Elections 2024 live updates: Kamala Harris hits campaign trail with first presidential rally in Milwaukee, Wisconsin

US Capitol police arrested Jewish activists protesting against US military support for Israel inside a congressional building on Tuesday, a day before prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to deliver a speech to Congress.

The protesters, organised by activist group Jewish Voice for Peace, wore red T-shirts bearing the phrases “not in our name” and “Jews say stop arming Israel”. Some carried banners reading “ceasefire now” and “let Gaza live.”

Protests are planned to coincide with Mr Netanyahu’s visit, in which he will meet president Joe Biden, vice president Kamala Harris and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

“For the past 9 months, we’ve witnessed countless horrors in Gaza, committed in our names and funded by our government,” Jewish Voice for Peace wrote on social media.

The activist group said over 250 protesters were arrested and 400 people took part in the demonstration.

Police said around 200 people were arrested.

“We told the people, who legally entered, to stop or they would be arrested. They did not stop,” the police said in a statement.

“Demonstrating inside the Congressional Buildings is against the law.”

Comments JD Vance made in 2021 questioning vice president Kamala Harris’ leadership because she did not have biological children have resurfaced, testing the young conservative senator in his early days campaigning as part of the Republicans’ presidential ticket.

During Mr Vance’s bid for the Senate in Ohio, he said in a Fox News interview that “we are effectively run in this country via the Democrats,” and referred to them as “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too”.

He said that included Ms Harris, US transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg and representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat.

“How does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?” asked Mr Vance, who is now Donald Trump’s running mate.

Ms Harris became stepmother to two teenagers when she married entertainment lawyer Douglas Emhoff in 2014. And Mr Buttigieg announced he and his husband adopted infant twins in September 2021, more than a month before Vance made those comments.

The clip has started to spread online, with Hillary Clinton sharing it in a Tuesday post on X and adding sarcastically “what a normal, relatable guy who certainly doesn’t hate women having freedoms”.

Republican leaders have warned party members against using overtly racist and sexist attacks against vice president Kamala Harris as the GOP works to adjust its campaign against the new Democratic presidential candidate.

At a closed-door meeting of House Republicans on Tuesday, National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) chairman Richard Hudson urged members to stick to criticising Ms Harris for her policies.

“This election will be about policies and not personalities,” House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters after the meeting.

“This is not personal with regard to Kamala Harris and her ethnicity or her gender have nothing to do with this whatsoever.”

The meeting came after some members and Trump’s allies began to cast Ms Harris as a “DEI” hire – a reference to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

“Intellectually, just really kind of the bottom of the barrel,” Wyoming representative Harriet Hageman said in a TV interview. “I think she was a DEI hire. And I think that that’s what we’re seeing and I just don’t think that they have anybody else.”

Benjamin Netanyahu will be meeting Joe Biden and vice president Kamala Harris, who on Sunday entered the presidential race after the president pulled out.

The Israeli leader appears to be hedging his bets about the November US election. Polls show the race is tight. Most analysts believe a second Trump administration would give Mr Netanyahu a freer hand in the Gaza war.

Mr Netanyahu and Trump were mostly in sync ideologically and on policy during Trump’s 2017-2021 term. The US moved its embassy then from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a long-held conservative goal that delighted Israelis and infuriated Palestinians.

In his social media post, Trump praised Mr Netanyahu’s role in the Abraham Accords, landmark US-brokered agreements signed during the Trump years that normalised bilateral relations between Israel and both Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.

“During my first term, we had Peace and Stability in the Region, even signing the historic Abraham Accords – And we will have it again,” Trump said on Truth Social.

He said Ms Harris, as the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, was “in no way capable of stopping” world conflicts.

In a statement posted to X (formerly Twitter), Biden said he would speak at 8:00 pm about “what lies ahead, and how I will finish the job for the American people.”

Less than 24 hours after the 81-year-old president stepped off the Democratic ticket on Sunday Kamala Harris, 59, has secured enough delegates to be nominated as the party’s presidential candidate. That has led Democrats to pounce on Trump and his age — a tactic straight out of the GOP playbook against Biden.

“What’s been reported in the media is simply not true,” Musk told conservative commentator Jordan Peterson in an interview aired on Monday. “I am not donating $45 million a month to Trump.”

The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that Musk, who endorsed Trump in July, would funnel the donations via an organization called America PAC.

Musk’s denial came the day before Tesla announced that its second-quarter profits had dropped 45 percent to $1.48bn amid a drop in sales of its electric vehicles.

More details in our full story.

Mike Bedigan has the story.

Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband, entertainment lawyer Doug Emhoff, have already made history: She as the first Black, female and Asian second-in-command of America; he as the country’s first Second Gentleman and first Jewish spouse in the White House. As her possible bid for the presidency dangles new historic heights before the couple, Sheila Flynn tells their love story.