Trump to start Vegas charge

Pence, caucuses also next week

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump will visit Las Vegas next week, just two days before Nevada Democrats hold their presidential caucuses.

The president will speak at a graduation ceremony Thursday for Hope for Prisoners, a Las Vegas program that helps ex-inmates re-enter society.

The graduation will take place at the Metropolitan Police Department headquarters in Las Vegas.

According to Jon Ponder, a former bank robber who started the organization, as many as 100 Metro officers and a like number of program graduates will watch as Attorney General William Barr administers an oath to 27 graduates.

“We are so very honored to have the president of the United States here in our local community, recognizing the men and women who are fighting for their second chance,” Ponder told the Review-journal.

A White House official hailed the program, “which aims to reduce recidivism, improve public safety, and support the administration’s efforts of providing previously incarcerated Americans with second chances.”

The Trump White House has made reintegration of former inmates into soci

ety a signature issue. In December 2018, Trump signed the First Step Act, a groundbreaking criminal justice reform. Trump recognized Ponder for his efforts in a May 2018 ceremony in the Rose Garden at the White House.

Deputy Assistant to the President Ja’ron Smith, who has met with Ponder at the White House, said Trump will discuss “his commitment to second-chance hiring” and criminal justice reform with the goal of leaving graduates with “a sense of hope.”

Trump’s touchdown in Nevada will be part of a sweep through the West that includes a campaign rally in Phoenix on Wednesday and Colorado Springs the following day.

While the Hope for Prisoners event is not a rally, the Nevada visit follows a pattern. Trump held Keep America Great rallies in Des Moines before Iowa’s first-in-the-nation