With the Republican National Convention just over a month away, party officials and Milwaukee leaders are still dealing with logistical troubles, including security concerns, sponsorships, and marketing goofs.
Taking place in downtown Milwaukee from July 15-18, more than 50,000 people, including an estimated 2,429 Republican delegates, will descend upon southeastern Wisconsin to watch former President Donald Trump, who, as of May 30, was convicted of 34 felonies, accept the GOP nomination to be on the ballot in the November general election—that is, if his July 11 sentencing date in New York doesn’t get in the way.
“We expect President Trump will be here to accept the nomination—we’re very excited about that,” RNC Chairman Michael Whatley said this week during a press conference hosted at the main convention site in the Badger State. “Obviously, if we need to make contingent plans, we will.”
A Manhattan jury found Trump guilty last month of falsifying documents to cover up a hush money payment to Stormy Daniels, a porn star, ahead of the 2016 election. He is the first former U.S. president to be convicted of a crime.
Trump’s attendance, as is to be expected, means heightened security concerns. The safety of the convention sites, attendees, and protestors has been a point of contention for RNC organizers, local legislators, and the Secret Service.
Attempts to ban firearms from the convention sites, where items like tennis balls and gas masks are prohibited, have failed due to concerns over violating state laws or riling up Trump’s pro-gun base.
More than 70 groups have signed up to demonstrate against the convention through the city’s official portal, so far. This March, the Milwaukee Common Council unanimously signed off on rules that would require protestors within a designated security zone to march along a specified route.
Then, in April, RNC counsel Todd Steggerda asked in a letter to the Secret Service for protestors to be pushed even further away from the convention, saying that the current plan “creates an elevated and untenable safety risk to the attending public.”
The Coalition to March on the RNC, comprised of dozens of organizations, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin filed a lawsuit over the ordinance on Wednesday, claiming that the city’s rules violate protestors’ free speech rights.
“Milwaukee has been rolling out the red carpet for the Republican National Convention and all its attendees, spending millions on their security,” Tim Muth, a staff attorney with the ACLU, said this week. “But sadly, the city does not appear to demonstrate that same commitment to protecting the First Amendment rights of people who want to express opposing views on the streets of Milwaukee during the RNC.”
The head of the Secret Service, Kimberly Cheatle, said on Thursday that security plans have yet to be finalized.
Safety concerns aren’t the only thing organizers are wrestling with.
Milwaukee-based department store giant Kohl’s announced it will not sponsor any events related to the RNC. This comes as organizers have hyped up the number of local companies that are financially supporting the convention.
Trump’s former chief of staff and current chair of Milwaukee’s host committee, Reince Priebus, told the Wall Street Journal that nearly all of the Fortune 500 companies in Wisconsin are sponsoring the event.
According to Federal Election Commission filings, Kohl’s hasn’t funded Republican or Democratic conventions for over a decade.
Still, the company’s decision spurred swift social media backlash, with some on the right calling for a boycott of the company. “Conservatives, you know what to do: BOYCOTT KOHL’S. IT WILL BE JUST LIKE BUD LIGHT, TARGET & DISNEY WORLD,” one user posted on X; “@Kohls you are about to go out of business” another shared.
For Milwaukee, this is a second chance to be in the political spotlight. The city hosted the Democratic National Convention in 2020, but was thwarted by the COVID-19 pandemic, forcing the event to go virtual as the virus continued to ravage the nation.
Wisconsin is also proving to be a key battleground state in 2024, as it has been previously, and Republican organizers are trying to capitalize on the moment. In 2016, Trump beat Hillary Clinton in the state by just shy of 23,000 votes. Then, in 2020, now President Joe Biden won Wisconsin by about 21,000 votes, or less than one percentage point.
The RNC’s website is literally counting down the minutes until the quadrennial convention kicks off, although earlier this week, it received a lot of attention for all the wrong reasons: it mistakenly used a photo of Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam instead of Milwaukee.