The opening Republican presidential debate of the 2024 election season will take place in Milwaukee this August, the Republican National Committee announced on Thursday.

Here’s what else we know about the event at this stage.

The president’s approval rating is the highest it has been in almost a year while Mr Trump is falling in the estimation of Republicans, a new poll has found.

The NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll was conducted last week following Joe Biden’s State of the Union address and included more than 1,300 people.

The survey reveals not just Mr Biden’s improved performance but also that a majority of potential GOP primary voters would prefer someone other than Mr Trump as their nominee, so far only Nikki Haley has confirmed she will run but Florida governor Ron DeSantis is thought to be waiting in the wings.

Here’s more from Gustaf Kilander.

The former president’s eldest and loudest son, Donald Trump Jr, joined the chorus of left and right voices criticising transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg this week over the Ohio train derailment but, unlike others, found himself fixated on the secretary’s sexuality.

During a Newsmax interview this week, Don Jr went on a tirade against Mr Buttigieg and insisted that the former South Bend mayor was named to his position as a diversity hire.

Here’s John Bowden on the inevitable (and deserved) backlash.

Steven Bannon, the former Trump White House strategist turned convicted felon and conservative podcaster, has been sued by the law firm that represented him in numerous state and federal proceedings over the last few years over unpaid legal fees totaling more than $480,000.

Mr Bannon was accused in a civil complaint filed last week of only paying $375,000 of the $855,487.87 in legal fees he racked up while defending himself from fraud charges stemming from a privately-funded campaign to build stretches of border fencing along the US-Mexico border. The case was dismissed upon Mr Bannon’s last-minute pardon by Donald Trump.

Read more from Andrew Feinberg:

Florida governor Ron DeSantis is widely seen as the top Republican contender to take on Donald Trump for the party’s 2024 nomination, but another high-profile GOP state leader is advising Mr DeSantis to hold off for now.

Former Alaska governor and vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin says Mr DeSantis should wait “a bit longer” and stay out of the 2024 race.

It’s a sign of the growing panic among allies of Donald Trump who fear that Ron DeSantis will be able to do what Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and John Kasich failed to do in 2016: Defeat Donald Turmp in a GOP primary.

Here’s a little more fresh lunacy courtesy of the Big Man over on the Truth Social.

“The sirens that went off in Ukraine during Biden’s speech were STAGED, FAKE, PHONY. He knew it, and so did everyone else. Scam!,” he writes, utterly baselessly.

Donald Trump has been busy raging away on his Truth Social app about Emily Kohrs, the foreperson of the Georgia grand jury that investigated his election subversion attempts, calling her “an extremely energetic young woman” going on a “Media rampage” as part of “a strictly political continuation of the greatest Witch Hunt of all time”, dismissing her interview tour as “ridiculous”.

In an initial post, he wrote: “This Georgia case is ridiculous, a strictly political continuation of the greatest Witch Hunt of all time. Now you have an extremely energetic young woman, the (get this!) “foreperson” of the Racist D.A.’s Special Grand Jury, going around and doing a Media Tour revealing, incredibly, the Grand Jury’s inner workings & thoughts. This is not JUSTICE, this is an illegal Kangaroo Court. Atlanta is leading the Nation in Murder and other Violent Crimes. All I did is make TWO PERFECT PHONE CALLS!!!”

The veteran keyboard warrior then returned to the matter (unable, as ever, to let anything go), writing: “Just to make every one of those people suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome feel better, it doesn’t really matter that the jury foreperson went on a Media rampage, thereby badly tainting the case and making it impossible to bring, because I did absolutely NOTHING WRONG! Two perfect phone calls on Election Integrity, that’s it! The D.A. should go after the murderers and other violent criminals in Atlanta, one of the most dangerous cities in the World, and leave honest people alone!”

The DoJ on Thursday moved to ask a judge to compel former Vice President Mike Pence to testify before a grand jury impaneled in Washington DC to hear evidence related to the January 6 attack and the effort by Donald Trump to overturn the 2020 election.

Mr Pence has indicated that he will resist requests for his testimony, citing his privilege as president of the Senate, one of the roles of the former vice president. The Justice Department has for months been collecting evidence related to the White House’s role in January 6 and recently appointed a special counsel to determine if Mr Trump, who is once again running for president, will face any criminal charges.

Read more in The Independent:

Former president Donald Trump will have to answer questions from attorneys representing two former FBI employees who are seeking redress for what they characterise as unfair retaliation against them for having investigated alleged ties between Mr Trump’s 2016 campaign and the Russian government.

In a short, 277 word ruling issued through the US District Court for the District of Columbia’s electronic filing system, Judge Amy Berman Jackson said attorneys for former FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok and ex-FBI attorney Lisa Page can depose Mr Trump and FBI Director Christopher Wray under oath and declined to grant Department of Justice motions to quash subpoenas for testimony from both the FBI director and the twice-impeached ex-president.

Follow along with The Independent for more updates.

The massive war chest Florida Governor Ron DeSantis hoarded during his successful bid for reelection last year would catapult him into a significant fundraising lead were he to announce his candidacy for president in the coming weeks.

The Florida governor reportedly has roughly $75m squirreled away in a bank account belonging to his state-level campaign committee, according to HuffPost.

That number is far more than two potential rivals for the GOP nomination, ex-South Carolina governor Nikki Haley and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

It could even be a sum with the power to challenge the fundraising juggernaut that Donald Trump amassed between 2016-2020 and has maintained since leaving office.