Republican National Convention speakers, explained for people who don’t watch Fox News

Melania Trump will deliver the keynote address during night two of the RNC.

A slew of President Donald Trump’s surrogates, including first lady Melania Trump and two of his children, Eric Trump and Tiffany Trump, will be making the case for his reelection during the second night of the Republican National Convention on Tuesday.

The Republican National Committee abandoned its plans to hold a large-scale, in-person convention in Charlotte, North Carolina — as well as its subsequent plans to relocate the convention to Jacksonville, Florida — on account of concerns about the coronavirus pandemic. The convention has consequently gone almost entirely virtual and will largely take place in Washington, DC, including speeches delivered from the White House lawn and the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium, over the course of just a few hours of condensed programming that will be broadcast nightly through Thursday, August 27.

The theme of Tuesday night is “Land of Opportunity.” The official proceedings go from 8:30 pm to 11 pm Eastern. All major television networks will broadcast the final hour; the full program will be available on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Twitch, as well as streaming services including Amazon Prime Video. Trump will be featured in the night’s programming more than once but will not give live remarks, according to his campaign.

On the first day of the convention, Trump and Vice President Mike Pence were formally renominated by the Republican Party. Trump responded to his nomination by painting a dark picture of what he claims would befall America if former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee, were elected. His speech was followed by others from the president’s family and allies, including Donald Trump Jr. and Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, that largely struck the same tone.

Later in the week, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, Ivanka Trump, and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, will each deliver high-profile addresses. The appearances are leading up to Trump accepting the nomination on Thursday night from the White House — a break from tradition that some legal and ethics experts argue is a violation of the Hatch Act, which prohibits the use of government property for political activities.

Here’s the lineup of speakers on Tuesday night (which is subject to change and may exclude surprise guests, according to the Trump campaign) in the order they are scheduled to appear:

• Norma Urrabazo, a pastor at the International Church of Las Vegas for 17 years, who will deliver the opening prayer.
• Myron Lizer, the Navajo Nation vice president who has collaborated with Trump on creating an inter-agency task force to address the crisis of murdered and missing indigenous persons.
• Richard Beasley, a Federal Bureau of Investigation special agent who worked in El Paso and Los Angeles before retiring; he is now the president of a private investigations firm, Global Intelligence Network.
• Jon Ponder, who was arrested by Beasley and sentenced to prison for bank robbery. After his release, he became the founder and CEO of Hope for Prisoners, which helps ex-convicts reenter civilian life.
• Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has represented his state since 2011 and was a 2016 Republican presidential candidate. He was the first US senator to test positive for Covid-19 and has recently proposed cutting days for rural post deliveries to ease the burden on the US Postal Service ahead of the election.
• Jason Joyce, a Maine lobsterman who will speak in support of Trump’s trade and fisheries policies.
• Cris Peterson, a dairy farmer in Minnesota who will speak in support of Trump’s trade policies that favor American dairy exports.
• Larry Kudlow, the head of the US Economic Council and former financial news host for CNBC. He has downplayed the severity of the coronavirus outbreak in the US and a potential second wave in the fall, pushing the president’s agenda of reopening the American economy.
• John Peterson, the owner and chief executive of metal fabricator Schuette Metals in Rothschild, Wisconsin, who will speak in support of Trump’s steel policies.
• Cissie Graham Lynch, the granddaughter of the late Rev. Billy Graham, an evangelist who advised a number of presidents and led a number of televised “crusades” that drew millions of viewers.
• Mayor Robert Vlaisavljevich, the Democratic mayor of Eveleth, a mining town in Minnesota, where Trump’s steel tariffs are popular.
• Abby Johnson, an anti-abortion rights activist who previously worked as a Planned Parenthood clinic director before resigning in October 2009. She claims that watching an abortion on an ultrasound is what pushed her to resign, but that account has been questioned by two separate investigative reports. She is now the CEO of And Then There Were None, a nonprofit that helps abortion clinic workers leave the industry. Video has recently surfaced of her saying, “Statistically, my brown son is more likely to commit a violent offense over my white sons.”
• Mary Ann Mendoza, one of a group of “Angel moms” whose children were killed by unauthorized immigrants and who are frequently invoked by Trump in his anti-immigrant rhetoric. Her son Brandon Mendoza, a police sergeant in Mesa, Arizona, died in 2014 in a head-on collision with an unauthorized immigrant who was driving on the wrong side of the road.
• Nicholas Sandmann, a Covington Catholic High School student who sued CNN for $275 million, claiming he was defamed in their coverage of a viral video in which he interacts with Native American activists, and has since settled for an undisclosed amount.
• Former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who served from 2011 to 2019. As attorney general, she faced ethics questions for deciding against joining an multistate lawsuit against Trump University after Trump donated to a political action committee working towards her reelection. She was on the White House’s defense team during Trump’s impeachment trial. She has since been working for the Trump-connected lobbying firm Ballard Partners.
• Tiffany Trump, Trump’s youngest daughter and a student at Georgetown Law; she has maintained a low profile throughout her father’s first term.
• Gov. Kim Reynolds (R-IA), has served as the first female governor of Iowa since 2017 and is an outspoken Trump loyalist. She has one of the lowest approval rates nationwide concerning her handling of the pandemic, and her state has been grappling with the aftermath of the recent derecho, which left many without power.
• Ryan Holets, a police officer and father of five who, together with his wife, adopted the daughter of a drug-addicted woman living on the streets of Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 2017.
• Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nuñez (R-FL), was elected Florida’s first Hispanic female lieutenant governor in 2018. Her state, which had a less aggressive and shorter lockdown than most, has had one of the worst Covid-19 outbreaks in the US.
• Eric Trump, one of Trump’s sons, is the executive vice president of the Trump Organization. The office of New York Attorney General Letitia James is seeking his testimony in its probe of Trump’s finances to determine whether he inflated his assets to receive loan and tax benefits.
• Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron is presiding over the investigation into Breonna Taylor’s killing in March by the police in Louisville. He was previously Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s legal counsel for two years.
• Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who has served in that role since April 2018, after Trump fired his predecessor Rex Tillerson. A hardline conservative, he represented Kansas in the US House of Representatives from 2011 until January 2017, when he was appointed as the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. In May, he came under scrutiny after pushing for the firing of State Department Inspector General Steve Linick, who was investigating his various alleged abuses, including misuse of taxpayer funds. He will deliver his address from Jerusalem, which has drawn criticism from diplomats who argue the choice politicizes America’s foreign policy.
• First Lady Melania Trump, who was criticized following her RNC 2016 appearance for including lines plagiarized from former First Lady Michelle Obama’s 2008 Democratic National Convention speech. Unlike former first ladies, she has laid low as her husband seeks reelection, apart from her recent renovation of the Rose Garden, where she will deliver the night’s keynote address live in front of a small audience. The Trump campaign said that it is consulting with a coronavirus adviser about the speech, and “all appropriate precautions will be taken.”

New goal: 25,000

In the spring, we launched a program asking readers for financial contributions to help keep Vox free for everyone, and last week, we set a goal of reaching 20,000 contributors. Well, you helped us blow past that. Today, we are extending that goal to 25,000. Millions turn to Vox each month to understand an increasingly chaotic world — from what is happening with the USPS to the coronavirus crisis to what is, quite possibly, the most consequential presidential election of our lifetimes. Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers, your support will be a critical part of sustaining our resource-intensive work — and helping everyone make sense of an increasingly chaotic world. Contribute today from as little as $3.