The Briefing
- Trump delivers tonight's opening keynote around 9 p.m. ET; he returns Thursday for closing remarks right after Vice President JD Vance's own keynote.
- Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are both missing from the RNC's speaker list, kept away by a State Department rule that bars Senate-confirmed officials from partisan conventions.
- Sen. Ted Cruz shares Thursday's bill with Vance, not tonight's — setting up a pointed 2028 subplot on the vice president's marquee night.
- Both sessions stream free through the RNC's own live portal and its official social accounts.
Dallas becomes the staging ground today for something no major American political party has ever attempted mid-cycle: a full national convention squeezed between elections rather than tied to a presidential nominee. Doors open this afternoon at the American Airlines Center for what the Republican National Committee is billing as an unprecedented Midterm Convention, and President Trump will speak on both of its two nights — opening tonight's session and closing out Thursday's.
Fifty-five days separate the gathering from a November 3 election that will decide which party runs Congress, and Republicans are betting that convention-style spectacle — typically saved for presidential years — can do more to energize nervous midterm voters than a standard rally circuit.
Tonight's Lineup, Block by Block
According to the schedule the RNC circulated this week, programming runs in one-hour blocks from 4 p.m. ET until Trump's keynote at nine. Chairman Joe Gruters and Texas Rep. Monica De La Cruz open the first hour alongside Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, Majority Whip Tom Emmer, Sen. Tim Scott and Sen. John Barrasso take over from 5 to 6 p.m., sharing the block with North Carolina Senate hopeful Michael Whatley. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the GOP's Senate nominee, gets the 6 p.m. hour to himself alongside Pennsylvania Rep. Rob Bresnahan. Ohio's Jon Husted, Sen. Dave McCormick and Attorney General Todd Blanche fill the 7 p.m. slot, and television personality-turned-Medicare chief Dr. Mehmet Oz shares the final hour with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent before Trump takes over at 9 p.m. ET for a keynote billed as setting the tone for the entire gathering.
How to Watch
Cord-cutters can follow both evenings through the RNC's dedicated live-stream page, with additional coverage on the party's verified YouTube, X, Instagram and Facebook accounts. Cable news networks are expected to carry portions of both sessions, though the RNC's own portal remains the only confirmed gavel-to-gavel option.
Rubio's Empty Chair
One name conspicuously missing from the roster is Secretary of State Marco Rubio, alongside Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — both routinely mentioned as possible 2028 contenders. The gap isn't personal. A State Department spokesperson told the Washington Examiner the agency enforces a long-running rule barring Senate-confirmed appointees from attending party conventions, meant to keep American diplomacy free of partisan taint. Rubio himself referenced the limits on his political activity in a 2025 sit-down with Lara Trump. It isn't an ironclad tradition: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo broke with the same guidance in 2020 to deliver a prerecorded convention address, which the department at the time described as delivered strictly "in his personal capacity." Other Cabinet officials, including Bessent, Blanche and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., face no such restriction and appear on this week's roster.
Vance's Moment — and a Ted Cruz Wrinkle
Vance headlines Thursday's session, sharing the closing 9 p.m. hour with Trump for what organizers bill as a joint keynote-and-closing address. The vice president is widely viewed as the GOP's likeliest 2028 standard-bearer, and his solo prime-time slot carries an added edge: Sen. Ted Cruz, who has been vocal about not conceding next cycle's nomination race to Vance alone, takes the stage earlier that same evening. Thursday's lineup also folds in House Speaker Mike Johnson, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, RFK Jr. and Donald Trump Jr., plus a tribute marking the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks and a remembrance of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
How Trump Ended Up Speaking Twice
Trump's appearance on both nights wasn't the original plan. Convention organizers had initially penciled him in for Thursday's closing address only, leaving Vance to headline Wednesday on his own — but the RNC reversed course and added Trump to tonight's lineup as well, according to reporting from the Washington Examiner, following internal concern that the event might struggle to draw viewers and attendees. An unnamed party official told the South China Morning Post the president simply "wants to set the tone for the entire convention." Trump first floated the idea of a midterm-year convention back in June, promising on Truth Social to celebrate what he called the "great American comeback" built on tax and border policy the administration credits to its record.
Texas Takes Center Stage
Holding the event in Dallas is no accident. Paxton is squaring off against Democratic state Rep. James Talarico for the Senate seat John Cornyn currently occupies, after Cornyn lost his own reelection bid in this year's Republican primary. Paxton's fundraising had lagged behind Talarico's for months, prompting Trump's political operation to intervene with a seven-figure infusion of MAGA Inc. money — reportedly $10 million — aimed squarely at closing that gap. A few miles away in the governor's race, Abbott is defending his seat against Democrat Gina Hinojosa in a contest recent polling shows as unexpectedly tight for an incumbent.
Not Everyone Is Showing Up
The convention won't go unanswered. Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries plans to dispatch a small delegation of House members to Dallas this week specifically to counter the GOP's messaging on camera. Attendance on the Republican side is also spottier than organizers might like: a Politico outreach effort covering upward of 70 GOP candidates and officials found roughly two out of three either passing on the event outright or still weighing whether to go, a list that reportedly includes Maine's Susan Collins and New Hampshire's former governor, John Sununu. The gathering is also a first in another sense — no major party has staged a full national convention between presidential elections before, a format the RNC only cleared for use at its own January rules meeting earlier this year, after Democrats considered and ultimately passed on a similar event of their own.
