Former US vice president Mike Pence is set to enter the 2024 presidential race next week.
It is reported that he will launch his campaign with a video and speech in the early nominating state of Iowa on 7 June.
It means that Mr Pence, who incurred the wrath of former president Donald Trump by refusing to support his effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election, will challenge his former boss for the Republican Party's nomination.
A staunch social conservative who stood by Mr Trump throughout his time in his office, Mr Pence has increasingly distanced himself from the former president since his election defeat.
The 63-year-old said that Mr Trump's encouragement of the rioters, who attacked the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, put him and his family in danger.
Mr Trump has a big polling lead in a Republican field that now has more than six declared candidates, a dynamic that could splinter the primary opposition against the former president.
Mr Pence has continued to embrace many of Mr Trump's policies, while portraying himself as an even-keeled and consensus-oriented alternative.
He has also appealed more directly to the evangelical Christian community, having spent significant time in recent months touring churches across the country.
The success of his campaign will hinge on whether he can attract enough backers of Mr Trump's policies who are turned off by the former president's rhetoric and behaviour to build a viable coalition.
Mr Pence - a former governor of Indiana and one-time party leader in the US House of Representatives - will also test voters' appetite for an establishment Republican in a party where voters have increasingly turned to outsiders.
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