Nevada
Nevada County Awards 23 Microbusiness Grants
Nevada County has awarded $57,500 in aid funds to 23 microbusinesses impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. All microbusinesses acquired $2,500 in grant funding.
“Microbusinesses are an important a part of our native economic system,” stated Board of Supervisors Chair Sue Hoek. “I’m proud to see small enterprise house owners from throughout the neighborhood get funded by means of this program, from microbusinesses in Nevada Metropolis, Grass Valley, and Truckee to entrepreneurs like Izzi Tooinsky in Penn Valley.”
“I’ve been making a residing performing for teenagers and households for practically 50 years. In all that point, I’ve by no means encountered a more difficult monetary time than the previous two years,” stated native performer Izzi Tooinsky. “This micro-grant helps maintain me going. I might sincerely prefer to thank Nevada County for the beneficiant microbusiness grant, and my gratitude reaches out additional to our nice nation that, with all its challenges and imperfections, has the knowledge and care to help, assist, and respect the worth of kids’s leisure.”
The 23 awarded companies hailed from Grass Valley, Nevada Metropolis, Penn Valley, Tough and Prepared, and Truckee. Various enterprise varieties included graphic design, artistic media, transportation, digital companies, retail, illustration, forestry, hair styling, bodywork, performers, photographers, artists, childcare suppliers, and language and music educators.
“This program focuses on supporting the very small companies that assist make Nevada County a particular place to dwell and work,” stated Nevada County CEO Alison Lehman. “We acknowledge the creativity, range, and resilience of our neighborhood in these small enterprise proprietor awards”.
Apply At present: 20 Extra Microbusiness Grants Out there
Twenty microbusiness grants are nonetheless open on a rolling foundation till stuffed. Eligible Nevada County microbusinesses are inspired to use for the grant funding as quickly as doable. Microbusinesses are eligible to obtain as much as $2,500 in grant funding.
“We’re wanting ahead to distributing $50,000 extra in grant funding to twenty different microbusinesses”, added Lehman. “These small companies are an integral a part of our native economic system.”
Discover a full checklist of eligibility and utility info and ceaselessly requested questions on Nevada County’s Microbusiness Grants web site. This system is made doable by the California Workplace of the Small Enterprise Advocate and the California Microbusiness COVID-19 Aid Grant program that Nevada County utilized to in November 2021. Nevada County is partnering with Sierra Enterprise Council to manage a straightforward utility course of and responsive customer support to candidates.
Nevada
Nevada is in a profound economic rut. Its working-class voters could swing the election
Urbin Gonzalez could be working inside, in the air conditioning, at his regular job as a porter on the Las Vegas strip. Instead, in the final few days before the US election, he chose to go door-knocking in the 104F (40C) heat, with the hopes of mobilising a few more voters to cast their ballots for Kamala Harris.
“I don’t care because I’m fighting for my situation,” said Gonzalez: for his retirement in 10 years, for a more affordable life, for housing that he and his family can afford. “I’m doing this for me.”
Gonzalez – like many workers on the strip – has struggled to keep up with rising costs in recent years. While the US economy broadly bounced back from the pandemic, Nevada has lagged behind. Nearly a quarter of jobs here are in leisure or hospitality, and although the Las Vegas Strip, where Gonzalez works, is back to booming with tourists, unemployment in Nevada remains the highest of any US state.
And working-class voters are wrestling with a big question: which candidate will help dig them out of a profound economic rut?
Their decision will help decide the election. Nevada is one of seven US swing states that help determine the outcome of the presidential race. With its six electoral votes, Nevada has leaned Democratic in every presidential vote since 2008 – but winning candidates have scraped by with slim margins. This year, the outcome could come down to working-class voters who have been worn down by low wages and ever-higher costs.
“Nevada is a blue state, but it’s a very, very, very light blue state,” said David Byler, chief of research at the polling firm Noble Predictive Insights. “It wouldn’t take a lot of swing to turn any of those into a functional tie or a Republican win.”
Both presidential campaigns are pitching solutions that – at least at first glance – look nearly identical.
Trump raised the idea of ending taxes on tips at a June campaign rally. Harris came out with a plan to do so in August, and combined it with a promise to end the federal sub-minimum wage for tipped workers, which is $2.13 an hour.
JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, floated the idea of expanding the child tax credit to $5,000. Harris and Walz have made their plan to expand the child tax credit and cap childcare costs one of their top campaign priorities.
Gonzalez doesn’t believe Trump will do anything to help workers – after all, the glittering hotel and casino that bears the former president’s name on the strip fought fiercely to block workers from unionising ahead of the 2016 elections. “All Trump wants to do is cut taxes for his buddies, for his rich friends, not for us,” he said. “He has shown us that.”
In past years, the state’s powerful, politically engaged unions have helped buoy Democratic candidates to victory – and this year, the Culinary Union alone aims to knock on at least 900,000 doors. The AFL-CIO has also been canvassing for Harris, and the Nevada Teamsters have made a point to endorse Harris, even as the national organization declined to make an endorsement.
“The people I talk to, they hear talking points from the Trump campaign, they hear a plan from the Harris campaign,” said Max Carter, a state assemblyman and former union electrician who has been canvassing on behalf of the Harris campaign.
But Republicans have also positioned themselves as the champions of workers. “Trump’s big innovation was really going after these working-class voters,” Byler said. The former president has messaged populism and managed to distinguish himself from a past era of Republicans focused on fiscal and social conservatism, and hawkish foreign policy.
Increasingly, voters say they trust Trump over Harris to improve economic conditions and follow through on policy promises. A September poll from Noble Predictive Insights, for example, found that 47% of voters trusted Trump to ban taxes on tips, compared to 40% who trusted Harris more on the matter.
Many voters remember the days early in the Trump administration when costs were just lower. “I think the economy was just better when Trump was president,” said Magaly Rodas, a 32-year-old mother of two who was deciding on the cost of groceries at her local Latin market.
Her husband, an electrician, has struggled to find work since the pandemic, she said – even as rent and other expenses have continued to climb. He’s also an immigrant, who has struggled to attain legal status in the US for more than a decade. Biden, Rodas said, keeps letting immigrants into the US, without any plan to help those who are already in the country. “What have the Democrats done for us in four years?” she said.
That’s a common complaint that canvassers for Make the Road Action in Nevada, a progressive group focused on turning out Latino and other minority voters. “A lot of people think – ‘Oh, the economy was better under Trump,’” said Josie Rivera, an organiser for the group.” And it’s been really disappointing to hear that a lot of Black and Latino men especially are turning more conservative or just sitting out the election and staying home.”
A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in the weeks leading up to election day found that Trump trailed Harris by just two percentage points among Hispanic men.
Canvassers for Make the Road have been working to fact-check Trump’s rhetoric that the economy was at its “best” under his presidency. They have also been talking to voters about Project 2025 – the ultra-conservative roadmap that details how the former president and his allies would restructure the US government – launching mass deportations, or dismantling education and climate programs, with disastrous consequences for immigrant and Black communities.
“Still, we’re facing a lot of misinformation,” Rivera said. “We try to combat that, when we go door to door, with one-on-one conversations and personal testimonials. But it can still be hard to get to voters.”
Many voters of color are turned off by the president’s racist rhetoric about immigrants, but don’t necessarily take him seriously, or believe he will actually enact the extreme policies he says he will, Rivera noted. Many voters do, however, seem to trust the former president’s business acumen.
“I don’t like him as a person, but I like his economic standpoint,” said Maile McDaniel, a 22-year-old resident of Reno. “Because he’s shown that he can do it before. He’s shown he can keep inflation down, he’s shown he can make things affordable.”
As an expecting mother, McDaniel said, she’s especially concerned about childcare costs and inflated prices at the grocery store.
Childcare in Nevada is also more expensive than elsewhere in the country, and other basic expenses in the state remain, for some, unattainably high. The median home price in the Las Vegas area, for example, has far outpaced national averages, and the average rent increased by nearly a third between 2020 and 2022.
Democrats argue that Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan brought in billions to fund everything from education to housing programs. And the president’s Inflation Reduction Act has also brought in unprecedented funding for new construction. But many of these projects are in the early stages, and it may take a while before Nevadans see the benefit.
The potential benefits of the rival proposals not to tax tips are also unclear. An analysis from the Yale Budget Lab estimated that more than a third of tipped American workers already pay no federal income tax because they earn too little.
Harris’s version of the plan would also aim to end the practice of paying tipped workers less than minimum wage, though in Nevada, all workers already are entitled to a minimum of $12 an hour, regardless of whether they earn tips. And a tax exemption for tips could also leave some workers worse off – disqualifying them from other tax credits.
Voters leaning toward either candidate also wondered why either Trump or Harris hadn’t tried to pass any of these reforms already.
“Trump was president for four years,” said Kenneth Logan, a retired bartender who lives in Las Vegas. “He says a lot of things, but he normally doesn’t follow through on them. I say if somebody tells you who they are, believe what they tell you.”
For decades, Nevada has been an election bellwether, voting for the winner of every presidential contest since 1912 with two exceptions – the state broke for Gerald Ford in 1976, and Hillary Clinton in 2016. Still, this year, even seasoned strategists and pollsters have struggled to predict which way the Silver state will swing.
Indeed, reaching voters has long been a struggle in Nevada. Its largest cities – Reno and Las Vegas – are home to a transient population, many of whom work unpredictable shifts in the state’s 24/7 entertainment and hospitality industries. The state is also incredibly diverse, and home to several immigrant communities who primarily speak Spanish or a language other than English.
Residents’ political affiliations can also be difficult to parse. Many Nevada voters have been fiercely independent for decades – voting for Democratic and Republican candidates. But new changes to the voter registration system – which automatically registers eligible voters at the DMV, and lists them as “non-partisan” by default – has increased the ranks of voters who are unaffiliated with any political party, even as voters beliefs have grown increasingly entrenched and polarised. Campaign operatives have been struggling to find these independents and figure out if they can be swayed.
Another uncertainty is how the state’s mostly Mexican American Latinos, who make up nearly 20% of Nevada’s electorate, will sway. Latino voters here have traditionally backed Democrats, though the party’s popularity is slipping. And both parties have struggled to strategically and thoughtfully message to Latinos, even as they seek desperately to win their votes.
Asian-American voters – who make up 12% of the state’s population – are another increasingly important voting bloc, and the Harris campaign especially has worked to court a growing constituency of Filipino-American voters in the state.
In addition, there are indications that Nevada’s Latter-day Saints, who make up 6% of the state’s population and have historically been reliable Republican voters, have been turned off by Trump’s Christian nationalism.
More than any other group, however, the campaigns in Nevada have remained focused on winning the state’s workers.
“I think it’s time for all the people like us who work in those hard jobs in this country to have someone working hard for us,” said Claudio Lara, 49, who works as a housecleaner in Vegas.
He is voting for Harris, he said, because she is a child of immigrants, and a woman. “It’s time for a woman, and it’s time for a change,” he said. “We need a strong change, a sharp change in this country.”
Nevada
Election 2024 live updates: Trump, Harris both rally voters in Nevada; latest polls
Harris uses Ellipse rally to highlight danger of second Trump term
Kamala Harris holds rally at the Ellipse, where former President Donald Trump held a “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6, 2021, before the Capitol riot.
Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris will both address supporters in a key swing state on Thursday: Nevada.
Trump is holding a rally in Henderson, Nevada, located southeast of Las Vegas, in the afternoon. That’s not the only Western state where Trump will host a campaign stop on Thursday − he’s also heading to Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Harris, meanwhile, will hold rallies Oct. 31 in Reno and Las Vegas to encourage Nevada voters to go to the polls, as well as a stop in Phoenix, Arizona.
Keep up with the USA TODAY Network’s live coverage from the campaign trail.
Harris campaigns in Wisconsin Wednesday night
Vice President Kamala Harris went back to a familiar place in the final stretch of her presidential campaign.
As she runs on preserving personal freedoms and protecting democracy, she made her pitch on Wednesday evening a few miles from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where her progressive parents participated in various civil rights causes in the late 60s. She spoke at the nearly 10,000-seat Alliant Energy Center here, to a majority-female crowd.
As president, Harris pledged that she would seek common ground and common-sense solutions to problems.“I am not looking to score political points. I am looking to make progress,” she said in her speech.
–Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy
Trump milks Biden’s garbage gaffe in insult-laden stump speech in Wisconsin
Former President Donald Trump made President Joe Biden’s “garbage” gaffe a central theme in his campaign rallies Wednesday. He also continued to take shots at his Democratic opponent Vice President Kamala Harris.
“Her gross incompetence disqualifies her from being president of the United States,” Trump said during a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Wednesday evening. “No one respects her, no one trusts her, no one takes her seriously.”
Trump rode into the Wisconsin event in the front seat of a personalized garbage truck, donning a neon orange trash collector’s vest. The move was in reference to Biden’s statement Tuesday, calling supporters of the former president “garbage.”
–Savannah Kuchar and David Jackson
The 2024 race for the White House will be razor-close until Election Day. In Real Clear Politics’ average of national polls, Trump leads Harris by just 0.4 percentage points, well within the margin of error for each of the surveys included.
It’s even closer in some of the swing states that could ultimately decide the election. For example, Harris leads Trump by 0.2 percentage points in Real Clear Politics’ average of Wisconsin polls.
– Marina Pitofsky
Got election questions? Sign up for USA TODAY’s On Politics newsletter for breaking news and exclusive analysis.
Donald Trump on Thursday is holding rallies in two Western states: New Mexico and Nevada. Trump will address Albuquerque voters in the afternoon before making a campaign stop in Henderson, located outside of Las Vegas.
The former president unveiled one of his signature campaign promises during a June rally in Las Vegas, vowing that, if elected, he would try to end federal taxes on tips, a likely winner in Nevada, whose casino and entertainment economy depends on tips.
– Marina Pitofsky, Mark Robison
Kamala Harris will hold rallies in Reno and Las Vegas, calling on Nevada voters to make a plan to vote. The Silver State is one of the pivotal swing states that could ultimately decide the 2024 election.
It will be the vice president’s first Northern Nevada visit since landing at the top of the Democratic ticket. Her last trip was in April 2023 when she spoke with Reno Mayor Hillary Schieve and actress Rosario Dawson about reproductive rights on the University of Nevada, Reno campus.
Harris is also set to address voters in Phoenix, Arizona Arizona at a Thursday morning rally.
– Mark Robison
Nevada
Chenin Nickel | Department of Nutrition
Summary
Nickel has a broad nutrition background, with extensive experience in both clinical and community dietetic settings. Her research expertise spreads across community nutrition, clinical dietetics, food science and sensory science, with several peer-reviewed papers published in these areas.
Education
B.S. Murray State University
M.S. University of Nevada, Reno
Ph.D. University of Nevada, Reno
Professional certifications
Registered Dietitian Nutritionist
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