In today’s edition: 

• New poll could show “an early warning sign for Nevada Republicans.”
• Who is responsible for reporting spilled sewage?
• Trio of gun reform measures return to the Legislature

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From the Capital Bureau Chief:

Expect big crowds and a marathon meeting — in a joint Senate and Assembly Judiciary hearing Thursday afternoon, lawmakers are set to hear three gun-related bills:

• SB89 would prevent anyone convicted of a hate crime in the last 10 years from purchasing a gun.
• AB105 would criminalize bringing a gun within 100 feet of an election site.
• AB245 would raise the legal age to purchase certain semi-automatic rifles and shotguns to 21.

Gov. Joe Lombardo vetoed three similar measures that passed out on party-line votes in 2023. So why try again?

Assm. Sandra Jauregui (D-Las Vegas), who is sponsoring the voting site and age limit bills, told The Nevada Independent the legislation represents commonsense solutions to gun violence that she vowed to continue to work on after the governor vetoed her similar bills in 2023.

Still, Jauregui hopes to avoid that fate on her voting site legislation because she removed the provision addressing “ghost guns” — untraceable, homebuilt firearms without serial numbers.

“[The governor] kind of indicated, and there were people who came to me and said that they would support the [voting site] bill if we removed the ghost gun portion,” Jauregui said in an interview last week. 

The 2023 bill included ghost gun language as a response to a pending legal battle against the state’s 2021 ban on ghost guns.

With the state Supreme Court upholding the law, Jauregui said that portion of the bill is no longer needed.

Meanwhile, the Washoe County Republican Party issued an “URGENT ALERT” on social media to Nevada gun owners, decrying the legislation and urging them to, “Fire up your computers and submit your opposition!” 

This should all make for a fun hearing.

As always, please send us your questions, thoughts and suggestions. You can reach me at [email protected].

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Poll: Nevada voters oppose federal cuts

A majority of Nevada residents are opposed to federal cuts to Medicaid and President Donald Trump’s efforts to eliminate the Department of Education, according to recent polling shared with The Nevada Independent.  

A memo detailing findings from a statewide survey of likely 2026 voters by the progressive Searchlight Research firm indicates that the opposition to the policy proposals could be “an early warning sign for Nevada Republicans.” The Democratic Nevada Legislative Victory political action committee and other Democratic organizations paid for the poll.

The poll, conducted from Feb. 18-23, surveyed 1,000 likely general election voters, including 750 over the phone and 250 text-to-web respondents, and had a margin of error of 3.1 percent. About 33 percent of voters surveyed were registered as Democrats, 34 percent as nonpartisan and 33 percent as Republicans. This is close to the breakdown of active voters in Nevada, where Democrats make up about 29 percent of active registered voters, Republicans about 29 percent and nonpartisans roughly 33.5 percent as of March 1.

Here are more details on the poll and its findings:

• Democratic operative Peter Koltak said the polling shows “the Trump administration and D.C. Republicans are actually very out of step with where Nevada voters are and maybe where they wish the federal government was spending its time.”
• Though top Republicans in the state including Gov. Joe Lombardo applauded Trump’s push for the elimination of the department, about 60 percent of respondents opposed it.
  • About 90 percent of Democratic and 65 percent of nonpartisan respondents said they opposed eliminating the education department, compared with about 25 percent of Republicans.
  • “I was surprised to see the governor and Republicans in state go all in on the idea of eliminating the Department Education,” Koltak said. “Because frankly, it's really out of step with where a lot of key swing voter audiences are on this issue.”
• Nearly 80 percent of poll respondents said they opposed possible Medicaid cuts.
  • The poll asked two forms of the question — whether voters supported cutting “federal funding for health care programs like Medicaid” which “covers eight hundred thousand Nevadans” or “in order to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy and big corporations.”
    • On the first question that noted the scope of Medicaid’s coverage, 79 percent of poll respondents were in opposition, including 69 percent of Republicans.
    • The second question, with the political tint, had 80 percent of respondents opposed, including 71 percent of Republicans.
  • Context: Trump has promised not to cut Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid benefits. House Republicans recently passed a budget bill envisioning $880 billion in spending cuts, which would be difficult to achieve without cuts to those programs.
• The survey also showed Trump’s job approval slightly underwater, with 41 percent strongly approving of Trump and 44 percent saying they strongly disagreed.
  • Context: The survey took place in February, and national polling averages have shown Trump’s approval rating dropping since then.
• “This [poll] is a very good window into where voters were on these things as they were initially experiencing them,” Koltak said. “There’s no reason to believe that any of this stuff is going to get more popular.”

— Tabitha Mueller

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What we’re reading and writing

Uber, Nevada trial lawyers strike deal through bill to limit ridesharing company liability by Eric Neugeboren

Does this mean it’s over?

Nevada governor tackles affordable housing in $250M plan by Jessica Hill and McKenna Ross, Las Vegas Review-Journal

There’s officially a bill!

Bees, butterflies and beetles — bill would allow Nevada to manage certain invertebrates by Amy Alonzo

Buggin Out.

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If sewage spills into a Nevada waterway, is anyone responsible for reporting it?

It’s an issue SB276 aims to answer.

• Context: More than 2 million gallons of untreated sewage were inadvertently routed into the Truckee River instead of to a wastewater treatment plant because of a construction error at a newly constructed apartment complex in Sparks. The issue wasn’t noticed for about a year; once discovered, it wasn’t reported to the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection. The division was eventually notified by a local media outlet last fall, after about a year of leakage.

• SB276 would assist in reporting future incidents, said Sen. Ira Hansen (R-Sparks), the bill’s sponsor.
  • “When we looked through NRS (Nevada Revised Statutes), there really was no requirement that would force a government agency to notify the people who could be affected by a sewage spill like this. That’s why we need the bill … Everybody knew about it, but nobody knew what to do with it,” he told lawmakers during a March 20 Senate Natural Resources Committee hearing. 
• Truckee Meadows Water Authority lobbyist Leo Drozdoff, who said the authority is in “gentle opposition” to the bill, pointed out that similar language already exists in statute.
  • “Maybe take a look at what exists on the books already,” he said.
• Hansen got the last word in, however. “If there are in fact [state laws] in place right now, they weren’t followed,” he said. 

— Amy Alonzo

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 Keeping Tabs

🏐 Girls comment in support of trans athlete ban bill — A group of girl Nevada athletes gave public comment on Tuesday during an Assembly Education Committee meeting in support of AB240, a GOP-backed bill that would prohibit transgender athletes from competing in girls sports at Nevada schools. Their efforts were highlighted on X by Riley Gaines, a prominent opponent of allowing transgender women to participate in girls sports.

• Committee Chair Assm. Selena Torres-Fossett (D-Las Vegas) told The Indy there will not be a hearing for the bill.

• Context: The testimony was part of Republican Lt. Gov. Stavros Anthony’s Task Force to Protect Women’s Sports. An ethics complaint has been filed based on Anthony’s remarks that his office has used government resources, including staff time, to support the task force.

🤑Bill would allow university involvement in NIL — A bill presented Wednesday in the Senate Committee on Education would allow Nevada higher education institutions to take part in compensating their athletes for their name, image and likeness (NIL). These deals would be funded through philanthropic donations to athletic departments, not public dollars.

• Context: The Legislature in 2021 passed AB254, which allowed student-athletes to profit off of their NIL, but prohibited institutional involvement.

😱Bipartisan support on immigration bill??? —  A bill that would make it a misdemeanor for a school district employee to share information about a student or their household with officers enforcing immigration laws passed out of the Assembly Education Committee almost unanimously on Tuesday. One nay came from Assm. Richard Delong (R-Reno), who voiced concerns that the state law could conflict with federal laws if they change in the future. 

• Other Republicans were more open to Assm. Cecelia Gonzalez’s (D-Las Vegas) bill. Assm. Alexis Hansen (R-Sparks) said she would support the bill as it only codifies pre-existing federal student privacy protections.

✨More magic, more mushrooms — After the Nevada Senate introduced a resolution urging the federal government to decriminalize magic mushrooms, another bill seeking to expand the use of psychedelic substances was heard Wednesday. Assm. Max Carter’s (D-Las Vegas) AB378 would create a pilot program allowing a limited number of patients with mental health conditions to use psychedelic substances as treatments. 

Like the resolution, AB378 has support from half a dozen Republican lawmakers.

— Eric Neugeboren, Isabella Aldrete

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Days until: 

• First committee passage deadline: 16
• First house passage deadline: 27
• Sine die: 68

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And to ease you into the weekend, a few social media posts that caught our eye: 

• X: Everything is fine.
• BSky: Sometimes, baked goods provide all the joy you need.
• Instagram: There’s always something going on at the #nvleg.

We’ll see you next week.

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