LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — The Harris-Walz campaign revealed a new policy proposal they say is aimed at helping first-time home buyers and creating more affordable housing.

Campaign officials said the federal government owns around 80% of the land in Nevada. At a press conference on Friday in Las Vegas, they offered what they say is a solution to fixing the housing crisis

“Everyone says Nevada is about 80 percent federal land, that’s absolutely right,” Zach Conine, Nevada Treasurer, said. “But if you build a housing development two hours outside of Ely, that housing development will be neither affordable, attainable, or easy to get to. So, we have to talk about the land that actually makes sense.”

Conine spoke on behalf of the Harris-Walz campaign. President Biden announced a plan in July to “repurpose federal land to build more affordable homes, including thousands of new homes in Nevada.”

“Housing developers throughout the state are poised to add to Nevada’s housing inventory,” said Joe Lombardo. “We need a streamlined approach to the disposal of federal lands so they can get to work.”

The Trump-Vance campaign responded to Biden and Harris’s efforts to build new affordable housing.

“Ultimately, it’s important to remember that it is Kamala Harris that has housing so unaffordable in this country and across the country,” Tommy Pigott, RNC Strategic Communications Director, told 8 News Now on Friday.

Officials say Harris’s new proposal aims to tax incentives that would add three million new homes in four years, also looking to create a $40 billion housing innovation fund.

“Vice President Harris is saying we know that the local communities are going to have the best ideas. We want to make sure you have the resources, whether its dollars or flexibility, in order to be able to do it,” Conine said.

“They’ve made promises before about making housing affordable,” Pigott said. “What they’ve delivered while they’ve been in office is unaffordable housing and an American dream that’s further out of reach.”

Harris also proposed a down payment assistance of $25,000 for first-time home buyers.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan group, estimated that Harris’s new plan would add $1.7 trillion to national deficits over a decade, to which Conine said Harris’s plans would put three million more families into housing.

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A poll among registered Latino voters in Nevada showed Vice President Kamala Harris with a lead of 18 percentage points over former President Donald Trump, whose campaign had previously gained ground with this sought-out electorate.

The two-week survey — conducted by BSP Research— questioned 400 registered voters each in Nevada and south Texas, according to Entravision, the media, marketing and technology company that commissioned it.

The questionnaire began three days after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed Harris.

In comparison, a poll by TelevisaUnivision Consumer Strategy & Insights, conducted days before Biden’s politically disastrous debate performance in June showed Trump trailing within the margin of error.

In a tight race in a battleground state like Nevada, Latino voters — who comprise 20 percent of overall voters — have the potential to swing elections.

Rosen leading, too

Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nevada, led her Republican challenger, veteran Sam Brown, by similar margins among Latino voters polled, 53 percent to 22 percent, according to Entravision.

The poll’s statistical margin of error stood at plus or minus 4.9 percent, according to Entravision.

Asked how likely they expect to cast a ballot, 62 percent of Latinos in Nevada and Texas said they were “almost certain” they would, yet, more than half expressed that they don’t have “all the information” they need, Entravision said.

Harris is viewed more favorably than Biden or Trump. And the vice president leads in head-to-head match-ups among all Latino demographics, except independents, who prefer the former president by 2 percentage points, according to to the poll.

“Harris’ strengths with Latino voters include: her position on abortion rights, electability, and personal qualities (being a professional, woman of color, daughter of immigrants),” pollsters said.

Latinos in Nevada expressed overwhelming support (51 percent to 22 percent) for the state’s “Right to Abortion” ballot initiative, the poll determined.

However, the top issues cited by Nevada Latinos were related to the economy, housing, gun violence and health care costs, pollsters said.

Latino outreach

Campaigns can improve their outreach to the Latino communities, according to the poll. In Nevada, 51 percent of those questioned want to hear more from the presidential hopefuls, compared to the 54 percent who want to learn more about the Senate candidates.

Half of those surveyed in both states said that they’ve changed their mind on candidates based on ads, while 66 percent said they “sought more information about a particular candidate as a result of advertising.”

The poll outlined vulnerabilities for both presidential candidates among Latinos surveyed in both states.

Fifty-nine percent said that they are “worried about Project 2025 if Donald Trump is elected,” including 57 percent of independents.

Trump has disavowed the right-wing governing agenda, whose authors include people who had served in his presidential administration.

About 55 percent agreed with a statement that Trump “should not be elected due to his role in the January 6th insurrection,” the poll concluded.

Still, 46 and 44 percent of Latinos surveyed viewed Trump’s economic and immigration policies favorable, respectively.

“Harris has easily improved Democratic prospects, but has some vulnerabilities among Latino voters,” pollsters said.

While the majority of Latinos said they think Harris has a better chance of defeating Trump than Biden, only 28 percent of them said they felt “very well informed” about her proposed policies, compared with 36 percent who expressed the same thing about Trump.

Contact Ricardo Torres-Cortez at rtorres@reviewjournal.com.

As the trial into the murder of a Las Vegas investigative journalist got underway this week, defense attorney Robert Draskovich argued in court that “killing a journalist does not kill a story.”

The statement came on the opening day of the trial against Robert Telles. The 47-year-old former Clark County public administrator is accused of murder with a deadly weapon against a victim aged 60 or older.

The victim is Jeff German, a 69-year-old reporter at The Las Vegas Review-Journal, who was found stabbed to death outside his suburban Las Vegas, Nevada, home on September 3, 2022.

Telles has pleaded not guilty.

German had reported on alleged mismanagement in Telles’ office. When Telles later lost a reelection bid in 2022, he posted a letter online in which he attacked the Review-Journal for its coverage.

In court on Wednesday, prosecutors outlined what they have previously said is “overwhelming” evidence against Telles, including that the former public administrator had downloaded images of German’s house onto his work computer and had done research on German’s car. Prosecutors have also previously said that DNA matching that of Telles was found beneath German’s fingernails and on his hands.

“In the end, this case isn’t about politics. It’s not about alleged inappropriate relationships. It’s not about who’s a good boss or who’s a good supervisor or favoritism at work,” Chief Deputy District Attorney Pamela Weckerly said. “It’s just about murder.”

As part of the defense’s argument, Telles’ attorney said that his client did not have a motive to kill German because “killing a journalist does not kill a story.”

Multiple press freedom experts told VOA that line of reasoning stood out to them as shocking — including because it’s factually incorrect, they said.

“That’s absurd. It’s a little preposterous,” Kirstin McCudden, vice president of editorial for Freedom of the Press Foundation, told VOA. “Killing a journalist kills stories. It kills stories every day, all over the world, and it certainly has a chilling effect on any journalist who wants to hold powerful people to account.”

Other press freedom experts agreed.

“It makes no sense. Very often the death of a journalist is the death of a story. No one knows what additional reporting Jeff German could have done if he were still alive,” Clayton Weimers, the head of the U.S. bureau of Reporters Without Borders, told VOA in an email.

In the first week of the trial, three of German’s neighbors testified, including the man who first found German’s body. Other witnesses included detectives, a medical examiner and former associates of the defendant.

Based on surveillance footage, former Metropolitan Police Department homicide detective Cliff Mogg testified that he believed Telles’ vehicle, a maroon Yukon Denali, “was the one used in the commission of Jeffrey German’s murder.”

After German’s killing, police publicized images of the suspect walking on a sidewalk near the reporter’s home and the Denali car driving away.

Real estate agent Zackary Schilling, who helped sell homes through the public administrator’s office and first met Telles in 2020, testified that he recognized the suspect’s walk, his shoes and the vehicle.

Chief Deputy District Attorney Christopher Hamner asked, “Who was the person you were thinking of?”

“I was thinking of Mr. Telles,” Schilling said. When asked about the suspect’s shoes, Schilling said, “They’re the cheap Nikes he always wore.”

Schilling also testified that he knew about the stories German had written about Telles and that he saw images published in the media of the suspect’s vehicle.

“It just came down my spine,” Schilling said. “I was like holy crap. I didn’t want to believe it, but the facts are the facts. That was Rob Telles’ car.”

The case is the first in U.S. history in which an elected official is accused of murdering an American journalist.

“Understanding that this is believed to be a crime about the work that he was doing is incredibly chilling and scary for journalists,” said McCudden, who is based in New York.

Journalist killings are rare in the United States. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, or CPJ, in New York, 17 journalists and media workers have been killed in the U.S. since the watchdog started keeping records in 1992. Of those, the CPJ has said it believes 15 cases — including German’s — were in relation to the journalist’s work.

And while impunity is high globally — journalist murders go unpunished in nearly 80% of cases around the world, according to the CPJ — pending a verdict in the German case, no journalist murder in the United States that has gone entirely unpunished since the group started keeping track.

Accountability in these cases is especially important because it sends the message that targeting journalists is unacceptable, according to Katherine Jacobsen, the U.S. and Canada program coordinator at the CPJ. Attacks against journalists can also have a chilling effect on other reporters, she said.

“Because of that public face that many journalists have, killing them does have a ripple effect throughout the community,” she told VOA.