What Went Down On Night 2 Of The RNC

Mary Ann Mendoza, who was scheduled to appear tonight, has been dropped from the schedule, and it’s unclear whether the campaign will address it tonight. She was lined up to tell her story as an “angel mom” whose son died after getting hit by a drunk driver who was an undocumented immigrant. Her absence is likely connected to a tweet she made earlier today, where she linked to a QAnon-supporting conspiracy theorist who made anti-Semitic claims about the Rothschilds, the famous Jewish banking family from Germany. This is just the latest intermingling of QAnon with the GOP. Earlier this month, Trump declined to denounce the conspiracy theory when asked about it after a QAnon backer, Marjorie Taylor Greene, won the Republican nomination in a safe Republican congressional seat in Georgia.

We’re hearing about the spiritual transformation of Jon Ponder, a formerly incarcerated person who was pardoned by Trump ahead of the RNC. Ponder converted to Christianity in prison and later founded the nonprofit Hope for Prisoners, which is part of the large network of Christian ministries that work with incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people. Their activism is one reason that prison reform has been embraced by Republicans in recent years.

There isn’t necessarily a ton of good polling on the Native American vote, but Hillary Clinton won Arizona’s Apache County, which is 77 percent Native American and covers much of Navajo Nation, by a 62-30 margin in 2016.