President Joe Biden kicked off his Tuesday visit to Nevada by courting Black voters — a vital voting bloc —  at the NAACP conference and an economic summit with Rep. Steven Horsford (D-NV). 

Members of the NAACP crowd cheered Tuesday afternoon as Biden made his entrance at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center, chanting “four more years.” During his speech, Biden emphasized the importance of economic equity and civil rights, promising to protect them during his presidency. 

He criticized former President Donald Trump for stripping Black Americans of health care, minimizing the Black workforce and fostering white supremacy nationwide. If re-elected, Biden said that he would call on Congress to enshrine into law the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and restore Roe v. Wade within the first hundred days of his presidency. 

“I’ll do everything the NAACP stands for,” Biden said. 

Biden’s visit arrives at the heels of the attempted assassination of Trump, the most serious attempt to assassinate a presidential candidate since 1981, and a shaky debate performance that’s called his leadership into question and prompted calls to replace him on the top of the ballot. Following the shooting, Biden called for updated security measures at campaign events and postponed his Monday visit to Austin, Texas. 

“It’s time for an important conversation,” he said. “The politics in this country have gotten too heated. We must reject not only political violence, but violence of any kind.” 

Although 92 percent of Black Nevadans supported Biden during the 2020 election, enthusiasm for the president has dwindled.  Nevada has the third highest growing Black population in the nation; a population that has become an increasingly important constituency during this year’s nail-biter race. Trump has also made attempts to court Black voters, ​​having the most success with the youngest. 

In the morning, Rep. Steven Horsford (D-NV), the chairman of the powerful Congressional Black Caucus, kicked off the president's second event of the day — an economic summit in North Las Vegas. The congressman has stood behind Biden as other Democrats have questioned his ability to lead, calling such doubts “ageist” and “ableist.” Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV), up for re-election, notably did not appear alongside Biden today, similar to other major Democrats who’ve sidestepped the president in recent weeks.

Horsford lauded a new affordable housing plan announced by the Biden administration this afternoon. The plan would place a cap on rents for major landlords and build 2 millions homes nationwide. Horsford said the plan had a special significance to him with funds going to build homes “half a block away” from where he grew up — a neighborhood that he called “overlooked.” 

Biden’s proposal could help secure as many as 15,000 additional affordable housing units in Nevada and would include awarding a $50 million housing grant to the Southern Nevada Regional Housing Authority and the City of Las Vegas.

Biden’s housing announcement was the second time he has delivered a second-term housing vision this year while in Las Vegas, an apt place for such policy discussions. Nevada is short of nearly 80,000 affordable units and Las Vegas is among the cities with the highest percentage of rent-burdened residents in the country.

The president’s plan was aimed at a national audience and a Nevada-specific one. He called for a 5 percent cap on rent increases for corporate landlords, with violators losing access to certain federal tax breaks available to rental property owners. Such a policy would require an act of Congress, likely necessitating a Democratic trifecta — but the Biden campaign is hoping it can inspire voters in a time when Biden’s age, rather than his policy agenda, has been garnering more attention.

“We are sending a clear message to corporate landlords,” Biden said.

More affordable housing needed

Less likely to make national headlines but of paramount importance to the Las Vegas Valley is Biden’s plan to use federal land for affordable housing. Growth in the West, and particularly in Nevada, has often been limited because of the high proportion of public lands — about 80 percent of land in the state is owned by the federal government. 

Las Vegas is encircled by public land, and the Southern Nevada Home Builders Association estimates that it will run out of new land to build housing in eight years. While environmentalists have protested that the region should prioritize denser housing on existing land, Democrats and Republicans alike have been interested in using public land for new housing.

The White House also announced Tuesday that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the primary landowner in Nevada, will move into the public comment period on selling a 20-acre parcel to the county at $100 per acre, the largest sale of land dedicated to affordable housing in the nearly 26 years since the passage of the Southern Nevada Public Lands Management Act (SNPLMA), which governs public land disposal in the Las Vegas Valley. The sale is made possible because the administration streamlined the sale of several public parcels in Clark County earmarked for affordable housing. 

Clark County estimates that 150 affordable homes could be built on the land, located on the north side of Cactus Avenue between Buffalo Drive and Rainbow Boulevard, for households earning less than 80 percent of area median income.

In addition, BLM will soon propose an 18-acre sale to the City of Henderson, which estimates the parcel could hold 300 new affordable units. It will also consider an additional 562 acres for an estimated 15,000 units that Southern Nevada municipalities have identified as having affordable housing potential within the SNPLMA boundary  where the BLM already has the right to facilitate land sales. 

The announcement was met with cheers from congressional Democrats and aligned groups, including immigrants rights’ group Make the Road Nevada and the Nevada Housing Justice Alliance.

Meanwhile, the Nevada Realtors and former North Las Vegas Mayor John Lee, who is running for Congress against Horsford, criticized the proposal, saying rent control is a failed idea and that more public land needs to be made available for all forms of housing, not just those that are deemed affordable.

“While I appreciate the release of some federal land, this is not enough,” Lee said.  

Trump’s agenda criticized

Biden also repeatedly called out Project 2025 — a proposed policy agenda for Trump's presidency — suggesting that it would lead to the erosion of worker’s rights and civil protections. The project proposes to cut federal funding for schools teaching “critical race theory,” and de-emphasize the role of white supremacy and slavery in U.S. history. The plan would also deport undocumented people en masse and place them in camps as they await departure. 

It would “repeal all we’re doing,” Biden said.

His NAACP speech was sprinkled with references to episodes of racial violence such as the murder of George Floyd and the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. 

The Trump rallying cry of “MAGA,” Biden said to the audience, “want to deny you your freedom.”

Yet, despite such messaging and a chaotic campaign month, Biden ended on a positive note.

“I’ve never been more optimistic than I am now about the nation,” Biden concluded. “We just have to remember who we are.”