Just weeks after she was catapulted to the top of the presidential ticket, Kamala Harris has appeared on stage on the first day of the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago.
Last month, President Joe Biden decided to step aside in favour of his deputy, leaving organisers scrambling to rearrange the event as a celebration of Harris and her new running mate, Tim Walz.
With the formalities already dispensed with in a virtual roll call, Democrats are now holding what is essentially a four-day rally to convince Americans to vote for Harris and Walz over Republican challenger Donald Trump.
Day one of the convention was a celebration of the historic nature of Harris's candidacy.
She is the first Black woman and the first South Asian American to be the presidential nominee of a major party.
Endorsed by a combination of party elders like Hillary Clinton, and fresh faces like Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrats appeared united behind Harris.
Some national polls suggest the party's gamble of switching from Biden to Harris is paying off, with the Democrat edging out a slight lead over Trump.
But this convention is crucial to introducing Harris to a national American audience who will decide her fate in just 76 days.
These are the key moments from day one of the DNC.
Kamala breaks with convention to address elephant in the room
For Harris, the challenge was always going to be making sure Democrats were, as she loves to say, unburdened by what has been.
Less than a month ago, Biden was the Democratic presidential nominee.
But a catastrophic debate performance against Republican challenger Donald Trump raised questions about his capacity to run again, and he eventually stepped aside in favour of Harris.
Still his sitting vice-president, Harris needed to find a way to honour Biden, while unifying Democrats around her as they careen towards Election Day in November.
Usually, the nominee doesn't speak until the final day of the convention.
But Harris decided to make a surprise appearance on the first day, walking on stage to the tune of Beyonce's Freedom and rapturous applause from the audience.
"Joe, thank you for your historic leadership. We are forever grateful to you," she said.
"We will declare as one people, with one voice: we are moving forward."
This was meant to be Biden's convention. Instead, he was the support act for his VP
It was clearly an emotional night for Biden.
The president had to take a tissue from his pocket and dab tears from his face before he even said a word.
His daughter, Ashley, had regaled the crowd with tales about the "OG girl dad" before welcoming her father to the stage and embracing him in a hug.
After the chants of "thank you, Joe" finally quietened, Biden launched into an energetic – and at times angry – speech.
While it was relatively free of the signs of diminished capacities that ultimately cost him a shot at re-election, it covered a lot of familiar ground — including many of the anti-Trump themes he repeated in campaign stump speeches before he passed the torch.
"Democracy has delivered, and now democracy must be preserved," he said, attacking Trump as a "loser".
"This will be the first presidential election since January 6.
"On that day, we almost lost everything about who we are as a country and that threat — this is not hyperbole — that threat is still very much alive."
Biden declared his best decision of his long career was choosing Kamala Harris as his VP.
"Crime will keep going down when we put a prosecutor in the Oval Office instead of a convicted felon," he said, and promised to be "the best volunteer the Harris-Walz campaign has ever seen".
Earlier, First Lady Jill Biden walked onstage to the Fatboy Slim's hit Praise You — a fitting song to set up a speech full of glowing words about her husband.
"Joe and I have been together for almost 50 years, and still there are moments when I fall in love with him all over again," she said.
One of those moments: "When I saw him dig deep into his soul and decide to no longer seek re-election and endorse Kamala Harris."
Last American woman to get this close to the presidency says 'this is our time'
Hillary Clinton's appearance at the DNC was heady with symbolism.
In 2016, her hopes of becoming the first female president were dashed when Trump beat her to the White House.
Eight years later, she is back to throw her support behind the next woman running for America's highest office.
Dressed in suffragette white, Clinton paid tribute to the Democratic women who came before her, including Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman to be elected to congress, and Geraldine Ferraro, the first female vice-presidential nominee.
"I wish my mother and Kamala's mother could see us," Clinton said.
"They would say: 'keep going'."
Clinton used her speech to symbolically pass the torch to Harris, saying she will be the one to break through the "highest, hardest glass ceiling" — a riff on her 2008 concession speech when she lost the Democratic primary to Barack Obama.
"This is our time, America," Clinton said.
"The future is here. It's in our grasp. Let's go win it."
Women's rights were a key theme on day one of the convention, with many speakers demanding more reproductive choices after Americans lost their constitutional right to an abortion in 2022.
To audible gasps from the crowd, 21-year-old Hadley Duvall spoke of needing an abortion after she was impregnated by her stepfather at the age of 12.
"He calls it a beautiful ban," she said of Trump's comments about individual states that changed their abortion access.
"What is so beautiful about a child having to carry her parent's child?"
Protest outside the convention venue highlights the unspoken divide inside
Earlier in the day, promised pro-Palestinian protests were staged in Chicago's Union Park, not far from the convention venue.
Apart from a small breakaway group that attempted to breach security barriers at the convention, it was entirely peaceful.
But with only a couple of thousand people in attendance, it fell short of organisers' expectations, as evidenced by the scores of protest signs that had been produced for the event but sat in piles, unclaimed, in the park.
Some might read that as a result of Harris's ascent to the top of the Democratic ticket.
She's seen as more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause than Biden was — at least behind the scenes — and there are hopes within the movement that she'd take a different approach to arming Israel than he did.
But those hopes are fading.
"She's been our vice-president for the past four years, she supported all of his policies, and based on what she's put out so far, I don't see any change," said one protester, Amy Chiang.
Nima Homami, who travelled more than six hours from Ohio with a busload of fellow protesters, expressed doubts too.
"I don't know, honestly, if the Democrats will ever listen," he said.
"It feels like there's just too much money involved for them to ever listen to what we're saying.
"But I'm hoping, with enough young people, with enough people out here motivated to make a difference, that we might be able to create a political movement that can actually create the kind of change we want to see."
Another large protest is promised for Friday AEST, the final day of the convention.
