In my previous op-ed, I argued that open primaries would improve our democratic institutions by liberating our elections from the stranglehold of the two-party system. However, while opening up the primary system will improve the viability of third-party and independent candidates, this reform would be insufficient on its own.

Our current mode of electing candidates for office is a relic of the past, belonging to a time when the two-party system served the needs of our democratic system and ensured responsible party government. Academics describe our current state of party politics as consisting of “weak parties and strong partisanship.”

About ten days ago, our church facilities hosted an event for gubernatorial candidate Sheriff Joe Lombardo. Gov. Glen Youngkin of Virginia headlined the event. The sheriff used the forum to share his concern for education in the state.  The Nevada Independent wrote a story, it was picked up by other media outlets, and we were asked many questions.

Thanks to strong state leadership over the last four years, Nevada has taken a bold, progressive approach to fight climate change, work towards energy independence and create clean jobs. Both the federal government and our fellow states should look to us for leadership on this existential issue.

When Las Vegas reporter Jeff German was hot on a case, former Clark County District Attorney David Roger recalls, he rang his phone every day – often several times – in pursuit of the story.

The projected $9.7 billion on political spending for the 2022 election cycle means there will be a lot of political ads running here in the swingy state of Nevada — many of which will take the “low road” in attacking candidates and causes. 

When Reno City Council Member Neoma Jardon resigned last month, I wanted to write about the best way to replace resigned municipal council members but ultimately thought better of it — this is The Nevada Independent, after all, not the Reno Independent. Luckily for me, Council Member Oscar Delgado, who resigned last Friday, gave me another chance.

It should be no surprise that the “Puritan wing” of the religious right, having been successful in finally getting the U.S. Supreme Court judges to take away a woman’s constitutional right to control her own body, now seeks to destroy jobs for 3,000 women in Nevada. 

The poliovirus, a disease that was once considered eradicated in 1979 by the World Health Organization (WHO), is now seeing a resurgence. While at the time of this writing there have been no reported cases of the virus in Nevada, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), areas around the globe including New York are seeing cases and have declared a state of emergency to monitor the disease and prevent further community transmission.

State supreme courts across the United States fail to adequately reflect the diversity of the communities they serve as well as the diversity of the legal profession. Unfortunately, this stark contrast is also present in the makeup of the Supreme Court of Nevada. Currently, all seven of the Justices on the Supreme Court of Nevada are white. Not one person of color presides on our state’s highest court. 

Barry Perryman, an agriculture professor from UNR, has asked us all to believe that modern livestock grazing can’t be faulted for today’s degraded rangelands and cheatgrass infestations across the West. Indeed, he asserts that a new kind of seasonal overgrazing – called ‘targeted grazing’ by the livestock industry – is a viable solution to halt spread of this invasive weed and the unnaturally large range fires that come with it.

Whether it comes from grandpa’s political rant or from our own representatives in government, this is a sentiment that college-age students hear all the time. With only half of eligible voters aged 18-29 voting in the 2020 election, our voting rates don’t help our case. However, the 2020 presidential election represented an 11 percent increase in nationwide youth participation in voting from 2016. The rate of youth voting is on an upward trend.  

I understand what it’s like to follow a show religiously, to trace its ups and downs, and to debate endlessly with fans of other franchises over which franchise is better. I know what it’s like to dedicate one’s time to arguing over whether the U.S.S. Enterprise could defeat an Imperial Star Destroyer (though I prefer Star Trek over Star Wars, not a chance — Star Destroyers are simply too large).

In search of a more representative set of abortion politics

When I first met Jeff German in the early 1980s at the Las Vegas Sun, I was a wisecracking sports columnist working on my best Jim Murray-meets-Mike Royko impersonation.

Given the political push over the past few years in many states and local jurisdictions, as well as at the federal level, to either decriminalize prostitution or to adopt Nevada-style legalization of prostitution, the question of legalization is an emerging issue that will soon grab national headlines and force federal law makers to debate significant paradigm-shifting policy questions.  

My son, in 2021, went to Johns Hopkins Children’s Center in Maryland to have a critical surgery for recurrent infections — a surgery that wasn’t possible in Nevada. My brother received a critical bone marrow transplant in 1995, at Primary Children’s Hospital in Utah — a procedure still not available in Nevada today. And that’s just my story. Countless other Nevada families have experienced similar situations. 

In the Ohio Senate race, Rep. Tim Ryan, a Democrat opposed to student loan forgiveness, recently said “waiving debt for those on a trajectory to financial security sends the wrong message to millions of Ohioans without a degree to make ends meet.” He’s right.

We at Protect Thacker Pass are used to people calling us “delusional”, as David Colborne did in his recent opinion article, “Refusing to extract lithium is not a refusal to extract” wherein he wrote that “we are every bit as likely as a nation to abandon cars as carbohydrates. Pretending otherwise isn’t environmentalism — it’s delusion.”