There haven’t been “any reports of any big raids” in Nevada, according to Martha Menendez, an immigration attorney with the Nevada Immigrant Coalition.

Most Nevada progressive groups are backing Biden’s re-election — but not with direct endorsements — and are banking on young voters thinking Biden better serves their future, a strategy that could face challenges.

Laura Martin, executive director of the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada (PLAN) Action, said Lombardo’s plans for the coming biennium work for a “small percentage of people at the top” and not struggling Nevadans. 

Though McMahill emerged as the establishment-backed candidate, he maintained that he would not be following anyone else’s playbook as sheriff, noting that he spent the majority of his law enforcement career on the “uniform side of the police department."

Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) helped derail an effort to revamp an 1872 mining law in the Democrats' agenda bill. The move has raised concerns with environmentalist ahead of a tough re-election campaign.

The allegation comes as the latest serious rift between members of the higher education system’s governing board and its top administrative executive.   

A coalition of doctors, hospitals and health insurance providers affiliated with a national nonprofit group that has spent millions trying to kill public health insurance option proposals in other states is staking its opposition to similar legislation in Nevada.

This week’s Indy Environment newsletter looks at a legislative effort to protect a unique population of Rocky Mountain juniper trees in an area known as Bahsahwahbee, or “the sacred water valley” in Shoshone. For Indigenous communities, the area means everything.

Wadhams conceded that mining could pay more in taxes, but did not specify a number and warned that excessive taxation could drive mines out of business or drive the industry out of the state — and that commodity prices can be volatile and thus are not ideal for propping up the state’s tax base. Martin suggested that essential services including education and health care have been slashed in Nevada and that mining needs to contribute more to the state budget. And Malkiewich provided historical context and legal interpretations of a fight that dates back to the signing of the state Constitution in 1864.

In this edition: Recapping a Q&A with the head of the state mining association, how one lawmaker went viral on TikTok and details on a bill aimed at getting more Native American involvement in the naming of geographical places. Plus, a look ahead at this week’s major bill hearings.

As the fifth march kicks off virtually this weekend, Nevada organizers are reflecting on what the event means to them amid the pandemic and which issues they are tackling this year, as a new White House administration leads the country.

Black voters were projected to drop to the third largest racial or ethnic voting bloc in the country in 2020 after being surpassed by Hispanic voters for the first time. But organizers and researchers emphasized that the Black voters — historically loyal to Democrats and with the second-highest turnout rates across racial and ethnic groups — were the cornerstone of Biden's win and the future of the country.

In the time of coronavirus, a significant chunk of Democratic playbook has been torn out and tossed out the window, with campaigns, the party and outside organizations nixing door-knocking from their get-out-the-vote plans in favor of phone banking, text message campaigns and literature drops. Democrats’ absence from the field has been filled by Republicans, who halted in-person campaigning at the beginning of the pandemic but resumed door-knocking and in-person events in June.

Although lobbyists and members of the public have been barred from the physical legislative building, a host of interest groups are making their demands known and pushing for their priorities to be included in the proclamation that will establish the parameters of what lawmakers can consider in their second special session. Gov. Steve Sisolak is expected to call the next session once lawmakers finish finalizing cuts to the state budget during the first special session, which started Wednesday.

Police arrested two photojournalists covering protests on the Las Vegas Strip in response to the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis this week, according to booking logs posted to Twitter.

Critics say the communal nature of prisons makes it nearly impossible to practice social distancing, and if a COVID-19 outbreak of any scale were to take hold, it would likely overwhelm prison medical capacity and in turn stretch the capacity at community hospitals where inmates with more serious needs are taken.

On Caucus Day, precinct chairs opened the covers on the party-purchased iPads they had been assigned to reveal a browser-based Google Form tool, which they used to step-by-step report the results from in-person attendees and reveal the results from early voters. Precinct chairs who had been fretting for days about whether it was all going to work were pleasantly surprised.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders emerged from Saturday’s caucus not only with 47.1 percent support but a 26 percentage point lead over his next closest competitor, former Vice President Joe Biden. Political observers in Nevada anticipated a Sanders win, but they didn’t anticipate exactly how much he would win by.

Only about 27 percent of Democrats showed up to caucus in Nevada in 2008 and even fewer showed up in 2016. As Democrats prepare to hold what they say will be the most transparent, expansive and accessible caucus ever, newly obtained data shed light on who, historically, the state's caucusgoers have been.

The five-year contract involves running the state’s Day Reporting Centers — facilities offering more intensive supervision for people on parole and probation that can be used as an “intermediate sanction” in place of going to jail for people with minor violations of their parole terms.