On the morning of Jan. 1, 2025, a highly decorated military veteran drove a rented Tesla Cybertruck full of fireworks to the valet area of the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas, shot himself and detonated its explosive cargo. The attack, which injured seven people, came hours after someone rammed a truck into a crowd in New Orleans’ French Quarter, killing 14.

Giving us a hint of what 2025 would bring, it was later revealed that the attacker used ChatGPT to help plan the attack.

Was 2025 an unending catastrophe? No. Was it a good year? For most of us, certainly not.

Let’s review how the year started together, shall we?

January: Meet the Zizians

One positive story from January to remember was when a Washoe County judge ruled that Nevada law enforcement is required to follow Nevada laws, not more permissive federal laws, when it seizes property. This followed a case in which the Nevada Highway Patrol, after pulling a veteran over for “passing too closely” to a tanker truck, contacted the federal Drug Enforcement Agency under the agency’s Equitable Sharing Program to seize the veteran’s life savings in exchange for 80 percent of the confiscated money. The Nevada Independent’s Michael Schaus wrote an excellent column that helped put the case in context.

On a fiscally negative note, Gov. Joe Lombardo started the 83rd legislative session by submitting a two-year budget that was $335 million in the red. This made many legislators very angry and was widely regarded as a bad move.

On a much less positive note, the world was introduced to the Zizians following a fatal shooting of a U.S. Border Patrol agent in Vermont that month. Max Read, Behind the Bastards and Wired each did their best to explain to a very confused public about how a group of young vegan tech enthusiasts were inspired by Harry Potter fanfic and an apocalyptic vision of artificial intelligence to start a murderous crime spree.

February: Even I’m wrong sometimes

In February, I was wrong about something.

One of my recurring bugbears is the continuing use of population thresholds in state statutes to write laws that circumvent sections 20 and 21 of Article 4 of the state Constitution. Without making anyone grab their nearest copy of the state’s highest governing document, those two sections of Nevada’s Constitution demand that the Legislature only writes laws that are applicable, general and of uniform operation throughout the entire state.

No, not to parts of the state “in a county whose population is 700,000 or more,” as if we don’t know that only applies to Clark County. 

No, not to parts of the state “in a county whose population is 100,000 or more but less than 700,000,” as if we don’t know that only applies to Washoe County. 

The entire state. All of it.

None of that, however, stopped the Legislature from trying to “generally” write a law that applied “uniformly” to “a county whose population is 52,500 or more and less than 57,500” — Elko County, in other words — to compel the county to pay for the replacement of the 70-year-old school currently serving residents of the Duck Valley Indian Reservation in Owyhee.

So what did I write about the measure when it first passed in 2023? Did I catch yet another abuse of constitutional authority through the use of selective population targets? Did I write a clever screed detailing how this was yet another circumvention of the plain text that binds all levels of government in our state?

No, I apparently thought the bill was downright clever. Good thing I’m not a judge, otherwise my columns would become binding precedent.

In February, an actual judge ruled — correctly — that the microtargeting of specific counties through selective population thresholds is unconstitutional. Better yet, the Elko County Commission wisely read the room and continued to fund the replacement of the Owyhee Combined School campus without further legislative meddling.

A mercurial opinion columnist was proven wrong, an unconstitutional law was struck down and Nevada’s children were successfully served. If that’s not a win for Nevadans, I don’t know what one is.

Thankfully, nothing else happened in February, so we can move on.

March: Let’s do the attorney shuffle

In March, President Donald Trump appointed Sigal Chattah as the interim U.S. attorney for Nevada. This made many Nevadans angry and was widely regarded as a bad move.

Chattah was not the only controversial U.S. attorney pick Trump and his administration made that month. A few days before he appointed Chattah, he also appointed Alina Habba — his former personal lawyer — as the interim U.S. attorney for New Jersey. Prior to that, Attorney General Pam Bondi appointed John Sarcone as the interim U.S. attorney for the Northern District of New York.

None of these lawyers would ultimately get confirmed by the Senate, nor would their terms be extended by federal judges. Two branches of the federal government standing athwart Trump’s whims and shouting “stop,” however, didn’t stop the administration from trying to extend each of their appointments into the terminal end of the heat death of the universe.

In the case of Chattah, she was appointed as “acting” U.S. attorney — second in command behind the now-vacant U.S. attorney — before her initial appointment expired in July. This, according to a court ruling in September, illegally extended her appointment into February. That ruling, in turn, was paused in October by the same judge who issued it out of “deference and respect” for the executive branch.

That deference was not extended to Chattah’s colleague in New Jersey, however. The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in December that Habba was disqualified from serving as U.S. attorney, whether that service was in an interim, “acting” or other capacity. Lindsey Halligan, who was nominated as the interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia after her predecessor refused to bring charges against New York Attorney General Letitia James or former FBI Director James Comey, was recently disqualified as well.

Perhaps if Trump appointed Chattah as the chief prosecutor for states “whose population is 3,100,000 or more but less than 3,190,000,” he might have gotten away with it.

April: Board to death

In the most important news story of the month, Reno’s Development Services Department denied a permit to build a Jiffy Lube in west Reno because the lot it was to be constructed on was originally designated in 1996 as an employee parking lot for a neighboring grocery store.

A slightly less important news story from April featured Sigal Chattah, who at one point represented Robert Beadles in his quixotic quest to make harassing election workers constitutional. When she initially filed their complaint against the Election Worker Protection Act, I wrote some choice words regarding the quality of that filing (which, yes, she amended before the column was published). The Ninth Circuit, however, made short work of the remainder of her case by pointing out that none of the plaintiffs had actually been charged with violating the law they were seeking to overturn.

Finally, the Legislature started to spend some time considering a controversial subject that launched at least four opinion columns in The Indy alone — yes, that’s right, overhauling the governance of Nevada’s sprawling body of boards and commissions. Riveting stuff! The Legislature ultimately decided to throw out the governor’s bill, wrote a separate bill that placed boards and commissioners under the Department of Administration, then gave up on the effort before sine die. 

May: Veto Joe breaks his own record

Speaking of the Legislature, May brought the body’s constitutionally mandated 120-day deadline into view, which pushed the body into a fervor of activity.

One of the bills considered toward the end of the session was a measure that would have permitted nonpartisan voters to vote for major party candidates in state and presidential primary elections. The bill, which would have allowed nonpartisan voters to select either a Republican or Democratic primary ballot prior to voting in a primary election, was brought forward as an emergency measure by Assembly Speaker Steve Yeager (D-Las Vegas) and subsequently approved by both houses. Unfortunately, there was one person they forgot to ask — Gov. Joe Lombardo, who vetoed the bill on the grounds that the bill was too similar to Question 3, a ballot initiative for open primaries and ranked-choice voting that was approved by voters in 2022 and then subsequently rejected in 2024.

Another bill considered by the Legislature sought to limit the ability for local schools and library officials to remove books from local libraries by shifting content moderation duties to the court system. It also criminalized trying to share sensitive information about library employees or threatening them as felony offenses. The measure was once again approved by the Legislature, only to run face first into Lombardo’s veto pen. According to the governor’s veto message, he objected to the bill on constitutional grounds, citing possible violations of the First and 14th amendments in its passage.

The governor would ultimately veto 68 bills, breaking the record he himself established in the previous session.

June: A very taxing month

One of the measures that couldn’t have been vetoed by Lombardo was AJR1, which was sponsored by Assm. Natha Anderson (D-Sparks) and would have modified the state’s property tax structure pending voter approval at the ballot box. Despite the unavailability of his veto pen and passing the Assembly, however, the measure ultimately failed to pass the Senate, likely due to concerns that placing a property tax measure on the 2028 ballot could antagonize property owners.

Speaking as a property owner, I’m certainly not thrilled about the possibility of paying more in property taxes. That said, as I pointed out more than five years ago, Nevada’s property tax regime is ludicrously unequal and the situation certainly hasn’t changed since then.

To demonstrate how broken this system is, consider the home my wife and I bought and moved into a few years ago. Since it was built decades ago, it’s taxed at a lower, depreciated rate than an identical home with the same market value because we tax homes as if they’re used cars. Additionally, our home is taxed at a lower rate than newer properties because its taxable value plummeted during the Great Recession. Since subsequent increases can only be made in 3 percent to 8 percent increments, depending on whether the property was used as a primary residence in a given year, and Nevada does not reset property tax valuation after it is sold as other states do, our tax rate is even lower than it otherwise would have been.

The result? We’re going to pay 0.053 percent — just slightly more than half of a percentage point — of what we paid for our home when we bought it a few years ago. The market price for our home, meanwhile, continues to increase.

To put that percentage into perspective, according to the Tax Foundation, residents in only 10 states — including Nevada — pay less property taxes on average than what we will be paying next year. Yes, you read that right — the average Nevada property owner has an even lower property tax bill than I do.

Am I personally benefiting from our state’s mismanagement of its property tax system? Absolutely. Should I be? One of these days, we should consider letting the voters decide.

Then what happened? How did 2025 end?

With goats screaming into the abyss as they grazed on Nevada’s hilltops, of course. More insights such as these will be discussed as I continue my forensic audit of 2025. Stay tuned.

David Colborne ran for public office twice. He is now an IT manager, the father of two sons, and a recurring opinion columnist for The Nevada Independent. You can follow him on Mastodon @[email protected], on Bluesky @davidcolborne.bsky.social, on Threads @davidcolbornenvor email him at [email protected]. You can also message him on Signal at dcolborne.64.