Image source, Getty Images

That's it for our coverage of night three of the Republican National Convention - thank you for joining us.

Some of tonight's major moments:

• It was a big night for Mike Pence, who formally accepted the nomination to run for vice-president for a second time
• Pence painted a picture of a tough commander-in-chief, standing up for Americans at home and abroad. "Everyday President Donald Trump has been fighting for you," he said. "Now it’s our turn to fight for him."
• Tonight's festivities featured a number of President Trump's highest-profile female supporters and advisers. Among them: press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, who made perhaps the most emotional appeal for the president, talking about his support for her after she underwent a mastectomy
• Top adviser Kellyanne Conway and daughter-in-law Lara Trump also made the pitch for Trump's support of women. An important fact here: just four out of 23 members of the president's cabinet are women
• Another key theme tonight: Trump is the law-and-order president. Police veteran Michael McHale was among the most direct: "Those who value the safety of their family and loved ones" must vote Trump, he said
• But what wasn't mentioned? While several speakers made references to "violence" and "looting", none mentioned the police shooting in Wisconsin at the weekend, and victim Jacob Blake, which has sparked days of demonstrations

We'll be back tomorrow for the fourth and final night of the Republican convention. It'll be a big one - headlined by President Donald Trump, who will formally accept his party's nomination and make his pitch for re-election.

Tonight's page was brought to you by Matthew Davis, Boer Deng, Max Matza, Holly Honderich, Josh Cheetham, Robin Levinson-King and Chloe Kim.

The Democratic vice-presidential candidate has been firing out tweets during the Republican convention. Here is a flavour:

The third night of the Republican National Convention may not have had as many meme-able moments as Kimberley Guilfoyle's bombastic performance on the opening night - but people still found plenty to talk about.

An attack on Joe Biden's Catholic credentials from former football coach Lou Holtz sparked anger amongst the Catholic left, with many defending Biden's faith, citing his regular church attendance.

Former US ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell earned some raised eyebrows when he claimed to have watched Trump "charm" German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

But one of the biggest stories of the night online was a growing boycott in professional sports.

The NBA postponed Wednesday's three play-off games after the Milwaukee Bucks called off their fixture in protest at the shooting of Jacob Blake.

Tennis player Naomi Osaka has pulled out of a WTA match in solidarity. In baseball, the Milwaukee Brewers did not appear for their game against the Cincinnati Reds, and the Seattle Mariners announced they had decided not to play the second game in their MLB series against the San Diego Padres after an unanimous vote.

Chelsea Bailey
BBC News, Washington DC

We’ve been in Johnstown, Pennsylvania - what has become the heart of Trump country. For generations, this historic steel town reliably voted for Democrats - but that all changed with President Trump’s surprise victory here in 2016.

Jackie Kulback, a local Republican official, said before Trump, the Republican party “was really good at losing.” But now, they’ve had to add extra hours to the local party headquarters to accommodate the surge in voter interest and enthusiasm.

And that same surge is also dramatically reshaping the state’s political landscape. In the last year alone, election officials here said more than 47,000 voters have changed their registration from Democrat to Republican - a permanent sign of support for Trump.

And though the president may be behind in national polls, his support here appears to be undimmed.

“It used to be the building unions, the working man, were all Democrats,” said James Vasilko, a proud Republican who owns a local construction company. “Now, the working guys realise what President Trump has done for all of us.”

Trump won Pennsylvania in 2016 by an incredibly narrow margin - less than one percent. And though Pennsylvania is former Vice-President Joe Biden’s home state, this small rust belt city is brimming with confidence about Trump’s chances in November.

Mr Vasilko said, “I do not think there's any possible way that the Biden/Harris ticket can win.”

Anthony Zurcher
BBC North America reporter

For three and a half years, Vice-President Mike Pence has been Donald Trump’s most loyal sidekick – extolling his virtues and executing his directives.

On Wednesday night, Pence’s mission was to pitch for the president’s re-election by touting his accomplishments, attacking his Democratic opponent and trying to reframe his sometimes sharp edges as an asset, not a shortcoming.

“He’s certainly kept things interesting, but more importantly he’s kept his word,” he said.

Pence, like many of the Republicans this week, had to perform a delicate dance – talking up the president’s record, and then explaining the turmoil that has hit the nation in the past six months.

Pence tried to cast this “time of testing,” as he put it, in the best light.

“We are slowing the spread, we are protecting the vulnerable, we are saving lives, and we are opening up American again,” he said.

Pence drew a sharp contrast with the Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, who he said would “set America on a path of socialism and decline”.

“You won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America,” Pence added, in case his point wasn’t clear.

And in a line that some will find patriotic and others will view as a racially tinged dog-whistle, he said: “The choice in this election is whether America remains America."

The Democrats and the Republicans over the past two weeks have shared decidedly different views of what is right – and wrong – with America today. In 69 days, voters will have a chance to register their opinion, as well.

Image source, Getty Images

President Trump, who is not slated to speak until he gives his speech on Thursday accepting the Republican nomination, has just taken the stage.

After he arrives with First Lady Melania Trump to the sound of "Hail to the Chief", country star Trace Atkins begins singing the US national anthem.

The First and Second couples then mingled with supporters from behind a short divider and took selfies.

The live feed of the event showed very few people wearing masks, and Pence fist-bumping with some people in the crowd.

Image source, Getty Images

In a word: no. That's despite a claim from Vice-President Pence this evening.

Pence said that Joe Biden "has pledged to defund the police". Adovcates of "defunding" want police departments' budgets to be slashed and the funds diverted to social programmes.

But in an interview with CBS News in June, Joe Biden (the Democratic presidential nominee) said: "I don't support defunding the police”.

Instead, Mr Biden is backing police reform. He has said: "The better answer is to give police departments the resources they need to implement meaningful reforms, and to condition other federal dollars on completing those reforms". He has pledged to devote $300m to community policing.

Vice-President Mike Pence was one of the few speakers tonight to address the pandemic. He praised President Trump for suspending all travel from China at the end of January after the first coronavirus case was reported in the US.

"That action saved an untold number of American lives. And bought us time to launch the greatest national mobilisation since World War 2," he told supporters.

While Pence went on to tout a partnership with private industry to "reinvent testing", critics say any time that travel ban bought was quickly wasted because of a series of errors and inaction.

In this video, we explored the lost six weeks that allowed the virus to spread across the country.

Pence has demanded law and order in his speech from Baltimore.

"Let me be clear: the violence must stop - whether in Minneapolis, Portland, or Kenosha," he says, referring to the protests that have erupted just this past week in Kenosha in the wake of another police killing of a black man.

"Too many heroes have died defending our freedoms to see Americans strike each other down.

"We will have law and order on the streets of America.

"We're not going to defund police. Not now. Not ever," he adds.

Here's what Joe Biden had to say about the protests in an interview earlier today: "Protesting brutality is a right and absolutely necessary. But burning down communities is not protest, it's needless violence. Violence that endangers lives.

"That's wrong," he added.

Jonathan Marcus
BBC Diplomatic and defence correspondent

If the past is the prologue to the future then four more years of President Trump will be four more years of “America first”; four more years of the weakening of the international order; and four more years of incoherence and bluster in US foreign policy.

Beyond the meandering tweet storms, nothing has emerged that you could really call a Trump doctrine.

Opposition to America’s “forever wars” is popular at home and a second Trump term could see US troops withdrawn from a number of trouble spots. Pressure on US allies in crude terms, to “pay their way”, will continue. But the question remains: does this strengthen or weaken alliances upon which the US depends for its preeminent place on the global stage?

Policy towards Russia and, crucially, China may continue to lack any real guiding principle. 'Strategic rivalry' may grow, but Washington’s overall position may become weaker.

Trump’s first term has been good for the strong men and despots of global politics. There seems no reason that this should change during his second.

Image source, Getty Images

According to Pence, Trump has "stood up to our enemies and we’ve stood with our allies".

Under Trump's leadership, he says, "American armed forces took the last inch of Isis territory, crushed their caliphate and took down their leader without one American casualty."

Pence paints a contrast to Trump's Democratic rival, Joe Biden, saying that Biden opposed the operation that took down Osama Bin Laden, conducted under the Obama administration.

This account has been disputed by Biden, who has insisted he expressed scepticism, but ultimately supported Obama's decision.

Pence goes further - repeating a claim from the memoir of Obama-era secretary of defence Bob Gates, that Biden had "been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades".

Pence is describing the president as a man that fights back in the face of critics.

"For the last four years, I have watched this president endure unrelenting attacks and get up every day and fight to keep the promises he made to the American people," he says.

He notes that under Trump, territories under control of the terror group Isis - a group he points out once controlled "a land mass twice the size of Pennsylvania" - were taken back.

Trump "sees America for what it is; a nation that has done more good in this world than any other," he says.

It is "a nation that deserves far more gratitude than grievance. And if you want a president who falls silent when our heritage is demeaned or insulted, then he’s not your man," he says.

The vice-president has stepped out at Fort McHenry to chants of "four more years" from a small crowd, spaced apart for social distancing.

Flanked by over a dozen US flags, Pence speaks of his 'gratitude for the confidence the president has placed in me,' as he accepts the nomination for the Trump-Pence 2020 Republican ticket.

A visibly emotional Karen Pence sits in the audience next to some of the Pence children, and the vice-president's mother is there as well.

He jokes: 'Sometimes I actually think I'm her second favourite candidate on the Trump-Pence ticket'.

Image source, Getty Images

Vice-president Mike Pence takes to the stage at historic Fort McHenry in Baltimore. He begins by noting how the fort withstood a British onslaught 206 years ago, and criticising Democrats for "attacking America" at their party convention last week.

There are a lot of high-profile Republicans speaking tonight, and many of them have referenced the 19th amendment in the United States - ratified 100 years ago, it granted women the right to vote.

What do American voters think of this historic anniversary? The BBC’s Shrai Popat asked a number of women running for office. Texan Beth Van Duyne, a candidate for Congress, said:

"I think about how far we have come," Van Duyne said. "It's incredibly humbling to be one of the record number of Republican women running for Congress this year."

Read more about what some female candidates - both Republican and Democrat - think about what has been achieved and what is left to do.

Image source, Reuters

What kind of vice-president is Mike Pence?

On the one hand, he does a lot of the typical tasks associated with modern VPs like the advising, the communications, the weekly lunch with the president and the foreign travel, says Joel Goldstein, a professor of law at St Louis University who has written books about the vice-presidency.

But on the other hand, Pence has the unique challenge of deputising for a president who is like no other. That means he often finds himself cleaning up a controversy, saying Donald Trump hasn’t said what he’s said, and rephrasing it.

But whereas all VPs end up being salespeople for the president, Pence has taken that to new levels, says Mr Goldstein. “He says President Trump is going to be the best friend the military has ever had, things like that. There are no limits on the bounds of his praise for the president.”

Perhaps Pence would act differently if he was serving under one of the Bushes or another Republican president, he adds. Trump is a man who doesn’t like to be challenged.

“He wants to have people sit there in a public meeting singing his praises, and Pence has been willing to do that. But when you do that, it demeans the vice-president and also demeans the office.”

Mike Pence: From Indiana to the White House

Lara Trump made an eyebrow raising claim in her speech just now, when she said Mr Trump appointed the "secretary of the United Nations".

"It didn’t surprise me when President Donald Trump appointed the most women to senior level positions of any administration in history," she said.

"The Secretary of the United Nations, Secretary of the Air Force, the first female CIA Director..."

The UN general secretary is appointed by the UN General Assembly members, not the US president.

The BBC's Anthony Zurcher has confirmed that President Trump has just arrived at Fort McHenry in Baltimore, where he is apparently accompanying his vice-president, Mike Pence, who is due to give a keynote speech there within the next 45 minutes.

Image source, Getty Images

Lara Trump - Donald Trump's daughter-in-law and an adviser to the president's re-election team - is up now.

The mother-of-two has been married to Trump's second son, Eric Trump, since 2014. And since joining the Trump family, the 37-year-old has proven to be a loyal supporter of the elder Trump's political career.

During the 2016 election, she led the Trump-Pence Women's Empowerment tour, a role she has reprised the second time around. Lara Trump has established herself as a top spokesperson for the president, traveling around the country and holding "MAGA mommy" gatherings as part of the "Women for Trump" initiative.

It's a crucial role: white suburban women were key to delivering the White House to Trump in 2016, and he'll need that support again.

She has promised to keep a "hopeful and inspirational and patriotic" tone at tonight's event.

Image source, Getty Images

We've also heard from Madison Cawthorn, a congressional candidate from North Carolina, running for his first term this November.

If he wins, the 25-year-old would be the youngest congressman elected in over 200 years.

Cawthorn had his athletic dreams derailed after a car accident left him paralysed. Sitting in a wheelchair, the young Republican made a charismatic pitch for his own candidacy as he also gave his support to Trump.

"I was given a one percent chance of surviving. Thanks to the power of prayer, a loving community, and skilled doctors, I made it," he said.

"At 20, I thought about giving up. However, I knew I could still make a difference," he says. "In 2020, our country has a choice. We can give up on the American idea, or we can work together to make our imperfect union more perfect."

"While the radical left wants to dismantle, defund, and destroy, Republicans, under President Trump’s leadership, want to rebuild, restore and renew."

He capped his appearance by standing up, with the aid of a support, from his chair, in what will surely be a re-played moment from the convention.

His is an important pitch: support from young people like Cawthorn is currently lacking for President Trump. A poll from the Harvard Kennedy School in April showed 18- to 29-year-olds supporting Democratic candidate Joe Biden by a margin of 23 points.