More than $40 million was raised by backers of the abortion and ranked-choice voting ballot questions in 2024, primarily from so-called “dark money” groups that do not have to disclose their donors, campaign finance reports released last week show. Most of the money went to support Question 3, the failed initiative that would have instituted ranked-choice voting and open primaries in Nevada. The PAC behind the initiative brought in nearly $29 million, making it one of the most expensive ballot question campaigns in recent memory.
The Legislature will once again consider a proposed constitutional amendment that would remove a 159-year-old prohibition on Nevada operating a lottery. The measure, AJR5, passed easily in both legislative chambers in 2023 but requires a second approval before it can be sent to Nevada voters in 2026. History, however, isn’t on its side. More than two dozen legislative attempts to implement a Nevada lottery since 1887 have failed and never made it out of Carson City. The effort also faces headwinds this legislative session from the casino industry, which opposed the effort two years ago but is taking a more aggressive stance in 2025 and is determined to keep Nevada’s place as one of just five states without a statewide lottery.
For the first time in nearly 20 years, there are more registered Republicans than Democrats in Nevada. Using updated voter registration data from the secretary of state’s office procured by Republican strategist Jeremy Hughes, which was shared and reviewed by The Nevada Independent, Republicans built a lead of about 340 voters over Democrats in January. By November 2024, Democrats’ longstanding voter registration advantage was down to fewer than 6,000 voters in a state with more than 2 million active registered voters. Despite beating Democrats, both parties still lag registered nonpartisans, who became the biggest political group in the state in August 2022 and whose share of the electorate has continued to increase. There are nearly 692,000 registered nonpartisans, while Republicans have 617,204 voters to Democrats’ 616,863.
RENO – The fires in Los Angeles have everyone on high alert and wondering if this could happen here in Nevada. Nevada has high winds, and often they come in the winter prior to a storm. With this year being very dry, and having a lot of grass growth from some prior wet winters, it’s a perfect recipe for fire.
The Nevada Department of Agriculture (NDA) has detected Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) in dairy cattle in Churchill County. According to the NDA in a Jan. 24 release, the affected premises have been quarantined, and mandatory testing will occur onsite at regular intervals until the herds are confirmed to be virus-free. The first detection of HPAI in dairy cattle in Nevada was made in Nye County in December of 2024.
CARSON CITY, NV – Nevada Outdoor School is among the 21 recipients of the 2025 Nevada Outdoor Education and Recreation (NOER) grant program, securing a $25,000 award to expand outdoor programming for rural students in Northern Nevada. The grant, announced by the Nevada Division of Outdoor Recreation, is part of a larger effort to improve access to outdoor education and recreational opportunities statewide.
Alarms didn’t sound when the snowflakes stopped falling in early January. The snowpack was above average midway through the climatologically wettest part of the year, and there were still several months for the state to build up its snowpack. But January storms were slow to materialize — other than last weekend’s storm that dropped disproportionate amounts of rain and snow across the state, the month was largely dry. Now, two-thirds of the way through its snowy season, the state’s valleys remain largely snow-free and snowpack is sporadic across Nevada’s mountains.
In an effort to strengthen the nation’s domestic battery supply chain and electrify the transportation sector, the federal government closed a $996 million loan guarantee for a controversial lithium mine on the habitat of an endangered Nevada wildflower. On Friday, the Department of Energy (DOE) announded it had finalized the nearly $1 billion loan to support the development of Ioneer’s on-site processing facility at the Rhyolite Ridge Lithium-Boron Project in Esmeralda County.
On March 21, 2023, President Joe Biden designated Avi Kwa Ame National Monument in southern Nevada. Located at the confluence of the Mojave and Sonoran Deserts, the national monument protects innumerable objects of historic and scientific interest, including its namesake Avi Kwa Ame – or Spirit Mountain – and the surrounding arid valleys and mountain ranges that are historically important and sacred places for several Tribal Nations. (Department of the Interior photo) Nevada’s only Republican in Congress, Rep. Mark Amodei, announced plans Thursday for legislation that would require Congressional approval of all future national monuments in Nevada.
Attorneys general from 18 states sued Tuesday to block President Donald Trump’s move to end a decades-old immigration policy known as birthright citizenship guaranteeing that U.S.-born children are citizens regardless of their parents’ status. Trump’s roughly 700-word executive order, issued late Monday, amounts to a fulfillment of something he’s talked about during the presidential campaign. But whether it succeeds is far from certain amid what is likely to be a lengthy legal battle over the president’s immigration policies. The executive order could have major implications in Nevada, which has the largest per capita undocumented population of any state and the largest share of mixed-status families in the nation.
Gov. Joe Lombardo’s recommended two-year budget is $335 million in the red without offsetting revenue, state officials confirmed Tuesday, setting up a process that Democrats say will require corrective action from the governor by next week. State officials acknowledged the shortfall and said they have already made revisions to the proposed budget. But an $85 million deficit remains with those changes included, according to testimony given Tuesday by staff of the Governor’s Finance Office during the first pre-session legislative budget meeting of the year.
A bipartisan effort to give mining companies more legal rights to federal lands and speed up the permitting process did not make it past a contentious five-week lame duck session, dashing hopes to reverse a major court ruling adopting a stricter interpretation of federal mining law, at least for the time being. In the final weeks of the 118th Congress, before the 119th was sworn in early this month, the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024— a mining reform package shepherded by former independent U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin— fell apart despite a strong bipartisan desire to implement permitting reform.
RENO — The annual PBS Reno Writers Contest and PBS Reno is inviting local students in kindergarten through third grade to submit their own illustrated stories.
PANACA — Game wardens from the Nevada Department of Wildlife (NDOW) are seeking the public’s help to solve two separate poaching cases that occurred near the Nevada/Utah border. The first ongoing investigation involves a bull elk that was shot and killed in Lincoln County on Labor Day weekend (Aug. 30-Sept 1).
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden signed bipartisan legislation that expands Social Security benefits for more than 2 million Americans. The bill was approved by Congress late last year. The ceremony on Sunday marked one of the last times Biden is expected to sign major legislation as president, since Congress is now controlled by Republicans and his term is set to end on Jan. 20, when President-elect Donald Trump takes the oath of office.