The Democratic Party opened its 2024 national convention in Chicago’s United Center on Monday, adopting its platform, setting its agenda, and hearing the first day of speeches from Hillary Clinton, abortion activists, and President Joe Biden. The first day of the DNC featured a prayer without Christ, politicians citing Bible verses moments after promoting abortion-on-demand, and insisting pro-life protections violate “basic decency.”
Here are a few of the most memorable events of day one:
1. A “Christian” invocation without Jesus or a cross?
The Democratic National Convention began its first day in prayer — but not one that mentioned the Name of Jesus Christ or displayed the symbol associated with His death and resurrection. The invocation, offered by Roman Catholic Cardinal Blase J. Cupich of the Archdiocese of Chicago, exhorted the faithful “to root out ongoing injustices in our national life, especially those created by moral blindness and fear of the other” and to forge a “new chapter of our nation’s history.” Although Cupich did not mention Jesus, he did, however, quote Pope Francis.
“Hiding his pectoral cross, and never once [m]entioning the name of Jesus, Cdl. Blase Cupich gave the invocation at an event providing free abortions and vasectomies,” noted The Lepanto Institute, a conservative Catholic organization. Catholic Vote said simply, “The DNC is demonic.”
In April 2022, Cardinal Cupich was booed off the stage of the Chicago March for Life, where he said protecting the unborn is “not our only goal.”
2. Citing the Golden Rule, the death penalty, and love for children discussing abortion
While most of the speakers shied away from even uttering the word “abortion,” some invoked the gruesome procedure while invoking the Bible or claiming those who protect the unborn lack humanity. Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear (D), who made the shortlist for vice president after party leaders persuaded President Joe Biden to step down as his party’s presumptive nominee, referred to two passages of the Good Book while bashing former President Donald Trump and vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance over their openness to pro-life arguments.
“Trump says people are absolutely thrilled that women had their basic rights eliminated,” said Beshear. Trump and J.D. Vance’s “policies give rapists more rights than their victims,” he alleged, before turning to the Scriptures.
“My faith teaches me the Golden Rule: love your neighbor as yourself. The Parable of the Good Samaritan teaches us that we are all each other’s neighbors. We believe in an America that lives out these values. Let’s end anger politics and remember we are all Americans,” he said.
Those remarks contrast with his view of anyone who supports pro-life laws. Advocating for the right to life “fails any test of humanity, any test of basic decency, any test of whether you have any underlying empathy,” said Beshear (whose father, Steve, also served as Kentucky’s governor).
“Hey maybe the party that promotes abortion through all nine months until birth and all kinds of sexual degeneracy shouldn’t be quoting from the Bible that condemns both,” suggested Kristan Hawkins of Students for Life of America.
Another speaker also insisted supporting abortion proves one’s empathic nature. Kamala Harris “sees each person as just that: a person. … She sees the humanity in everyone.” said Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) in a vitriolic speech. “As women are dying, [President Trump] is bragging about overturning Roe. … Right now in Texas, they want to institute the death penalty — that is a problem — while Kamala Harris is fighting for our reproductive rights to be restored.”
Former Secretary of State and failed 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton took a similar rhetorical approach. “Kamala cares about kids and families,” Clinton insisted, while saying Harris would sign a bill nationalizing abortion-on-demand. “Women fighting for reproductive health care are saying, ‘Keep going,’” stated Clinton. “Yes, she will restore abortion rights nationwide!” Abortion activist Hadley Duvall, who spoke alongside Behsear, also stated, “Kamala Harris will sign a national law to restore the right to an abortion.”
New York Governor Kathy Hochul (D) declared, “Together, we must protect abortion rights!” She seemingly complained about the existence of President Donald Trump, saying New Yorkers are tired of him, as “we’ve had to deal with him for 78 long years.” Hochul’s remarks came 37 days after a gunman came within a fraction of an inch of killing the 45th president in cold blood.
Although abortion pervaded the proceedings, most speakers did not use the phrase at all, preferring the euphemism “reproductive rights” or “reproductive freedom” in its place. Beshear told delegates to “elect Kamala Harris and Tim Walz and protect reproductive freedom!”
“Reproductive rights” places the “right” to take an innocent life through abortion on the same constitutional level as the unalienable right to life protected in the 5th and 14th Amendments. The language shift away from naming the life-taking procedure to promoting a nebulous “freedom” mirrors the tactics of the abortion industry itself. The organization once known as the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) recently rebranded itself as “Reproductive Freedom for All.” Harris, a longtime ally of the abortion industry who prosecuted investigative journalists David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt for exposing Planned Parenthood’s trafficking in aborted babies’ organs, has centered her campaign around “freedom” (and “joy”).
The rhetoric proved too much for many viewers. “The Democrats have become a singularly single issue party. It is all about murdering babies, and that is their definition of freedom,” observed David Limbaugh, a conservative commentator and author of numerous Christian books.
3. Planned Parenthood carries out 10 abortions and an unknown number of vasectomies during DNC
Planned Parenthood Great Rivers in St. Louis announced it would offer free abortions and vasectomies in a mobile truck not far from the Democratic National Convention. A local hot dog shop, The Wieners Circle, posted on the social media platform X that it would give anyone who had a vasectomy or abortion a coupon for a free hotdog.
“Planned Parenthood staff is saying that on the first day of the DNC, they did ten free abortions,” reported Lila Rose, founder of the pro-life organization Live Action, on Monday. “Ten helpless babies have been sacrificed so far at the DNC death cult. There are no words to express the sheer horror.”
In response, Democrats for Life held a pro-life event to give baby items to local mothers. “While Planned Parenthood is providing free abortions at the DNC, Democrats For Life is conducting a diaper drive to support local Chicago families,” said Kristen Day of Democrats for Life. She later noted the Democratic Party, which prides itself on its diversity and inclusion, “is inclusive only if you take an oath to Planned Parenthood’s pro-abortion agenda.”
4. Began with a ‘land acknowledgement’
As the party of Woke activists, the Democratic National Convention began with a land acknowledgement, a statement that all American territory once belonged to American Indian tribes. “Our country was built on indigenous homelands,” they stated, naming numerous areas tribes.
5. Trump would ‘weaponize’ the government?
In a curious about-face, Michigan State Senator Mallory McMorrow (D) warned, “Under Project 2025, Donald Trump would be able to weaponize the Department of Justice to go after his political opponents. He could even turn the FBI into his own personal police force.” Of course, House Republicans convened a formal investigation into the Biden-Harris administration’s multipronged attempt to weaponize government against its political foes, including instigating a now-tenuous special prosecutor case into the former president’s actions.
6. Joe Biden’s farewell speech
Joe Biden’s farewell speech to the 2024 DNC combined familiar themes from his previous speeches with the sound of Biden regularly shouting his words or rushing them together. He stumbled trying to say women were not without “electoral power” (saying, “Women are not without electrical” power) and appeared to lose his train of thought when discussing Medicare and Big Pharma.
Yet perhaps most concerning were his recycled tales about President Donald Trump, which fact-checkers have found to be inaccurate:
- President Trump allegedly claimed there were “very fine people on both sides” of Charlottesville’s Unite the Right protest, Biden said, taking the Lord’s Name in vain afterwards. Yet Trump said moments later he is not talking about white supremacists and neo-Nazis, but instead about local citizens who wanted to preserve their history.
- President Trump allegedly called Americans who died in uniform “suckers and losers,” although eyewitnesses of his trip to Europe insist the event did not occur.
- That President Trump said, unless he is elected, America will experience a “bloodbath,” an economic term the 45th president applied to the automobile industry.
- Biden also alleged, “We saved democracy in 2020, and now we just save it again in 2024.”
Biden concluded his speech after midnight. The second day commenced Tuesday morning.
Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.
