DNC Day 1: President Biden says 'America is winning' and Trump is a 'loser'

A video just aired at the convention criticizing Project 2025, a conservative policy blueprint that has become a flashpoint in the 2024 election.

Mallory McMorrow, a Michigan state senator, then walked on stage and slammed a giant book on the podium.

"You are going to hear a lot about what is in this 900-page document," McMorrow said of Project 2025. "Why? Because this is the Republican blueprint for a second Trump term."

It includes expanding presidential power and eliminating the Department of Education and other federal agencies, McMorrow noted. She said that's how it works in "dictatorships" and that Democrats believe in the separation of powers and the rule of law.

Read more about Project 2025 here. Trump has tried to distance himself from the blueprint, even though several of the former president's current and former advisers and appointees have authored or supported it.

Mickey Guyton, a Black country music artist, is the first entertainer of the night.

Guyton performed her song "All American" on stage.

Other performers to come this convention include Jason Isbell and James Taylor.

Multiple speakers have mentioned Fannie Lou Hamer, a civil rights activist who gave a landmark speech at the Democratic Convention in 1964.

Hamer was a former sharecropper and a leader of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, a racially integrated group that challenged the seating of an all-white Mississippi delegation at the 1964 DNC.

Her televised testimony to the credentials committee in Atlantic City, New Jersey, mesmerized the nation and shone light on the violence inflicted on Hamer and others as they worked to secure rights that were supposed to be guaranteed by the Constitution.

Hamer spoke on Aug. 22, 1964 - exactly 60 years before Kamala Harris is scheduled to accept the Democratic nomination and become the first Black woman and first person of South Asian descent to be the presidential nominee of a major party.

In a video message, former Trump supporter Rich Logis of Florida urged Republicans and Independents against voting for the former president.

"Lying is Trump's toxic superpower. He's ripped apart families, communities, our whole country," Logis said.

"So this is my message to all the Republicans and Independents who are watching -- people like me who voted for and believed in Trump: I made a brave mistake, but it's never too late to change your mind. You don't need to agree with everything you hear tonight to do what is right. We need to be able to trust our leaders. That's why I'm all in for Kamala Harris."