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HARI SREENIVASAN: We turn to the crisis in Turkey, where the government continued its crackdown on those involved in an attempted coup that left more than 250 dead and nearly 2,000 injured. Leaders from around the world are calling for restraint.

“NewsHour” special correspondent Marcia Biggs is in Istanbul and has the latest.

MARCIA BIGGS, Special Correspondent: Protests raged for yet another day in Istanbul’s Taksim Square. Supporters of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowing to protect their leader and Turkey’s fragile democracy.

That fury was channeled by Turkey’s prime minister, who said the country will evaluate whether to reinstate the death penalty for some who plotted the coup. Turkey had scrapped capital punishment as part of its ongoing bid to join the European Union.

BINALI YILDIRIM, Prime Minister, Turkey (through translator): Death penalty requires a change of constitution. We will decide in compliance with the people’s will.

MARCIA BIGGS: That brought a swift rebuke from the E.U. foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, and others in Europe.

FEDERICA MOGHERINI, Foreign Policy Chief, European Union: We are the ones saying today rule of law has to be protected in the country. There is no excuse for any steps that takes the country away from that.

MARCIA BIGGS: Mogherini spoke before meetings in Brussels with Secretary of State John Kerry and other foreign ministers. Kerry pledged support for Turkey’s government, but cautioned the U.S. and others will be watching closely.

JOHN KERRY, Secretary of State: NATO also has a requirement with respect to democracy, and NATO will indeed measure very carefully what is happening.

MARCIA BIGGS: A major point of contention between the U.S. and Turkey, the fate of Muslim cleric and Erdogan opponent Fethullah Gulen, who lives in Pennsylvania in self-imposed exile. Erdogan and his administration say Gulen orchestrated the coup attempt, a charge the cleric forcefully denies.

Turkey is demanding he be extradited. The coup attempt by factions of Turkey’s military launched a night of terror late Friday. President Erdogan, who was on vacation, spoke first via FaceTime on Turkish TV and called for his supporters to take to the streets.

Then, late at night, he flew into Istanbul’s airport and vowed to purge the military and government.

PRESIDENT RECEP TAYYIP ERDOGAN, Turkey (through translator): Those guns were given to you by the people of this country. If you use the guns against the people who gave them to you, you will pay a heavy price.

MARCIA BIGGS: Chaos continued through the night, but by midday Saturday, the strike against the state was largely defeated. Erdogan has moved swiftly to make good on his vow to purge the country of what he calls conspirators; 9,000 police and other security officials were fired today.

More than 6,000 military personnel have been detained, and more than 3,000 judges suspended. Offices of many Turkish media organizations were stormed Friday night, including state television and CNN’s Turkish network.

Murat Yetkin is editor-in-chief of Hurriyet Daily News, whose office was also taken hostage.

Is he in control?

MURAT YETKIN, Editor-in-Chief, Hurriyet Daily News: It’s president’s quote, prime minister’s quote that everything is not over yet. That means they’re not.

MARCIA BIGGS: Well, and if it were over, he wouldn’t be still calling people out into the street.

MURAT YETKIN: No.

MARCIA BIGGS: So, the question remains, who has emerged the true winner?

MURAT YETKIN: Erdogan’s popularity has increased.

MARCIA BIGGS: Whether in favor of President Erdogan or not, most people we spoke to agreed that military rule wasn’t the answer. Where the people remain bitterly divided is over the future identity of their government, Islamic or secular.

Tarkan runs this cafe in a secular neighborhood. He says his biggest fear is that his two small children will not live in a free Turkey.

His friend Enre is a 31-year-old gay photographer. When demonstrators took to the streets on Friday, he says he felt targeted and with no one to call for protection.

ENRE: I don’t feel any safe really in my country now.

WOMAN: Basically, we are not (INAUDIBLE) people, because we are wearing short skirt, dress, and drinking the alcohol and going to bars.

MARCIA BIGGS: Thirty-five-year-old Burcu is terrified of the Erdogan government’s promise to institute aspects of Islamic law into the traditionally secular Turkish legal system.

WOMAN (through translator): They’re telling us protect your democracy, but this is not what I understand democracy to be or what I want from my democracy. For the last two days in this country, there have been calls for jihad and people have been going out to the streets with machetes.

MARCIA BIGGS: In this neighborhood, the people we met were scared, sad, and desperately uncertain of their future. Not a 10-minute walk away, we met 48-year-old Taci and his family. Taci took his son with him out on the streets Friday night in support of President Erdogan. He praises the president for what he has done for the economy and scoffs at suggestions that Turkey under his rule has lost its freedom.

MAN (through translator): Look around. Everyone can dress as they want. There’ll be no Sharia law brought to Turkey. This will never happen.

MARCIA BIGGS: His wife, Hulya, tells us that Erdogan is the strong leader the country needs and she is pleased that her children can now attend religion classes at school, as part of a program initiated by Erdogan for what he calls the devout generation.

WOMAN (through translator): If we had Sharia law now, the heads of these generals who attempted the coup would be hanging at the palace gates. There was no mercy during Ottoman time under Sharia law. We want capital punishment. We want it deep from our hearts. And it will happen, inshallah.

MARCIA BIGGS: Strong opinions on both sides and looming uncertainty for a divided country in a fragile state.

For the “PBS NewsHour,” I’m Marcia Biggs in Istanbul, Turkey.

HARI SREENIVASAN: For more on this, we turn to Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He’s also the author of “The Rise of Turkey: The 21st Century’s First Muslim Power.” And “NewsHour” chief foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Warner.

Soner, first, I want to ask, the information coming out of Turkey says the Interior Ministry has fired close to 9,000 people. Were that many people involved in this coup?

SONER CAGAPTAY, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy: Probably not.

It’s likely that the military plotters of the coup that the government arrested were involved in it, but I can’t believe that 9,000 judges and many other civilian employees were involved in the coup. Rather, what this suggests is that the government is now going after the Gulen movement, which was its former ally, also a conservative movement as the AKP’s is.

But now since the rift, 2013, there has been a blood feud between the two, and it’s not a coincidence therefore that there were some Gulen-aligned officers who probably took part in this coup effort. But the government is casting a wider net and going after what it thinks are supporters and sympathizers of this movement in the bureaucracy and also in the judiciary.

So expect a large-scale witch-hunt in Turkey coming up.

HARI SREENIVASAN: We will talk a little bit more about Gulen in a second, but, Margaret, what is the U.S. kind of position on what looks like a large-scale crackdown?

MARGARET WARNER, Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent: Well, that is exactly the number one U.S. concern.

The U.S. was caught off-guard by this, Hari, and certainly came out and said the right things about supporting a democratic government, but quickly followed by admonitions to Erdogan not to use this as a way to purge, as he has in others — in journalist community and the judiciary, purge people he thinks are his opponents.

And when Secretary Kerry made his first comments, I think it was on Saturday, and suggested at least in the reporting that Turkey’s NATO membership might be affected by this, there was a huge reaction from Turkish diplomats, who peppered the State Department and the White House demanding an explanation.

And so today you saw the White House press secretary taking concerns — taking care to say, look, Turkey is a member, and it’s a member. This is not like the E.U.. But there’s certainly concern in the White House that this is going to deepen the rift with Turkey, the chilly relationship.

The labor minister even suggested the U.S. was behind the coup. Erdogan hasn’t repeated that, but there are deep concerns.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Let’s talk a little bit about Fethullah Gulen.

He’s in Pennsylvania. Erdogan says he’s behind the coup. He says, I’m not behind the coup. Secretary Kerry says prove that he’s behind the coup.

Who is he and does he have the kind of influence that scares Erdogan so much?

SONER CAGAPTAY: He’s known to have friends in the Turkish bureaucracy, including in the police force, as well as the judiciary and the military.

And after the rift started with him and President Erdogan, many Gulen-aligned or suspected Gulen-aligned people in the bureaucracy were kicked out. Now this gives Erdogan a second chance to really go after this movement.

I think at the end, whether or not we think Gulen movement was behind the coup fully, this is what President Erdogan believes. He believes that this is the main driving force behind the coup and he will go after them with all his force. And whereas earlier, the whole issue of Gulen movement was a talking point in U.S.-Turkish relationship when there were bilateral meetings, now it’s going to be issue number one.

Erdogan is going to insist on his extradition and he might even link Turkish-U.S. cooperation on Gulen’s extradition. Now, that may not work with the Pentagon, which already has a dim view of Erdogan’s administration for his policy of allowing radicals to cross into Syria to fight the Assad regime, some of whom have morphed into ISIS.

So, if he does link those two, I think that might create a backlash at the Pentagon. People might say, we don’t want a deal like that. I think what Turkey ought to do is separate the two issues, provide to Washington a full and convincing account of, as they say, Gulen’s involvement in the coup, but keep military cooperation separate from that.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Margaret, what Soner is pointing to is just also the geographic and political importance of Turkey right now and how important it is to the United States and really all NATO allies, especially in the fight against ISIS.

MARGARET WARNER: Incirlik Air Base, it’s mostly a Turkish base. And the U.S. just has a little section there.

But some of the coup plotters, including the former commander of the base who tried to get asylum from the U.S., ostensibly or reportedly or accusedly were working out of there. It’s all very uncomfortable. The power has not even been restored to the air base, but the U.S. has its own power.

But if you look at a map, Turkey is absolutely key now, given its related involvement in the fight against ISIS, in which it really is cracking down on people trying to get in and most importantly letting U.S. planes use that, not only to refuel, but to launch offensive strikes.

Otherwise, they have to come from carriers in the ocean, taking five, six times as much and often having to leave without even dropping their ordnance. Maintaining this relationship, you can see the United States trying very hard to manage it, so it doesn’t go awry, as Soner was suggesting.

SONER CAGAPTAY: There will be problems moving forward, because of the fact that there is really no good outcome of this coup for Turkey.

If the military had won, it would have become an oppressive country. And Erdogan has won, but it still will become a oppressive place, because he has a record of cracking down on dissent, and going after the opposition, banning social media, sending the police to beat up demonstrators.

And so far Erdogan has done all of this based on the assumption that there is a conspiracy to overthrow him. Now that theory has legs, because there really is a conspiracy to overthrow him. His supporters will embrace his crackdown as oppression as a necessary tool to go after those who want to undermine him, and he will continue casting a wide net against the opposition.

While Turkey has the right, an Erdogan administration, to go after those who executed this ill-conceived, ill-executed, nefarious plot, I think we’re going to see that his crackdown is going to be wider than that going after the opposition. It will become much more difficult for Turks who don’t agree with him to oppose his policies democratically.

MARGARET WARNER: The U.S. view is, we will know in two weeks whether it’s that or whether they’re just rounding up a lot of suspects and that in two weeks most are freed and they really identify coup plotters.

HARI SREENIVASAN: All right, Soner Cagaptay and Margaret Warner, thanks so much.

SONER CAGAPTAY: It’s a pleasure.

MARGARET WARNER: Pleasure.

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GWEN IFILL: Good evening. I’m Gwen Ifill.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And I’m Judy Woodruff.

GWEN IFILL: We bring you the “NewsHour” tonight from the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio, site of the 2016 Republican National Convention.

JUDY WOODRUFF: For the next four days, the political spotlight shines on Donald Trump.

Tonight, with memories fresh of violence at home and abroad, the Republicans focus on security and immigration.

GWEN IFILL: Plus: Who is Donald Trump? We begin our three-part look at his life, beginning tonight.

MICHAEL D’ANTONIO, Author, “The Truth About Trump”: From the very start with Donald, it was about getting control of the family business, building it, growing it, and becoming the rich and famous and powerful person that he eventually became.

HARI SREENIVASAN: And I’m Hari Sreenivasan in Washington. We will have all the non-convention news of the day, including another ambush targeting police officers, leaving three dead and three wounded in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Plus: Turkey’s crackdown. We’re on the ground there as the country’s government fires nearly 9,000 police, and arrests 6,000 others after a failed military coup.

JUDY WOODRUFF: All that and more on tonight’s “PBS NewsHour.”

(BREAK)

JUDY WOODRUFF: The Republican National Convention has officially opened for business, but not without a fuss. Opponents of Donald Trump objected loudly to adopting convention rules by voice vote.

Meanwhile, the candidate is hoping to keep focused on a law and order theme.

Correspondent Lisa Desjardins begins out coverage.

REINCE PRIEBUS, Chairman, Republican National Committee: This convention will come to order.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

LISA DESJARDINS: The convention formally began this afternoon, with events of the last two weeks looming over party business. Police killings of black men and the killing of officers in Dallas and now Baton Rouge are in the air, and Republican Party Chairman Reince Priebus opened with a moment of silence.

REINCE PRIEBUS: The men and women who protect our safety and well-being, who put their lives on the line every day, they’re our genuine heroes. We also want to recognize all the families who have lost loved ones during these troubling times.

LISA DESJARDINS: The theme of day one is make America safe again.

That idea of security will not just dominate here at the convention, but also throughout the Trump campaign, we’re told. Donald Trump will try to make the case that the leadership of President Obama and Hillary Clinton has fed violence here at home and insecurity abroad.

Tonight’s speakers are meant to drive that message home, including Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke, retired Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell, and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

In a convention twist, Trump himself will introduce his wife, Melania, the night’s featured speaker. But not everyone is here to see it. Ohio Governor John Kasich, a one-time Trump opponent, is staying away, and so are former Presidents George W. Bush and his father, George H.W. Bush.

Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort today brushed aside the absences.

PAUL MANAFORT, Manager, Trump Campaign: The Bush family, while we would liked to have had them, they are not — they have not been — they are part of past. We’re dealing with the future. We’re dealing with fixing the issues that relate to the future.

LISA DESJARDINS: Another former Trump opponent, Ben Carson, told the “NewsHour”‘s John Yang:

DR. BEN CARSON (R), Former Republican Presidential Candidate: The choice is going to be as dramatic as any choice we have ever had. We are talking about traditional American values, faith, family, personal responsibility, compassion for your neighbor, vs. a continuation of secular progressivism.

LISA DESJARDINS: Meanwhile, hundreds of protesters showed up today.

WOMAN: We should have turned our backs on what I see as a festival of hate. I’m very, actually, disappointed.

LISA DESJARDINS: Several hundred Trump supporters also gathered for a rally today, and a few were openly carrying guns. Authorities have banned some items in the event zone around the convention. But under Ohio’s open-carry law, firearms are permitted. That’s adding to security worries and the heavy police presence.

Cleveland Police Chief Calvin Williams:

CALVIN WILLIAMS, Chief, Cleveland Police Department: We want to make sure that the demonstrators are safe walking through the streets of the city of Cleveland, and we want to make sure we have enough officers to respond if things turn otherwise.

LISA DESJARDINS: Meanwhile, the Democratic nominee-to-be, Hillary Clinton, was in Cincinnati, addressing the NAACP and laying into Trump.

HILLARY CLINTON (D), Presumptive Presidential Nominee: Donald Trump led the movement to delegitimize our first black president, trumpeting the so-called birther movement. Donald Trump plays coy with white supremacists. Donald Trump insults Mexican immigrants, even an American judge born of Mexican heritage.

LISA DESJARDINS: The GOP has been known as the party of Lincoln. Clinton said, we are watching it become the party of Trump.

And this convention saw its first political test tonight, just late tonight, as the delegates who oppose Mr. Trump called for a roll call vote, trying to change the rules of this convention. They didn’t have enough states to do that. And in the end, the convention receded for dinner with the Trump forces saying they feel strong. Will we see more of those objections?

We will wait and see — Gwen, Judy.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Thank you, Lisa.

Gwen and I will be back later in the program with much more from Cleveland.

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A new exhibit at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio. Photo by Abbey Oldham

How does rock ‘n’ roll influence our thinking about political events and the world? A new exhibit at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame seeks to answer that question.

The guitar Jimi Hendrix used to play the national anthem at the Woodstock music festival. Photo by Abbey Oldham

“Louder Than Words: Rock, Power and Politics” features bands and artifacts – everything from instruments and sheet music to clothing – that documents American history through the tunes we rock out to. The exhibit is free all week while approximately 40 events take place at the Hall across four days during the Republican National Convention.

“At its core, some say all rock ‘n’ roll is political,” Greg Harris, the Hall of Fame’s CEO said. “It’s asking you to think differently, maybe to push the envelope, maybe to believe in something that you don’t currently believe in.”

Visitors are greeted by President Bill Clinton’s saxophone, which he played during a 1992 appearance on The Arsenio Hall Show. Right next to that is the guitar Jimi Hendrix used to play the national anthem during Woodstock in 1969.

Former President Bill Clinton’s saxophone. Photo by Abbey Oldham

“The performance of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ was unplanned,” said Kathryn Metz, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s manager of education outreach. The performance was controversial and considered by some to be disrespectful, in part, because of his “bomb” and “siren” style of playing the guitar during the anthem, she said.

The exhibit goes through the presidencies starting with Dwight Eisenhower and chronicles how rock ‘n’ roll and politics intersected in history. The displays include two guitars owned by John Lennon, including one he used to record “Give Peace a Chance.” Other items include the dress made of meat worn by Lady Gaga, lyrics to “Born in the U.S.A.” written by Bruce Springsteen and costumes worn by the Village People.

Costumes from the Village People at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Photo by Abbey Oldham

Check out our look at the exhibit, along with the rest of our convention coverage, on Snapchat. Type “pbsnews” and you will find our snap story, which includes a look inside Quicken Loans Arena – the home of the 2016 Republican National Convention. 

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The delegates of the Republican National Convention pose for a group photo at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio on July 18. Photo by Mike Segar/Reuters

American political conventions once had real drama as parties held rounds and rounds of voting before settling on a presidential nominee.

Now, they are highly staged television pep rallies as party loyalists anoint a nominee determined in state primaries and caucuses.

So as Republicans convene in Cleveland this week to nominate Donald Trump, with Democrats waiting to follow with Hillary Clinton’s nomination next week in Philadelphia, it’s reasonable to wonder whether the soirees still matter — especially in a year in which Trump has upended American politics.

The answer is not a simple yes or no. Here are some points to consider:

___

THIS IS NOT A NORMAL ELECTION YEAR

Conventions normally offer nominees an opportunity to bask in the spotlight, basking in the praise of their adoring supporters.

But Trump has had a rough run-up to the convention. Top Republicans, including the party’s last four nominees, are boycotting the convention. Trump’s rollout of running mate Mike Pence was shaky. And the first hours of the convention were marred by tumult on the convention floor in a fight over Republican rules.

So does a rocky start to the convention bode ill for Trump?

Not necessarily. The first rule of the 2016 campaign is that usual rules may not apply.

The political power brokers who have been abuzz about the turmoil in Trump’s campaign are some of the same ones who couldn’t imagine the outlandish billionaire developer winning the Republican nomination. Many were also shocked that Clinton faced a strong challenge from Bernie Sanders, a 74-year-old senator who identifies as a democratic socialist.

So beware of those who say they know just what’s going to happen in Cleveland and beyond.

___

TOUGH REBRANDING EFFORTS

Conventions offer candidates opportunity to shape their images to voters who hadn’t really tuned in before. That will be a tough task this year.

Trump and Clinton have been on the national stage for decades. The electorate seems to have hardened opinions, and negative ones at that.

A July Associated Press-GfK poll found more than 6 out of 10 voters held an unfavorable view of Trump; Clinton did poorly on that front as well, with a 57 percent unfavorable rating.

For Trump, Cleveland is about making himself more “likable,” according to top Republican advisers. A prime target: women, who make up more than half the electorate.

For Clinton, the hurdle is “trust.” Democrats say the way to overcome persuadable voters’ skepticism is to tell them about what she’s accomplished in her public roles, convincing them she’s best for the job, even if they may not completely trust her.

___

PARTY UNITY?

Parties traditionally strive to project an image of unity at their conventions. The Democratic Party has rallied behind Clinton, with Sanders and President Barack Obama among those speaking at the convention. Clinton will use surrogates to tell her story until she appears on her convention’s final night to accept the nomination.

The Republican Party, meanwhile, is fractured, as was evident in the rules fight Monday. Yet Trump doesn’t seem to care about party fissures. He’s the outsider selling himself to voters. His party label is secondary.

That would seem to give the united Democrats an advantage over the chaotic Republicans. But maybe not.

Trump’s primary product is his personal brand. Because of Trump, Republican primary debates set ratings records. Republican primary turnout set records. His name almost guarantees a large audience for his acceptance speech Thursday.

Trump enhanced his fame as a reality TV star, succeeding in a genre in which audiences tune in to see the unpredictable. Democrats could have a hard time attracting as many viewers — and voters — to their carefully scripted show.

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German emergency services workers congregate in the area where a man attacked passengers on a train near the city of Wuerzburg, Germany early July 19. Photo by Kai Pfaffenbach/Reuters

A teenager wielding an ax and a knife wounded four riders on a train passing through the southern German state of Bavaria late Monday. The attacker — a 17-year-old Afghan, according to AFP — was shot and killed by police as he tried to flee the scene.

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The incident occurred on a local train near the town of Wuerzburg. Early reports cited as many as 20 people with injuries, but the Wuerzburg police clarified later via Facebook that medics treated 14 people for shock, three victims for serious wounds and one person for light wounds.

Police said they did not know the motive for the attack, according to the Associated Press.

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CLEVELAND — Melania Trump’s well-received speech Monday to the Republican National Convention contained two passages that match nearly word-for-word the speech that first lady Michelle Obama delivered in 2008 at the Democratic National Convention.

The passages in question focus on lessons that Mrs. Trump, the wife of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, said she learned from her parents and the relevance of their lessons in her experience as a mother. They came near the beginning of her roughly 10-minute speech, which was otherwise distinct from the address that Mrs. Obama gave when her husband, then-Sen. Barack Obama, was being nominated for president.

In Mrs. Trump’s speech in Cleveland, she said: “From a young age, my parents impressed on me the values that you work hard for what you want in life, that your word is your bond and you do what you say and keep your promise, that you treat people with respect. They taught and showed me values and morals in their daily life.”

So part of Melania Trump's #RNCinCLE speech sounded an awful like a speech from @FLOTUS… https://t.co/xkWxD9hdas pic.twitter.com/55UYNdp0rx

— Mic (@mic) July 19, 2016

In Mrs. Obama’s 2008 speech in Denver, she said: “And Barack and I were raised with so many of the same values: like, you work hard for what you want in life, that your word is your bond, that you do what you say you’re going to do, that you treat people with dignity and respect, even if you don’t know them and even if you don’t agree with them.”

Another passage with notable similarities that follows two sentences later in Mrs. Trump’s speech addresses her attempts to instill those values in her son.

“We need to pass those lessons on to the many generations to follow,” Mrs. Trump said. “Because we want our children in this nation to know that the only limit to your achievements is the strength of your dreams and your willingness to work for them.”

Melania Trump's #RNCinCLE speech is strikingly similar to Michelle Obama's 2008 DNC speech https://t.co/RBbR3gic8Jhttps://t.co/7XjGJzVAgX

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) July 19, 2016

In the first lady’s 2008 speech, she said, “Barack and I set out to build lives guided by these values and to pass them onto the next generation, because we want our children — and all children in this nation — to know that the only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work hard for them.”

Trump’s campaign had no immediate reaction when asked about the similarities in the two speeches. White House officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment late Monday evening.

In an interview with NBC News taped ahead of her convention appearance and posted online early Tuesday, Mrs. Trump said of her speech, “I wrote it.” She added that she had “a little help.”

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A security official tries to extinguish a fire after members of the “Revolutionary Communist Party, USA” burned the U.S. flag outside the gates of the Quicken Loans Arena, the site for the Republican National Convention in Ohio, U.S., July 20, 2016. REUTERS/Adrees Latif

CLEVELAND — Hundreds of demonstrators — including anarchists, anti-Muslim protesters, Bikers for Trump and those calling themselves pro- and anti-capitalist — gathered in Cleveland’s Public Square on Thursday ahead of Donald Trump’s star turn on the final night of the Republican convention.

Police on bicycles and on foot formed barriers to keep hostile groups apart as debates but no fighting broke out.

As with other demonstrations over the past four days, police were out in force to keep the peace, and Police Chief Calvin Williams was in the middle of it again, riding with a bike patrol unit in the square.

Anti-Trump forces scheduled an evening rally in the square that was expected to draw a big crowd. Trump was set to accept his party’s nomination Thursday night.

As of Thursday morning, police reported 23 protest-related arrests since Monday, well below what law enforcement officials had feared. Seventeen of the arrests came Wednesday, during a melee that erupted during a flag-burning outside an entrance to the convention arena.

Trump said on Thursday that Cleveland police were doing “an incredible job.”

Early in the afternoon, about 150 protesters carrying signs saying “Ban All Trumps Not Muslims” and chanting “Love Trumps Hate” marched across a bridge leading into downtown.

The protest by a group called Stand Together Against Trump drew little notice outside a heavy police presence. Officers on rooftops watched through binoculars, while police on bicycles pedaled along the streets with no other traffic.

The demonstrators, in sweltering heat pushing above 90 degrees, dutifully followed the city’s designated route for protest marches.

“Trump is trying to use the moment to divide us. He’s trying to use the moment to gain personal power,” said march organizer Bryan Hambley, a Cleveland doctor.

Officers got between the marchers and a few conservative religious counter-protesters to make sure no skirmishes broke out.

Meanwhile, organizers of the flag-burning denied on Thursday that the man holding the American flag was on fire and said police used that as an excuse to move in.

Two officers were assaulted and suffered minor injuries, police said. The charges against those arrested included failure to disperse, resisting arrest and felonious assault on a police officer.

Among those arrested was Gregory “Joey” Johnson, whose torching of a flag at a GOP convention three decades ago led to the landmark 1989 U.S. Supreme Court decision that said flag-burning is protected by the First Amendment.

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Roger Ailes, chairman and CEO of Fox News and Fox Television Stations, answers questions during a panel discussion at the Television Critics Association summer press tour in Pasadena, California July 24, 2006. Picture taken July 24, 2006. Photo by Fred Prouser/REUTERS

After 20 years on the job, Roger Ailes has resigned from his role as CEO at Fox News, 21st Century Fox announced Thursday.

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Rupert Murdoch will step in as acting CEO and Chairman of Fox News and Fox Business Network to “ensure continuity of all that is best about Fox News and what it stands for,” Murdoch said in the statement released by 21st Century Fox.

The news comes amid a week of numerous conflicting reports about Ailes’ future after former news anchor Gretchen Carlson filed a sexual harassment suit against Ailes. In response to the lawsuit, 21st Century Fox launched an independent investigation, conducted by the New York law firm Paul, Weiss.

On Tuesday, Fox News personality Megyn Kelly became the latest to accuse Ailes of sexual harassment, telling investigators that Ailes had harassed her as a legal correspondent roughly 10 years ago.

Fox News personality Megyn Kelly told investigators that Fox News CEO Roger Ailes made unwanted sexual advances towards her. Photo by Brendan McDermid/REUTERS

“Roger Ailes has made a remarkable contribution to our company and our country,” Murdoch said in the statement. “Roger shared my vision of a great and independent television organization and executed it brilliantly over 20 great years.”

Murdoch’s sons, Lachlan and James Murdoch, echoed that sentiment, noting additionally: “For [our Fox News and Fox Business colleagues], as well as for our colleagues across our entire organization, we continue our commitment to maintaining a work environment based on trust and respect.”

No mention was made in the statement of Carlson’s sexual harassment suit or the investigation.

Shortly after Ailes’ resignation, Gretchen Carlson thanked her supporters, and her lawyer made a statement.

The statement reads: “Within 2 weeks of her filing a lawsuit against Roger Ailes, Gretchen Carlson’s extraordinary courage has caused a seismic shift in the media world. We hope that all businesses now understand that women will no longer tolerate sexual harassment and reputable companies will no longer shield those who abuse women. We thank all the brave women who spoke out about this issue. We will have more to say in the coming days as events unfold.”

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Voters walk to a polling precinct on primary day in Florida for the U.S. presidential election in Boca Raton, Florida March 15, 2016. Photo by Joe Skipper/Reuters

A Muslim advocacy group in Florida says it may take legal action over the removal of an Islamic center as a polling place for the presidential election in November.

Susan Bucher, elections supervisor for Palm Beach County, made the decision to eliminate the Islamic Center of Boca Raton as a polling place. She said her office had received “50 or so anonymous callers” who “felt uncomfortable voting at the Islamic center” in a statement to The Palm Beach Post.

READ MORE: People vote in churches and synagogues. Why not a mosque?

One caller indicated that “individuals planned to impede voting and maybe even call in a bomb threat” on election day, she said.

After Bucher met with leaders from the Islamic center on Wednesday, the Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said it may issue a lawsuit.

“The supervisor of elections is evidently targeted by an organized lobbying campaign spreading fear and Islamophobia. Her discretion to designate or remove polling sites must never be based on religious, racial or ethnic bias,” Laila Abdelaziz, Florida legislative and government affairs director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said in a statement. “This apparent unconstitutional religious bias may need to be corrected by our courts.”

The potential polling site at the mosque has been swapped for a library two miles away. It would have been the only Islamic place of worship selected as a voting site, joining over 80 churches and five synagogues in the area.

Bassem Alhalabi, president of the mosque, told the Sun Sentinel the Islamic center is “a true community center.” It serves as a hurricane shelter, feeds the homeless and works with the juvenile justice department.

“This is not democratic,” said Alhalabi, a professor of computer science and engineering at Florida Atlantic University. “If Muslims are good to vote in a church and a synagogue, then Christian and Jews are also good to vote in an Islamic center.”

Bucher’s decision also drew criticism from Rep. Ted Deutch, who represents Florida’s 19th district, which includes part of Palm Beach County.

“If we are going to use places of worship as polling places, we should not discriminate,” he said in a statement. “When Donald Trump advocates a religious ban on Muslims, there is a dangerous impact on communities throughout this country.”

The decommissioning of the mosque comes as efforts among American-Muslims to increase voter turnout gather steam. Some new voters say that they registered in response to comments by Republican nominee Donald Trump, namely his proposed ban on Muslim immigrants entering the country.

The campaign, founded in December by the U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations, aims to register a million Muslims by November, adding to the more than 300,000 Muslims that have registered to vote since the 2012 election cycle.

Campaigners have coupled the get-out-the-vote effort with community outreach initiatives, asking imams “to encourage their congregations to register to vote and launching “a ‘National Open Mosque Day’ to facilitate interactions between Muslims and people of other faiths,” the Christian Science Monitor reported.

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Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event on the day several states held presidential primaries, including California, at the Trump National Golf Club Westchester in Briarcliff Manor, New York. Photo by Carlo Allegri/Reuters

CLEVELAND — Pro-gay Republicans have held Donald Trump up as the most supportive nominee in GOP history, but at this week’s Republican National Convention, their excitement is clashing with the stark realization that their party is still pushing a very different message.

While Republicans seek to broaden their appeal ahead of November’s election, the party adopted a platform that moves farther away from gay rights with a new admonition of gay parenting, adding language that says kids raised by a mother and father tend to be “physically and emotionally healthier.” On the convention’s first day, the platform maintained its opposition to gay marriage and to bathroom choice for transgender people.

Trump declares himself a “friend of the gay community,” but his nominating convention has featured awkward silences on the rare occasions when gay rights have come up. Connecticut State Rep. Cara Pavalock said that’s a reflection of how much work the party needs to do on the issue.

“I joined the party not for what it is but for what I know it will be in the future,” said Pavalock, a Trump supporter.

An explicit call for better GOP treatment of gays was to come Thursday from PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, a Trump supporter who has faced blowback in Silicon Valley for giving the speech. Gay Republicans were eager to see what reception delegates would give Thiel, who planned to say he’s proud to be gay and disagrees with the party’s platform.

For those hoping Trump’s nomination will help repair the perception that Republicans are hostile to equality, there’s another challenge: Mainstream gay rights groups are denouncing the New York billionaire, arguing that tolerance for one minority group doesn’t excuse prejudice toward others — like Hispanics and Muslims.

Trump, who has said he’d nominate Supreme Court justices who might overturn gay marriage, has nonetheless spoken effusively about his friendships with gay people while avoiding anti-gay rhetoric that many other GOP candidates have embraced. After a gunman claiming Islamic State allegiance killed 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, Trump said he’d be better than Hillary Clinton because he wouldn’t allow in Muslim immigrants who want to “murder gays.”

At the same time, Trump has rattled many voters with unflattering comments about women, while insisting Mexico sends rapists and criminals into the U.S.

“His hatred toward anybody is a huge concern,” said Jay Brown of the Human Rights Campaign, the largest gay rights group. “When he attacks women, he attacks us. When he attacks Muslims, he’s attacking us.”

Gay Republicans who attended one event in a downtown ballroom Tuesday — titled “Wake Up! (the most fab party at the RNC)” — said it promoted the message that Islam and LGBT tolerance are incompatible. Outside the party, police kept at bay protesters with signs reading “Queers Against Racism.”

Though gay rights groups have pointed to Trump’s rhetoric about other minorities as evidence of intolerance, Republicans say that’s an attempt to blur the issues to help Democrats win elections and raise money.

“They are hell-bent on keeping this a political issue,” said Republican strategist Richard Grenell.

Four years ago Grenell, who is gay, was hired by 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney to be his foreign policy spokesman, but resigned under pressure from social conservatives who questioned Romney’s conservatism. This week, he attended a “Big Tent Brunch” on the convention’s sidelines, hosted by the American Unity Fund, a GOP group that promotes LGBT rights.

At the brunch — held in a literal big tent at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, pro-LGBT Republicans sipped mimosas and mingled with transgender activist Caitlyn Jenner while a man carried a rainbow version of the Gadsden flag — a tea party symbol. Added was the phrase “Shoot Back,” employed by gun rights advocates after the Orlando shooting to suggest the victims should have been armed.

And at the Quicken Loans Arena where Trump was nominated, there were only vague allusions to gay rights from convention speakers — such as former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who praised police for protecting, among others, people of “every sexual orientation.”

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HARI SREENIVASAN: Next, our series The end of AIDS wraps up in South Africa, where, this week, many of the world’s top scientists, researchers and advocates are meeting in Durban.

Among the topics: Is the end of AIDS really a possibility?

Perhaps no nation has paid as steep a toll from AIDS as South Africa has.

But, as correspondent William Brangham and producer Jason Kane report, few other nations are doing as much to push back against the virus.

This is the final report in our series, which has been supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: As the world races to end the HIV/AIDS epidemic, many are looking to South Africa, which has more ground to cover than anywhere else.

They’re sending out fleets of bike messengers to deliver lifesaving drugs. They’re testing as many people as they can, educating others, running some of the world’s top state-of-the-art research labs. They’re even trying this, surfing lessons as HIV prevention.

South Africa has more people infected with HIV than any nation on Earth. Over six million people here have the virus. Only half of those are being treated, so South Africa also has one of the greatest challenges.

SALIM ABDOOL KARIM, CAPRISA: One out of every five people living with HIV in the world lives right here in South Africa.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Salim Abdool Karim is one of the leaders of South Africa’s fight against HIV/AIDS. He runs CAPRISA, a major research lab in Durban.

SALIM ABDOOL KARIM: We estimate that there are about 1,000 new HIV infections in South Africa each day.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Every single day?

SALIM ABDOOL KARIM: Every single day. And what’s critical in that, it’s not just that there’s all this HIV, but that young women are a key factor in the highest-incidence populations.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: This is the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation Youth Center in Masiphumelele Township in Cape Town. This is the place that uses surfing, among other things, to keep kids engaged in its HIV program.

Here, Linda-Gail Bekker is trying to prevent young women from ever getting HIV in the first place. Some studies indicate that up to 8 percent of teenage girls will become infected every year in parts of South Africa before they reach their mid-20s.

LINDA-GAIL BEKKER, Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation Youth Center: These are unprecedented around the world. We have to do something about this.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Bekker’s center is trying something few other places in the world are trying. They’re offering uninfected teenage girls PrEP. It sands for pre-exposure prophylaxis. And as we have reported in this series, it’s a once-a-day pill which greatly lowers your risk of becoming infected if you’re exposed to HIV.

WOMAN: You need to take your pill every day so that you can stay protected by the pill.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Bekker says, this isn’t just crucial HIV prevention for these young women. It’s also empowerment. Too often, she says, young girls here have very little say in their own sexual lives and sexual health.

WOMAN: By not taking your pill every day, you might be in risk of getting HIV.

LINDA-GAIL BEKKER: For the first time, we have something that works if people take it, but it works for them. It’s in their hands. So, a young woman can swallow a pill a day. She is in control. She decides whether she swallows that pill or not, and she doesn’t have to have a conversation with her male partner about what he does and doesn’t do under the circumstance.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Of course, these innovations come after a very dark history that drove the spread of HIV in South Africa. For years, apartheid era laws created a system where black men were forced to travel long distances from their rural homes to find work, often in the nation’s mines.

Many slept with HIV-positive sex workers, and then brought the virus home to different regions. But even after the end of apartheid, and as the HIV epidemic deepened, former President Thabo Mbeki questioned whether HIV even caused AIDS.

THABO MBEKI, Former South African President: How does a virus cause a syndrome?

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Mbeki was widely criticized for hindering South Africa’s response to the epidemic. One study estimates his policies led to the deaths of over 300,000 South Africans.

Mbeki was president when Mpumi Mevana was diagnosed with HIV.

MPUMI MEVANA, HIV Patient: I was diagnosed in the corridor by the doctor in Johannesburg Hospital. “No, my dear, we can’t help you in this situation, because you’re HIV-positive.”

So, I went home that day, thinking that this is the end of the story for me. I’m waiting for the day I’m going to die.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: This 37-year-old single mother from Soweto is almost completely blind, because of a virus that can strike HIV-positive people who aren’t getting treatment.

But in a sign of the times, Mevana is now being treated in one of the most innovative clinics in Johannesburg. The Right to Care clinics treat more people with HIV in South Africa than anyone else. It’s 9:30 in the morning, and they have already seen 300 patients so far. They see 12,000 to 15,000 a month.

Ian Sanne is the founding director and CEO.

IAN SANNE, Founding Director and CEO, Right to Care: This clinic happens to be the most efficient clinic in South Africa. It’s probably one of the largest.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Sanne’s goal is to bring the most modern technologies to bear on HIV treatment in South Africa. They have built a robotic pharmacy to speed drug dispensing.

WOMAN: First, you insert your card in there.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: They have built this prototype ATM-like machine to dispense HIV drugs far away from clinics. They use electronic medical records and bar coding throughout the system.

And wait times in many South African clinics can be more than half-a-day, but here, Sanne says, they average less than an hour. He says, remember, South Africa has over three million people more people who aren’t being treated today, so every facility nationwide has to scale up.

IAN SANNE: In my view, we don’t have a choice. We actually have to make this work.

DR. AARON MOTSOALEDI, South African Minister of Health: How do we successfully run this world’s biggest treatment program?

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Dr. Aaron Motsoaledi is South Africa’s minister of health. He points out that South Africa has made huge gains in recent years.

In 2004, only 400,000 were being treated for HIV. Today, 3.4 million are. In 2004, 70,000 babies a year were born HIV-positive, but treatment has brought that down to less than 6,000 a year. But Motsoaledi says achieving these advances in so short a period of time has stretched the country’s resources thin.

DR. AARON MOTSOALEDI: There’s no way on earth you could increase the number of doctors proportionately within a decade.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: So, for now, the burden of South Africa’s expanded HIV care falls the hardest on its health care workers.

Nobuhle Ndlela is a nurse in a rural part of KwaZulu-Natal in Eastern South Africa. Her day starts early, getting her girls off to school before she drives to the HIV clinic where she works.

KwaZulu-Natal is one of the most HIV-infected regions on the planet. At the local hospital, people routinely show up with advanced AIDS. They’re often also infected with tuberculosis, another epidemic that’s plaguing South Africa.

T.B. is the leading cause of death for HIV-positive people here. It’s estimated that in many pockets of KwaZulu-Natal, one out of every three adults is infected with HIV.

At the clinic where Ndlela works, she says the stream of patients coming through her door is overwhelming.

NOBUHLE NDLELA, Nurse: Too much. I used to see 260 usually per day. But on the fourth of this month, April, there were 305.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Three hundred and five?

NOBUHLE NDLELA: Yes, because…

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: In one day?

NOBUHLE NDLELA: In one day.

So — and it became even difficult for me to observe the patient properly.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: This woman with her back to us just received her diagnosis a few days ago. She asked that we not show her face or use her name.

She’s told us she stares at the sheet of paper with her positive result on it for hours, in disbelief.

WOMAN: I didn’t expect it to be like that. I was so shocked and surprised, so disappointed. I don’t know how to explain it.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: She says she was infected by her boyfriend, who didn’t know or didn’t tell her about his own status. She hasn’t yet told her two young sons the news.

Why?

WOMAN: I’m not ready to tell them. Even my family, I never said anything to them. So, it’s not easy.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: What are you worried their reaction is going to be? There’s a lot of people in this community that have it. It’s — there’s no shame in having this disease.

(CROSSTALK)

WOMAN: They will think I’m going to die. They will not feel comfortable about it.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: It obviously doesn’t feel this way to her, but she’s one of the lucky ones. Consistent HIV medication, which she will now get, can prolong her life for decades. She can still work, still be a mom.

This is the challenge for so much of South Africa today: Find the people who are infected with HIV, but don’t know it, persuade them to start treatment, and sustain that treatment for the rest of their lives.

SALIM ABDOOL KARIM: It’s not that we don’t know what to do. It’s a challenge of trying to do what we know works, and to do it at a scale where it can really make a difference.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: After a long day treating hundreds of HIV patients, Nobuhle Ndlela is tired, but not defeated.

NOBUHLE NDLELA: God knows every step I take.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: She has a few hours with her daughters to pray and to sing and to rest, before she starts again, wrestling against an epidemic.

For the “PBS NewsHour,” I’m William Brangham in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

HARI SREENIVASAN: You can explore the entire series The End of AIDS on our Web site, PBS.org/NewsHour.

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HARI SREENIVASAN: Vice President Joe Biden spoke today with Turkish prime minister and expressed — quote — “unyielding support” for Turkish democracy.

According to the White House, this comes as the crackdown after last Friday’s attempted coup in Turkey continues. And, today, the Parliament cemented emergency legislation giving the government expanded powers.

From Istanbul, special correspondent Marcia Biggs begins our coverage.

MARCIA BIGGS: Across Turkey this morning, reactions to the declaration of emergency ranged from fearful to welcoming.

MAN (through translator): I think it could make things worse in a country where we have no freedoms.

MAN (through translator): I think this is the right move under the current circumstances. We are going through difficult times.

MARCIA BIGGS: The move follows last Friday’s failed military coup attempt, which killed nearly 250 people and wounded hundreds more. In his announcement last night, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed to cleanse what he called viruses in the armed forces.

RECEP TAYYIP ERDOGAN, Turkish President (through translator): This measure is in no way against democracy, the law and freedoms. On the contrary, it aims to protect and strengthen them.

MARCIA BIGGS: Erdogan’s government had already embarked on a sweeping crackdown of mass arrests and mass firings since the coup. But Parliament’s overwhelming approval of the state of emergency fully authorizes him to impose laws by fiat, hold prisoners in jail longer and take other actions.

Turkey’s markets reacted with a slide, as the lira tumbled to a near-record low and governments around the globe reacted cautiously. Germany called for emergency rule to end as quickly as possible. And in Washington, the White House also urged Ankara not to go too far.

JOSH EARNEST, White House Press Secretary: The United States is not going to micromanage the situation in Turkey. But I think we are going to send a clear, unmistakable signal of support for the democratic institutions of Turkey.

MARCIA BIGGS: Journalist Andrew Finkel has lived in Turkey for almost 30 years. He spoke to us in Istanbul.

So, what does this mean for Erdogan and his power?

ANDREW FINKEL, Founder of P24: Well, it means that he will be free to move against people who he perceives to be his opponents and his enemies.

MARCIA BIGGS: Are there any limits to this?

ANDREW FINKEL: It would be a brave person to try and impose those limits. But the thing is, even before the coup happened, he — we were headed down an autocratic path.

MARCIA BIGGS: Erdogan’s government blames opposition cleric Fethullah Gulen and his followers for the coup. Gulen now lives in the U.S. in exile.

ANDREW FINKEL: He preaches a nonviolent variant of Islam. Most people would call it a moderate view of Islam. But his followers were very active in many forms of life. And many believe that his followers pursued a policy of really getting themselves in positions of authority in the bureaucracy, in the police, in the judiciary, et cetera, et cetera, in order to further the aims of the movement.

MARCIA BIGGS: Here in Turkey, many of those followers attended more than 650 schools founded by Gulen that taught over 200,000 students. Once strong allies, Erdogan and Gulen finally broke in 2013 after Gulen accused Erdogan and his party of corruption, even supplying videotaped evidence.

ANDREW FINKEL: Mr. Erdogan resented the Gulenists’ move on to occupy positions of power and the influence they had within his own government.

MARCIA BIGGS: Can the country handle losing all these people?

ANDREW FINKEL: It’s 60,000 people. It’s a third of the officer corps, colonels or generals or above. You know, who’s guarding the store?

MARCIA BIGGS: The numbers of people affected by this purge are staggering; 30,000 people were suspended from their jobs in civil service, 9,000 people were taken into custody; 21,000 teachers had their licenses revoked. Yet, among all these people, we were unable to find anyone who felt free enough to talk to us about it.

Senel Karatas is the director of Istanbul Human Rights Association. This week, she has been helping the families of soldiers in custody, allegedly tortured by government authorities after the coup. We spoke to her yesterday.

What does the purge mean for you, someone who fights human rights violations on a daily basis?

SENEL KARATAS, Director, Istanbul Human Rights Association (through translator): Since the coup, we have seen an extreme rise of abuses and maybe suspension of human rights.

It was really good that so many people have solidarity against the coup and prevented it. But some people on the streets started to use this atmosphere as an opportunity for revenge

MARCIA BIGGS: Are you scared for yourself, for your country?

SENEL KARATAS (through translator): Yes. The state of emergency is the main concern for the future of democracy. It will lead to a rise in human rights abuses, and we will fall into despair.

MARCIA BIGGS: Turkey has now suspended its commitment to the European Convention on Human Rights. The deputy prime minister insisted today that — quote — “Standards of the European Court of Human Rights will be upheld,” but he didn’t elaborate.

For now, Senel says she is doubtful, but will continue her work.

For the “PBS NewsHour,” I’m Marcia Biggs in Istanbul, Turkey.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Turkey’s stability and its commitment to human rights are but two of the challenges facing Europe in the wake of the attempted coup. Turkey is also instrumental in the fight against ISIS and stemming the flow of migrants and refugees from the Middle East to Europe.

Now we explore Europe’s options.

Earlier this evening, I sat down with Federica Mogherini, the European Union’s top diplomat. She is in Washington for a donor conference, raising money for humanitarian aid to Iraq.

Thanks for joining us.

FEDERICA MOGHERINI, High Representative/Vice President, European Union: Thank you very much for inviting me.

HARI SREENIVASAN: All right, so first things first.

In the past week, Turkey has been going through a significant amount of turmoil. There was an attempted coup. They have detained and fired tens of thousands of people. They are now declaring a state of emergency, and they’re saying that they want to bring back the death penalty.

So, aren’t these the type of violations of human rights or civil liberties that should stop them from becoming a member of the E.U., which they want to be?

FEDERICA MOGHERINI: You know, what is happening in Turkey is extremely important, both for Europe and America.

And we were saying together with Secretary Kerry that, as it was important to stop the coup, it is very important that the reaction to the coup is one that takes into consideration human rights, rule of law. And we’re seeing in these days things that are completely unacceptable, being that against the word of university or media, the judiciary.

And we are saying very clearly and loud, both Europeans and Americans together, that, yes, the state institutions needs to be preserved democratically, so the president, government, Parliament, but that fundamental freedoms have to be respected and protected. And we’re going to continue this way.

HARI SREENIVASAN: So, what’s the leverage that the E.U. has? Will you say to Turkey, if you do this, you’re not going to become a part of the E.U.?

FEDERICA MOGHERINI: Well, we have said it very clearly.

For instance, if you introduce the death penalty that was abolished exactly for negotiations to enter the European Union, if you are reintroducing the death penalty, you are not going to become a member of the European Union. That’s very clear.

HARI SREENIVASAN: So, one of the things that you have been able to do with Turkey is to slow the flow of migrants coming from Turkey into Greece.

You have sort of orchestrated almost a refugee swap. If they can keep the people coming across from Turkey to Greece, perhaps the European Union can take some people from Syria.

What if Turkey says, you know what, stay out of our business, we have to deal with what this attempted coup was, we have to take the measures we have to take? And what if they decide let’s just let people through, let people go back to Europe again?

FEDERICA MOGHERINI: The deal we had with Turkey had nothing to do with the swap.

What we have decided to do and what we are doing is to support the hosting of Syrian refugees in Turkey, as we’re doing in Jordan or in Lebanon. That’s the humanitarian thing. And, by the way, it’s also a security issue.

I’m here in Washington today because Secretary Kerry invited this anti-Da’esh coalition ministerial meeting. It has to do with a global effort to manage the situation that is spilling out of Syria, with serious consequences on all the neighboring countries, including Turkey.

Turkey is a country that is hosting the largest number of refugees in the world at this moment. So, the agreement we have with Turkey is about making lives of Syrian refugees sustainable and making the life of the Turkish hosting communities sustainable.

So, it’s humanitarian. It’s aimed also at preventing radicalization among the Syrian refugees. It’s important. It’s in our interest. It’s in the interest of the whole international community. And we’re going to continue that way.

HARI SREENIVASAN: But when you talk about radicalization, that is something that Europe is facing much, much closer than even the United States.

Well, who — what do you do to try and stop the attackers that struck in Paris, in Brussels and Nice?

FEDERICA MOGHERINI: So, first of all, we have to realize that this is a global challenge that requires a global work, a global coalition.

That is why it’s so important that America and Europe stays together and works together in this respect. We have today a partnership between Europe and America that is as strong as ever. And this is extremely important to face this challenge together.

It’s not something that comes from the outside of our societies. We see it in here and we see it in Europe. It’s people that were born and raised in our own societies. So there is part of our work that is focused on defeating Da’esh on the ground in Syria, Iraq, but also in Libya and elsewhere, but is also a cultural, I would say, a social part of the work, that is aimed at preventing our own youth to get radicalized.

Take the case of Nice, somebody that got radicalized, if we can talk about that, in a few weeks’ time. So, violence is somehow preceding the radicalization. It has nothing to do with religion, has much more to do with violence.

So, this is the kind of effort we’re doing, together with our Arab friends, also with a strong component of the Asian partners in those efforts, because the risk is not only for Europe. It’s for United States, for the Middle East, obviously, but also for Asia, as we have seen in many different places. It’s a global effort, and this is why we need America to stay engaged.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Speaking of America, you have said that part of the strategy going forward for the E.U. is to strengthen E.U. relations with the NATO allies.

The Republican candidate for president just said that he would make NATO response to a crisis conditional on those countries paying more for the protection. What do you think of that?

FEDERICA MOGHERINI: You know, in Europe, we are strengthening our defense capabilities, including also investment in defense capabilities.

But I think that everybody here in America understands very well that NATO has provided peace and security, not only for Europe, but for all of the Western world, for so many decades. It’s part of our history. I think it’s part of our future. And when NATO is investing in security also in Europe, it’s doing that also for America’s security.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Is there a position that the European Union might take if Donald Trump does come into power and if he wants to implement the strategy?

FEDERICA MOGHERINI: You know, I have my own personal opinions, preferences, political views.

But the point is that Europe and America need to work together, are bound to work together. In a world like this, with terrorism, conflicts, crisis, dangers everywhere, you need friends. And Europe and America are the best friends we can find on both sides of the Atlantic.

So, on the European side, we are committed to work with America in any circumstances, with any president that is elected. What I can say, though, is that I remember very well when Obama was elected in 2008. In his first speech in Chicago, he was saying about restoring friendships and alliances that were, let’s say, going through difficult times.

I think he delivered on this. And I can only hope that the next president will do the same.

HARI SREENIVASAN: All right, Federica Mogherini, thanks so much for joining us.

FEDERICA MOGHERINI: Thank you.

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HARI SREENIVASAN:  In the day’s other news:  Donald Trump raised concerns at NATO after suggesting he wouldn’t automatically defend allies against Russia, unless they pay more of the cost.  He told The New York Times — quote — “If they fulfill their obligations to us, the answer is yes.”

The head of NATO said two World Wars prove peace in Europe is also important to U.S. security.

In France, investigators say the man behind the deadly truck attack in nice may have started planning a year ago.  Mohamed Bouhlel killed 84 people last week when he drove a truck down a beachside promenade packed with Bastille Day revelers.  Now a search of his phone suggests he’d been thinking about it for months.

FRANCOIS MOLINS, Paris Prosecutor (through translator):  It found photographs of Nice’s fireworks dating back to July 14, 2015.  Yes, I said 2015.  And it found a photograph of a newspaper article dating back to January 1, 2016, appearing in a local Nice newspaper, headlined — and I quote — “Man Charges Into a Restaurant Terrace With a Truck.”

HARI SREENIVASAN:  Five suspects already in custody are facing terrorism charges for allegedly aiding in the attack.

Federal police in Brazil say they have broken up a possible terror plot during the Summer Olympics.  Brazil’s justice minister says 10 suspects pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group and talked of striking during the Games.  He says they had no specific targets yet.  The Olympics begin in Rio de Janeiro on August 5.

The highest tribunal in sports today rejected Russia’s appeals to let its track and field athletes compete in Rio.  They have been banned over allegations of systematic state-sponsored doping.

Ian Payne of Independent Television News reports from Lausanne, Switzerland.

MATTHIEU REEB, Secretary General, Court of Arbitration for Sport:  the Court of Arbitration for Sport has dismissed the request filed by the Russian Olympic Committee and 68 Russian athletes.

IAN PAYNE:  So, 68 Russian track and field athletes are banned from Rio unless they can prove they have not been involved in doping.  So, stars such as double Olympic poll vaulting champion Yelena Isinbayeva, who trains in Russia, will not appear.  She has described the position as the funeral of athletes.

Now the IOC must decide whether to ban the entire Russian team, which won 82 medals at London in 2012, including 24 golds.

Russian sport has been in the dark for the last 18 months, and this week a report claimed Russian secret agents had swapped positive drug tests at their laboratory during the Sochi Winter Games.

In Russia, as the athletes prepared for the Games, the reaction was one of sadness and anger

ALINA VISHNITSKAYA, Russian Sprinter (through translator):  This decision is really frustrating.  For some reason, clean sportsmen who have never been caught doping will have to carry this responsibility with everyone else.  I wouldn’t want this to ever happen again.

IAN PAYNE:  Elsewhere within the sport, the reaction was quite different.

USAIN BOLT, Jamaican Sprinter:  If you are the court and you catch somebody, I definitely feel that you should take action.  And if you feel like banning the whole team is the right action, then I’m all for it, you know what I mean?

IAN PAYNE:  The attention will now switch to the International Olympic Committee, who also have their headquarters here.  Legally, they now have the green light to ban the entire Russian team.

HARI SREENIVASAN:  The IOC Executive Board meets Sunday to consider that question.

Back in this country, Florida’s state law enforcement agency will investigate the police shooting of an unarmed black man in North Miami.  Behavioral therapist Charles Kinsey says he was trying to return an autistic patient who had wandered off Monday.  Cell phone video showed Kinsey down on his back with his hands up, and identifying himself, before he was shot.  He spoke from his hospital bed yesterday.

CHARLES KINSEY, Shooting Victim:  And I’m standing there.  I’m like, sir, “Why did you shoot me?”

And his words to me, he said, “I don’t know.”

As long as I got my hands up, they’re not going to shoot me.  This is what I’m thinking.  they’re not going to shoot me.  Wow, was I wrong.

HARI SREENIVASAN:  The police chief said his officers had been told there was a man with a gun threatening to kill himself.  It turned out the autistic man had a toy truck.

The U.S. Justice Department filed suit today to block two major mergers in the health insurance industry.  Aetna wants to buy Humana for $34 billion, while Anthem is trying to buy Cigna for $48 billion.  Justice officials say the deals would hurt competition and consumers.  The companies say getting larger will help them cut prices.

FOX News Channel CEO Roger Ailes has resigned.  Parent company 21st Century Fox announced it late today, and said it’s effective immediately.  Ailes faced growing allegations of sexual harassment.

And on Wall Street, stocks gave some ground after a week-plus rally.  The Dow Jones industrial average lost 77 points to close at 18517.  The Nasdaq fell 16 points, and the S&P 500 slipped seven.

And the National Basketball Association is moving next year’s All-Star Game from Charlotte, North Carolina, over a state law on transgender bathrooms.  The statute requires people to use public restrooms matching their sex at birth.  A league statement says it wants all people to feel welcome at its events, and will choose another city.

Vice President Joe Biden spoke today with Turkish prime minister and expressed — quote — “unyielding support” for Turkish democracy.

According to the White House, this comes as the crackdown after last Friday’s attempted coup in Turkey continues.  And, today, the Parliament cemented emergency legislation giving the government expanded powers.

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JUDY WOODRUFF: And from there, we go to our team of analysts here in the booth, who are with us all evening and all week and next week, David Brooks of The New York Times, syndicated columnist Mark Shields, and Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report.

So, let’s talk a little bit about what you heard.

David Brooks, Mike Pence and Donald Trump?

DAVID BROOKS: Pepto-Bismol. He calms things down.

And so he’s a very conventional conservative, very — pretty orthodox conservative, somebody who’s been involved in Republican circles forever, has such a sweet disposition. And so he takes the things Donald Trump says and he sorts them, makes them seem normal.

And one of the things the Trump campaign has got to do is try to make him seem like a normal candidate. And Pence has managed to be good at that.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Amy?

AMY WALTER, The Cook Political Report: And he’s incredibly on message.

This is the one person you don’t have to worry about freelancing. What we have seen at this convention and what we saw from some of the other candidates who were sort of in the race for vice president, like Newt Gingrich, they’re going to go off on their, sort of riff on their own sort of tangent.

Mike Pence is going to do what the Trump campaign needs him to do, period, exclamation point. The other thing that Mike Pence does besides soothing the edges of Donald Trump, is he soothes a lot of candidates down-ballot.

You can send Mike Pence to any one of these battleground states where the Senate majority is on the line, and candidates are going to want to stand with him, even those candidates who aren’t going to show up at a Trump rally.

GWEN IFILL: Mark, you have to listen carefully to Judy’s conversation with Mike Pence to realize that sometimes he’s actually disagreeing with the guy whose ticket he’s on.

But — so when he says he’s going to go and have a heart-to-heart with him whenever they have mild disagreements, not that people care if vice presidents and presidents agreed all the time, does that mean he can make a — that he can engineer a change of heart if he feels strongly about something?

MARK SHIELDS: Probably not. That’s not the historic role of vice presidents.

They don’t have that much influence on the presidential candidate who has won the nomination and given them — the only person that has a vote in the vice presidential nomination is the presidential candidate.

But I do want to say about Mike Pence, it’s the first Reaganesque figure we have seen at this convention.

GWEN IFILL: What do you mean?

MARK SHIELDS: In the sense of Ronald Reagan was an upbeat, reassuring and civil and just appealing figure.

In the conversation with Judy, there wasn’t the adversarial. There wasn’t the chip on the shoulder. That’s not part of Mike Pence. And I thought his speech last night was quite Reaganesque in the sense of putting a smiling face on conservatism, which has been missing this week.

DAVID BROOKS: It should be said this is not like the distinction between Joe Biden and Barack Obama or Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

This is not like, oh, we have got two normal guys, they’re in the party and they have some differences. This is here and here. Ronald Reagan was an upbeat, market-oriented, outward-looking, sort of optimistic, future-oriented politician.

Donald Trump is a fear-oriented, backward-looking, closed-in politician.

GWEN IFILL: Let’s talk about a lot of other things going on tonight, because, tonight, we’re going to hear from Donald Trump, the big nomination acceptance speech.

And all day long, it’s been kind of overshadowed by what Ted Cruz did last night. They’re not talking about Mike Pence. They’re not talking about even what Donald Trump is expected to do. They’re talking about the fact that Ted Cruz kind of poked the candidate in the eye.

Amy.

AMY WALTER: I have never been at a convection where as much time and energy was expended on what’s going to happen in the next election than what’s going to happen in this one.

And while Ted Cruz did it most aggressively by basically coming out to somebody’s party and, you know, just spilling the drinks everywhere, every other candidate has also gone up there and done a much more subtle way of saying, you know what, I have a different vision of where our country is going and a different vision for where the party needs to go than Donald Trump does. I’m going to stand up here and say that he’s the nominee.

That doesn’t mean they’re all lining up behind him. This last day, though, this is Donald Trump’s day. He’s not going to rescue this convention. It’s still going down in history as being unconventional and disruptive.

But he has a chance here to make a good impression. And I think the good news for him is that the bar is much lower than it was before we started this.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Mark Shields, what is the burden for Donald Trump tonight? What does he need to do?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, oh, sure.

Well, the burden — just one quick thing on Ted Cruz, and that is, he had a chance, like Ronald Reagan did in 1976 in Kansas City, to make the case for electing — or, you know, really separating himself as a distinct political figure. He chose not to.

And as Jeb Bush and John Kasich chose not to endorse and honor their pledge to endorse, they stayed away. He came to the room to do it, high-risk politics for him.

As far as our nominee, Donald Trump, tonight, Judy, he’s got to excite his base. He’s got to unite the country. It’s a mood for change in the country. But the problem with Donald Trump is that the change he represents, to a majority of Americans right now, is not reassuring. It’s unreassuring.

And I think that’s his job tonight, and especially to lay out a jobs program.

JUDY WOODRUFF: David Brooks?

DAVID BROOKS: First, on Cruz, if I can get my bite in, I start with the proposition that Trump is not a normal politician.

He doesn’t cross the threshold, and this is going to end very badly for him, either in November or beyond. And if you start with that premise, then what Ted Cruz did, while nakedly ambitious, was courageous and probably the right thing to do. If your party is sliding into some sort of chaotic land of hollowed out, then if you stand before history and yell stop, you will be rewarded in years and years to come, in the way that none of the others will be.

As far as Trump, he has picked law and order as his theme. And so he has got to persuade Americans that their fundamental problem is violence, and that crime and terrorism are the first things on their agendas affecting their lives, and, therefore, they need a guy like him. I’m not sure that’s true, but I think that’s more less the task he has assigned himself.

GWEN IFILL: David Brooks, Mark Shields, Amy Walter, thank all you very much.

Well, we have a lot more to talk about, if you need more, which I’m sure you do. Tune in later tonight, beginning at 8:00 p.m. Eastern time, for our special NPR/”PBS NewsHour” coverage of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.

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JUDY WOODRUFF: And earlier today, I sat down with the vice presidential nominee, Indiana Governor Mike Pence, here in the Cleveland in the arena for an in-depth interview about the convention, the race ahead, and how his own views match up, or don’t, with those of the man who chose him.

Governor Mike Pence, congratulations on your nomination to be vice president.

GOV. MIKE PENCE, (R-IN), Vice Presidential Candidate: Thank you, Judy. We’re very humbled.

JUDY WOODRUFF: In your speech last night, I don’t think there were very many dry eyes when you gestured up in the stands to your mother.

GOV. MIKE PENCE: Or mine.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And you said you thanked her, you went on to talk about your family, about growing up. What was that moment like?

GOV. MIKE PENCE: It was very emotional, very emotional.

My grandfather emigrated to this country. My mom grew up in a family of immigrants. And just to think that I could walk out on the stage and accept my party’s nomination for vice president of the United States, and be able to share that moment with my mother and with my wonderful wife, our three children, was almost inexpressible.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Speaking of family, the other — one of the other major speakers last night was Senator Ted Cruz, who, in saying why he’s not endorsing Donald Trump, cited his own family.

He said he could not bring himself to support somebody who had criticized his wife and his father. And he’s referring, of course, to Donald Trump saying his father was involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Do you understand why this is a hard thing for Ted Cruz?

GOV. MIKE PENCE: Senator Ted Cruz is my friend. And I’m glad he came to the Republican National Convention.

I was glad we also heard from Marco Rubio, and Chris Christie and a great speech from Scott Walker.

But I recognize primaries are difficult things. We had a field of outstanding candidates. And primaries get a little bit rough. And it takes some time for people to get beyond those things, Judy.

But I really appreciate the fact that he came, that he congratulated Donald Trump on winning the Republican nomination. And then he expressed support for our shared conservative values.

And I think, as time goes on, that you are going to continue to see more and more Republicans, independents, and many Democrats rally to that cause. And we’re going to elect Donald Trump as the next president of the United States.

JUDY WOODRUFF: You have said some very — as you are now, very complimentary things about Donald Trump.

It’s also the case that you have spent virtually your entire life as a deep believer in Christian values, Christian conservative values. That has not been a centerpiece of Donald Trump’s campaign. Do you think you are going to be able, with your own beliefs, to persuade him on issues like LGBT rights, on — I don’t know, on the issue of abortion? Do you think you can change his views in those areas?

GOV. MIKE PENCE: Well, I think Donald Trump is pro-life.

And I believe in the sanctity of life, and we have had some heart-to-heart conversations about the Supreme Court of the United States and about the importance of making sure that our next president appoints justices to the Supreme Court who will not only uphold the rule of law, but will — that will advance the principles enshrined in the Constitution of the United States.

I’m grateful for Donald Trump’s pro-life views. And I’m grateful that he’s expressed those views so publicly and openly. And, look, the American people know that there are issues that divide us very quickly, and they’re issues that are often matters of the heart for every American.

But the challenges facing our country today, I think, have even more even to do with America’s place in the world, with a struggling economy that isn’t producing the jobs that Americans long to see, with the kind of economic policies that seem to have other countries winning and America losing.

Donald Trump is speaking about those issues, Judy, and I think that’s why not only do you see tremendous unity in the Republican Party, but you see a lot of independents and a lot of Democrats that are being drawn to this movement. And I’m excited about the chance to continue to carry that message across the country.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, speaking about America’s role in the world, let me ask you about foreign policy.

Donald Trump gave an interview to The New York Times this week in which, among other things, he said, if Russia attacked one of the small Baltic nations, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, that he would come to their aid only after reviewing their commitment to NATO, whether they fulfill their obligations to us, as he put it.

This is a departure not only from Republican Party views, but from what is really mainstream foreign policy thinking in this country. It’s been supported by a majority of American presidents going back to, I’m told, Harry Truman.

What do you say today to the citizens of these NATO countries about whether the U.S. is prepared to come to their aid?

GOV. MIKE PENCE: Donald Trump made it clear in that very interview that America will stand by our allies. We will uphold up our treaty obligations, including the mutual defense agreement that is NATO.

But what Donald Trump has also said — and quite apart from the fact that America keeps its word and you can tell Donald Trump keeps his word — that what we’re also going to do is say to our allies around the world, as we face $19 trillion in national debt, that it’s time for them to start to pay their fair share.

We provide an enormous amount of resources, particularly with regard to military resources, to countries all over the world. And in many cases, those countries are not compensating the American taxpayer for the commitment that we’re making to their security.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Doesn’t this inject a note doubt about whether the U.S. is going to be there when they need support?

(CROSSTALK)

GOV. MIKE PENCE: No. No, Judy, I think — I don’t read The New York Times every day, but I think that article actually said that — he said we would absolutely, was the word that he used, absolutely stand by our allies and stand by our treaty obligations.

But that’s not — it’s a separate question, but it’s just as important, that we don’t continue to burden the taxpayers of America with these commitments all across the globe, that we say to other countries with whom we stand in solidarity in their defense and the defense of their freedom, that we need you to partner with us.

I mean, it’s been a long time since NATO was created, and I also think Donald Trump has spoken very wisely about the need to rethink the mission of NATO.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well…

GOV. MIKE PENCE: It was a Cold War alliance, but now we face, in many ways, a more asymmetrical threat, with the rise of radical Islamic terrorism.

And rethinking NATO’s mission and its ability to confront that threat to our freedom is just as important.

JUDY WOODRUFF: He made a couple of other points in the article, one having to do with Turkey, where there has been enormous turmoil recently, an attempted coup.

He said he didn’t believe the U.S. should try to pressure the president of Turkey, who has been rounding people up, imprisoning people, shutting down news organizations.

Where are you in terms of whether the United States should be supporting and espousing democratic values, small-D democratic values, in other countries that are going through a situation like this?

GOV. MIKE PENCE: Well, I don’t think we have to choose between standing by a strategic ally and articulating our commitment to democracy and individual freedom.

We have done that throughout our history. And with regard to Turkey, I have been to Ankara. Turkey is a democracy. We certainly, we certainly, in the future, ought to encourage our ally to live up to their own democratic institutions and their own democratic ideals.

But make no mistake about it. With the rise of Islamic terrorism, radical Islamic terrorism in the world — excuse me — with the rise of ISIS, our alliance with Turkey is more important than ever before, the ability to have access, to move resources into the region and also, most importantly, to engage Turkey fully in the battle against global terrorism, is — about protecting the American people.

So, absolutely, yes, we should stand by our allies, but we should also stand by our ideals and work with our allies and encourage them to live up to the democratic institutions and traditions that they enjoy.

JUDY WOODRUFF: You have long been a proponent of free trade.

GOV. MIKE PENCE: Still am.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But how do you square that his saying he would scrap NAFTA and other treaties in a second, unless he could make sure that countries like Canada and Mexico do something to benefit American companies?

GOV. MIKE PENCE: I support free trade. Donald Trump supports free trade.

Trade means jobs. Jobs in the United States, jobs in my home state of Indiana are supported by international exports. But it doesn’t mean that we don’t work hard to make sure that those are good deals. And NAFTA itself has a provision in it that called for periodic reviews of the economies of the countries who had signed the treaty to ensure that the deal was working for everybody.

And what I hear Donald Trump saying about that deal and about other trade deals is, let’s just keep looking and let’s just make sure that, as we continue to — as we continue to expand our economic relationships with countries around the region and around the world, that we’re doing it in a way that’s a win for the American worker and for American jobs.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Last question.

A lot of, I should say, the talk at this convention from the stage and from the delegates has been pretty harsh criticism of Hillary Clinton. We have heard, “Lock her up.” We have heard — we have seen the signs, “Hillary to prison,” talk of indicting her.

Is this — you’re somebody who’s been outspoken against negative campaigning. Do you think it’s been over the top, as even some Republicans have said? And do you think it’s been a wasted opportunity, so far, to talk about what’s positive about Donald Trump?

GOV. MIKE PENCE: Well, first, I think that’s what freedom looks like.

The American people get to express themselves, and in the ways that they choose. But I have got to tell you, I — this convention, I have sensed a tremendous amount of energy, a tremendous amount of unity, not around the personalities, but around the choice that we face this fall.

In Donald Trump, you have someone who will bring real change to Washington, D.C. He’s a bold leader. He’s distinctly American. He doesn’t play by the old-fashioned rules. He’s going to Washington, D.C., break up the status quo, and I believe get this economy moving again and have America standing tall in the world.

And Hillary Clinton, by contrast, is the very embodiment of the failed status quo that Republicans, Democrats and independents are tired of and weary of. Now, I want to be clear.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But for the last three nights, “Lock her up” has been a refrain we have been hearing.

GOV. MIKE PENCE: People are frustrated, $19 trillion in national debt that just hasn’t been piled up by Democrat administrations. It’s been nearly doubled under this administration.

But, frankly, you know Judy — you have known me for a long time — I have battled against the big spenders in my own party, back when I was in Congress. The truth of the matter is, the American people are looking at Washington, D.C., and saying, enough is enough.

We want a different type of leadership. We want a different direction for this country. And that’s why I truly do believe that Donald Trump will be the next president of the United States.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Different, but does it have to be so negative, is my question?

GOV. MIKE PENCE: I think we have got to lay out the choice for the American people.

It’s a choice between change and the status quo. And I really do believe, we get out, we work our hearts out, we carry our message to the American people, a positive vision, but also laying out the choice and the stakes, I truly do believe we will have a great victory for the American people this fall.

JUDY WOODRUFF: After a tough campaign.

Governor Mike Pence, the Republican nominee for vice president, thank you very much.

GOV. MIKE PENCE: Thank you, Judy. Good to see you again.

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GWEN IFILL: For Donald J. Trump, the moment is at hand. The Republican presidential nominee addresses this convention, and the nation, tonight. It comes as the campaign is making a bid for unity, after a day, if not a full week, of division.

Correspondent Lisa Desjardins begins our coverage.

LISA DESJARDINS: Today’s walk-through for Donald Trump and daughter Ivanka at the podium where they will each speak Tonight Was Customary. And then, came the mic test.

DONALD TRUMP, (R) Presidential Candidate: I love the media. They’re so honest. They’re such honorable people. I love Cleveland. I love Ohio. It’s great to be here. Thank you, everybody. I love Cleveland. And they’re doing a great job. And the police are doing an incredible job. Thank you very much.

ANNOUNCER: Ted Cruz of Texas.

LISA DESJARDINS: But much of the day was dominated by what happened last night, when Trump’s primary challenger, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, balked at endorsing the nominee.

SEN. TED CRUZ (R-Texas): Stand and speak and vote your conscience. Vote for candidates up and down the ticket who you trust to defend our freedom and to be faithful to the Constitution.

(SHOUTING)

(BOOING)

LISA DESJARDINS: As he finished, Cruz was booed off the stage. And his wife, Heidi, was escorted off the convention floor to safety, while Trump delegates vented their anger.

WOMAN: I’m ticked. Who does he think he is? He lost. He’s a poor loser. I’m ashamed of him. He’s done, as far as I’m concerned, in the Republican Party.

LISA DESJARDINS: Some Cruz supporters, on the other hand, defended their man.

MAN: I don’t blame him either way. You know, it was a very bruising primary. I think some of Trump’s attacks on him were nasty and personal. And so I can understand why there’s still some hesitation, but, again, it’s a decision of conscience.

LISA DESJARDINS: Later, Trump took to Twitter to say: “Ted Cruz got booed off the stage, didn’t honor the pledge to support the party’s nominee. I saw his speech two hours early, but let him speak anyway. No big deal.”

DONALD TRUMP: Lyin’ Ted Cruz.

LISA DESJARDINS: During the primaries, Trump had referred to Cruz as lyin’ Ted and attacked his family members. This morning, the senator showed no sign of backing down at a breakfast for his home state’s delegation.

SEN. TED CRUZ: I am not in the habit of supporting people who attack my wife and attack my father. And that pledge wasn’t a blanket commitment that if you go and slander and attack Heidi, that I’m going to nonetheless come like a servile puppy dog and say thank you very much for maligning my wife and maligning my father.

LISA DESJARDINS: Cruz wouldn’t say if he will vote for Trump, but said he would never vote for Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort argued that the show of party divisions may actually rally Republicans behind Trump.

PAUL MANAFORT, Trump Campaign Manager: In a backhanded way, even with what Senator Cruz did, we think Mr. Trump’s commitment to unifying the party was enhanced last night. Senator Cruz, the strict constitutionalist, chose not to accept the strict terms of the pledge that he signed. So, as far as the contract was concerned, he was the one in violation, not anybody else.

LISA DESJARDINS: All of that demonstrates why unity will be at the top of the agenda on this fourth and final night of the Republican Convention, where the theme will be make America one again.

Speakers leading up to Trump’s keynote address will stress unity, leadership, solidarity, and trust, all in an effort to shore up support for their nominee. The lineup includes tech billionaire Peter Thiel, a co-founder of PayPal, and Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin, co-chair of the Republican Platform Committee.

Those outside the Quicken Loans arena are braving scorching heat to show their opposition to Trump. Demonstrators took to the streets this afternoon, and plan to rally again this evening.

Over the convention’s first three days, there’ve been about two dozen arrests, far fewer than initially expected.

For the “PBS NewsHour” in Cleveland, I’m Lisa Desjardins.

GWEN IFILL: We head down to the convention floor now.

NPR’s “Weekend Edition Sunday” host — I always have trouble with that — Rachel Martin is with us this week and next for our joint “PBS NewsHour”/NPR prime-time coverage of the conventions.

Rachel, I see you’re in the Washington delegation. What are you watching for tonight?

RACHEL MARTIN: Well, there’s a whole lot of electricity in the hall, as you might imagine, Gwen, because this is the big night. This is when Donald Trump comes out and accepts his party’s nomination to be president of the United States.

But as you heard in Lisa’s reporting, it’s been a tumultuous few days and there are a lot of sore feelings after Ted Cruz’s speech last night, so people here today are ready to turn the page. They’re going to be looking to Donald Trump to unify this party.

In the speech that he’s about to give, we will hear a lot of the themes we have heard throughout the week of an unsteady world, of it’s a chaotic world. He wants to be the strong and steady arm that can kind of steer America in the right direction.

Could also be the most scripted thing we have seen him, although his son said he might go off-script, which his supporters are probably looking forward to — Judy and Gwen.

GWEN IFILL: Thank you, Rachel.

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Sen. Timothy Kaine (D-Va) and Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo) have proposed The Teach Safe Relationships Act, which would require domestic violence prevention to be taught in public high school health education classes.

STERLING, Virginia — Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine has emerged as the leading contender to join the Democratic ticket as Hillary Clinton’s running mate, according to two Democrats, who both cautioned that Clinton has not made a final decision and could yet change directions.

The announcement of Clinton’s pick could come as early as Friday afternoon in Florida, a crucial general election battleground state. The timing is aimed at shifting attention away from the end of Donald Trump’s Republican convention and generating excitement before the start of Clinton’s own convention next week in Philadelphia.

Kaine, 58, has been a favorite for the vice presidential slot since the start of Clinton’s search process. He has been active in the Senate on foreign relations and military affairs and built a reputation for working across the aisle as Virginia’s governor and as mayor of Richmond.

“I’m glad the waiting game is nearly over,” Kaine told reporters Thursday after an event in northern Virginia, deflecting questions about whether he was about to join the ticket.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, a longtime friend of Clinton’s, is still in the mix, according to one of the two Democrats, who is close to the Clintons. Both Democrats are familiar with the selection process and spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly.

Clinton’s choice will be the culmination of a closely held search for a running mate, run by a small group of longtime advisers and confidantes.

Preparing for a showdown with Trump, Clinton has sought to project an inclusive campaign aimed at “breaking down barriers and building bridges” to mobilize the diverse coalition of voters who twice elected President Barack Obama.

Clinton has also considered Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a favorite of liberals; Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper; Labor Secretary Tom Perez;and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro.

Clinton is opening a two-day campaign swing in Florida on Friday. She’s expected to unveil her running mate at either a Friday afternoon rally at the state fairgrounds in Tampa or at a Saturday event at Florida International University in Miami, where two-thirds of the student body is Hispanic.

The two locations give Clinton’s campaign the flexibility to make the announcement at the most optimal time. The campaign is expected to first inform donors, volunteers and activists by text message and has been encouraging supporters to sign up for such an update.

After the convention, Clinton and her vice presidential choice will depart on a campaign bus tour, reminiscent of Bill Clinton’s “First 1,000 Miles” tour with Al Gore after the party’s 1992 convention.

Kaine is a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee and worked as a lawyer on fair housing and civil rights issues. He has been considered a leading vice presidential contender for weeks based on his broad political experience in Virginia, another presidential battleground.

“One of the main reasons that I’m being considered is because of Virginia,” Kaine said. “It’s not necessarily just because of me. It’s because Virginia is really important.”

The Virginian is seen as a safe choice against Trump and his running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence. Kaine could help Clinton woo moderate voters who have been turned off by Trump’s provocative rhetoric.

Kaine campaigned with Clinton last week in northern Virginia, where he spoke briefly in Spanish and argued that Trump was unqualified, untested and untrustworthy.

“Do you want a ‘you’re fired’ president or a ‘you’re hired’ president,” Kaine said in Annandale, Virginia, as Clinton nodded. “Do you want a trash-talking president or a bridge-building president?”

Kaine took a year off from law school as a young man to work with Jesuit missionaries at a vocational school in Honduras. His friends have described him as someone steeped in his convictions and his Roman Catholic faith.

He and his wife, Anne Holton, are longtime members of Richmond’s St. Elizabeth Catholic Church, a predominantly black congregation in a poor part of town. A native of Kansas City, Missouri, Kaine moved to Virginia after meeting Holton at Harvard Law School.

She currently serves as Virginia’s secretary of education and is the daughter of former Virginia Gov. A. Linwood Holton Jr., a Republican. The couple have three children; their eldest son, Nat, is serving as a Marine.

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Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump talks to his daughter Ivanka in the Trump family box at the conclusion of former rival candidate Sen. Ted Cruz’s address during the third night of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio on July 20, 2016. Photo by Mark Kauzlarich/Reuters

CLEVELAND — In an appeal to anxious voters, Donald Trump is pledging Thursday night that “safety will be restored” if he is elected president, using his Republican convention address to cast Democrat Hillary Clinton as part of a political class causing the nation’s troubles.

“As long as we are led by politicians who will not put ‘America First,’ then we can be assured that other nations will not treat America with respect,” Trump says, according to excerpts released ahead of his address.

Trump’s speech on the closing night of the Republican convention marks his highest-profile opportunity to unite his fractured Republican Party and quiet Americans’ concerns about his preparedness for the White House.

Trump is promising “profound relief” and “simplified” taxes for the middle class,” an end to excessive regulation, and infrastructure projects that will create millions of jobs, according to the excerpts.

Trump takes the stage in Cleveland facing a daunting array of challenges, many of his own making. His nominating event has been consumed by a plagiarism charge, unusually harsh criticism of Clinton, and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s dramatic refusal to endorse the GOP nominee from the convention stage.

Overseas U.S. allies as well as voters at home will be closely watching his address, which comes the day after his suggestion that he might not defend America’s NATO partners as president.

Trump’s wife, Melania, foreshadowed it all on opening night, noting, “It would not be a Trump contest without excitement and drama.”

His team hopes to close the convention on a more traditional note, with the businessman delivering a scripted speech to the convention crowd and millions of Americans watching on television. Balloons will drop from the ceiling, and the stage will be filled with Trump family members and supporters.

Trump is to be introduced by his eldest daughter, Ivanka, one of his most polished and effective advocates.

Father and daughter took the stage together in the afternoon for an extensive walkthrough, taking turns standing at the podium and staring out into an arena that will be filled with jubilant delegates by evening.

“I love the media,” Trump said with a smile as he tested the microphone.

By night’s end, Trump’s campaign hopes voters see the real estate mogul as a candidate who, despite his unorthodox political temperament, is prepared to lead the nation.

“I think he needs to lay out some clear policy views,” Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback said. “There are still a lot of people at the convention and within the party who are not sure where he’s going to stand.”

On the eve of his address, Trump suggested a new course for U.S. foreign policy, saying he would set different conditions before coming to the defense of NATO allies. The remarks, in an interview published online Wednesday by The New York Times, deviate from decades of American doctrine and seem to reject the 67-year-old alliance’s bedrock principle of collective defense

As president, Trump said he would defend allies against Russian aggression only after first ensuring they had met their financial commitments. “If they fulfill their obligations to us, the answer is yes,” he said.

Democrats, Republicans and international partners warned of the risks of backing away from NATO obligations.

“Two world wars have shown that peace in Europe is also important for the security of the United States,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said.

Democrat Clinton’s top policy adviser, Jake Sullivan, said Trump’s proposal showed he was “temperamentally unfit and fundamentally ill-prepared to be our commander in chief.”

As Trump wrapped up his convention, Clinton was closing in on her selection of a running mate. Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine emerged as the leading contender, according to two Democrats familiar with the selection process, with an announcement expected as early as Friday.

Trump had hoped the four-day Republican convention would bolster his support among GOP leaders and win over skeptics. But that goal seemed guaranteed to go unfulfilled following Cruz’s stubborn defiance on the convention stage.

The Texas senator refused to endorse Trump during his Wednesday speech, even as delegates loudly jeered him from the convention floor. It was a surreal moment given how carefully scripted political conventions normally are, and served as a fresh reminder that Trump events rarely go by the rules.

Trump’s advisers say they saw Cruz’s remarks in advance and had not expected an endorsement. However, a Cruz aide said Thursday that one of Trump’s advisers had reached out to the senator’s team shortly before the speech in hopes of getting a last-minute commitment.

Trump supporters were furious at Cruz, including New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who called the senator “totally selfish.”

Speaking to members of the Texas delegation, Cruz held his ground. He moved no closer to an endorsement, saying only that he, too, would be watching and listening Thursday night. He insisted he would not be a “servile puppy dog,” especially after Trump’s criticism of his wife and father.

Steve Lonegan, who ran Cruz’s New Jersey presidential campaign, defended the Texan’s refusal to back the nominee.

“There was a time in American history when a real man would have called the other guy out to a duel” for disparagement of his wife, Heidi, Lonegan said. “Every woman in this country should wish they had a man like that.”

Trump brushed aside the controversy, insisting Cruz was an outlier in an otherwise unified party.

“Other than a small group of people who have suffered massive and embarrassing losses, the party is VERY united. Great love in the arena!” Trump wrote on Twitter.

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Republican U.S. presidential nominee Donald Trump takes the stage to formally accept the nomination on the last day of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, U.S. July 21, 2016. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

WASHINGTON — TRUMP: “Decades of progress made in bringing down crime are now being reversed by this administration’s rollback of criminal enforcement. Homicides last year increased by 17 percent in America’s 50 largest cities. That’s the largest increase in 25 years.”

THE FACTS: A rollback? President Barack Obama has actually achieved some big increases in spending for state and local law enforcement, including billions in grants provided through the 2009 stimulus. While FBI crime statistics for 2015 are not yet available, Trump’s claim about rising homicides appears to come from a Washington Post analysis published in January. While Trump accurately quotes part of the analysis, he omits that the statistical jump was so large because homicides are still very low by historical standards. In the 50 cities cited by the Post, for example, half as many people were killed last year as in 1991.

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TRUMP: “The number of new illegal immigrant families who have crossed the border so far this year already exceeds the entire total from 2015. They are being released by the tens of thousands into our communities with no regard for the impact on public safety or resources.”

THE FACTS: The pace of releasing immigrants is driven not by the Obama administration, but by a court ruling. A federal judge ruled last year that the government couldn’t hold parents and children in jail for more than 20 days. An appeals court partially rolled that back earlier this month, saying that parents could be detained but children must be released.

By the standard used by the government to estimate illegal border crossings – the number of arrests — Trump is right that the number in this budget year has already exceeded last year’s total. But it’s down from 2014.

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TRUMP: “When a secretary of state illegally stores her emails on a private server, deletes 33,000 of them so the authorities can’t see her crime, puts our country at risk, lies about it in every different form and faces no consequence – I know that corruption has reached a level like never before.”

THE FACTS: Clinton’s use of a private server to store her emails was not illegal under federal law. Her actions were not established as a crime. The FBI investigated the matter and its role was to advise the Justice Department whether to bring charges against her based on what it found. FBI Director James Comey declined to refer the case for criminal prosecution to the Justice Department, instead accusing Clinton of extreme carelessness.

As for Trump’s claim that Clinton faces no consequence, that may be true in a legal sense. But the matter has been a distraction to her campaign and fed into public perceptions that she can’t be trusted. The election will test whether she has paid a price politically.

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TRUMP: “The number of police officers killed in the line of duty has risen by almost 50 percent compared to this point last year.”

THE FACTS: Not according to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, which tracks police fatalities daily. The group found that the number of police officers who died as of July 20 is up just slightly this year, at 67, compared with 62 through the same period last year. That includes deaths in the line of duty from all causes, including traffic fatalities.

It is true that there has been a spike in police deaths from intentional shootings, 32 this year compared with 18 last year, largely attributable to the recent mass shootings in Dallas and Baton Rouge. But that was not his claim.

And overall, police are statistically safer on America’s streets now than at any time in recent decades.

For example, the 109 law enforcement fatalities in 2013 were the lowest since 1956.

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TRUMP: “My opponent has called for a radical 550 percent increase in Syrian (refugees). … She proposes this despite the fact that there’s no way to screen these refugees in order to find out who they are or where they come from. I only want to admit individuals into our country who will support our values and love our people.”

THE FACTS: Trump persists in making the bogus claim that the U.S. doesn’t screen refugees. The administration both screens them and knows where they are from. The Department of Homeland Security leads the process, which involves rigorous background checks. Processing of a refugee can take 18 months to two years, and usually longer for those coming from Syria. Refugees are also subject to in-person interviews and fingerprint and other biometric screening.

For all that caution, U.S. officials acknowledge that the Islamic State group could try to place operatives among refugees. Last year, FBI Director James Comey said data about people coming from Syria may be limited, adding, “If we don’t know much about somebody, there won’t be anything in our database.”

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TRUMP: “Two million more Latinos are in poverty today than when President Obama took his oath of office less than eight years ago. Another 14 million people have left the workforce entirely. … President Obama has almost doubled our national debt to more than $19 trillion, and growing.”

THE FACTS: Trump is playing with numbers to make the economy look worse than it actually is. The sluggish recovery over the past seven years has been frustrating. But with unemployment at 4.9 percent, the situation isn’t as bleak as he suggests.

Trump’s figure of 14 million who’ve stopped working since Obama took office comes from the Labor Department’s measure of people not in the workforce. It’s misleading for three reasons: The U.S. population has increased in that time; the country has aged and people have retired; and younger people are staying in school longer for college and advanced degrees, so they’re not in the labor force, either.

A better figure is labor force participation — the share of people with jobs or who are searching for work. That figure has declined from 65.7 percent when Obama took office to 62.7 percent now. Part of that decrease reflects retirements, but the decline is also a long-term trend.

On national debt, economists say a more meaningful measure than dollars is the share of the overall economy taken up by the debt. By that measure, the debt rose 36 percent under Obama (rather than doubling). That’s roughly the same as what occurred under Republican President George W. Bush.

The Hispanic population has risen since Obama while the poverty rate has fallen. The Pew Research Center found that 23.5 percent of the country’s 55.3 million Latinos live in poverty, compared with 24.7 percent in 2010.

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TRUMP: “Another humiliation came when President Obama drew a red line in Syria, and the whole world knew it meant absolutely nothing.”

THE FACTS: Trump’s reference is to a threat by Obama for retaliatory strikes if Syrian President Bashar Assad used chemical weapons against rebels — and he’s basically on target. When Assad crossed Obama’s “red line” in 2013 by using chemical weapons, the U.S. president backed down.

Obama’s two secretaries of state, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, pushed for intervention, as have a former defense secretary and CIA director. But Obama as commander-in-chief has the last word, and nothing has swayed him thus far.

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TRUMP: “When that same secretary of state rakes in millions and millions of dollars trading access and favors to special interests and foreign powers, I know the time for action has come.”

THE FACTS: That’s a somewhat overheated take on a legitimately troublesome issue for Clinton.

Although financial disclosures show she earned only her government salary as secretary of state, she made more than $21 million afterward, over three years, for speeches and appearances for private companies. None of those speeches was paid for by foreign governments, but some groups she addressed could be counted as special interests.

As well, the Clintons’ family charity, the Clinton Foundation, received millions of dollars in donations while she was secretary of state, some from foreigners. And Bill Clinton earned millions making appearances and speeches for foreign corporations and organizations while his wife was at the State Department.

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TRUMP: “After four years of Hillary Clinton, what do we have? ISIS has spread across the region, and the entire world. Libya is in ruins, and our ambassador and his staff were left helpless to die at the hands of savage killers. Egypt was turned over to the radical Muslim Brotherhood, forcing the military to retake control. Iraq is in chaos. Iran is on the path to nuclear weapons. Syria is engulfed in a civil war and a refugee crisis now threatens the West. … This is the legacy of Hillary Clinton: death, destruction, terrorism and weakness.”

THE FACTS: It’s an exaggeration to suggest Clinton, or any secretary of state, is to blame for the widespread instability and violence across the Middle East.

Clinton worked to impose sanctions that helped coax Tehran to a nuclear deal with the U.S. and other world powers last year, a deal in which Iran rolled back its nuclear program to get relief from sanctions that were choking its economy.

She did not start the war in Libya, but supported a NATO intervention well after violence broke out between rebels and the forces of dictator Moammar Gadhafi. The country slid into chaos after Gadhafi was ousted and killed in 2011, leaving it split between competing governments.

Clinton had no role in military decisions made during the 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. Republicans’ claim that high-level officials in Washington issued a “stand-down” order delaying a military rescue in Benghazi has been widely debunked.

On Iraq, Clinton as a senator voted in 2002 to grant President George W. Bush authority to invade Iraq, but has since said it was a “mistake.” Many in the Middle East do not regret Saddam’s ouster and regional allies allowed U.S. bases in their country to support the war. But many also now fear the Islamic State group, which rose in the chaos of Syria’s civil war and Iraq’s security vacuum.

TRUMP: “America is one of the highest-taxed nations in the world.”

THE FACTS: Trump continues to repeat this inaccuracy. The U.S. tax burden is actually the fourth lowest among the 34 developed and large emerging-market economies that make up the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Taxes made up 26 percent of the total U.S. economy in 2014, according to the OECD. That’s far below Sweden’s tax burden of 42.7 percent, Britain’s 32.6 percent or Germany’s 36.1 percent. Only three OECD members had a lower figure than the U.S.: Chile, South Korea and Mexico.

TRUMP: “My opponent wants to essentially abolish the Second Amendment.”

THE FACTS: Hillary Clinton has not proposed any revocation of the constitutionally protected right to bear arms. She does support a ban on certain military-style weapons, similar to the law President Bill Clinton signed in the 1990s. That ban expired after 10 years and was not renewed. Clinton also backs an expansion of existing criminal background checks to apply to weapons sales at gun shows. The checks now apply mainly to sales by federally licensed gun dealers.

Associated Press writers Josh Boak, Stephen Braun, Deb Riechmann, Jim Drinkard and Alicia A. Caldwell in Washington and Elliot Spagat in San Diego contributed to this report.

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