U.S. Sen. Jacky Rosen prides herself on being one of the most bipartisan senators in Congress, but on Thursday at a Las Vegas roundtable on reproductive freedom, Rosen unloaded on Republicans – including her 2024 election opponent, Sam Brown.
“If Republicans take back the Senate, they’ll do everything they can to ban abortion across the country and right here in Nevada,” she said. “We can’t trust a word they’re saying, not when it’s an election year.”
Rosen said Brown, who unsuccessfully ran for state office in Texas and supported extreme anti-abortion legislation, “will do or say anything to get elected. That’s why he’s trying to cover up his anti-choice record.”
Rosen was leading Brown in polls before Pres. Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race.
On Saturday, she’ll attend Vice-President Kamala Harris’ rally in Las Vegas, where she says she’s looking forward to greeting Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
Rosen was joined at the event by Jessica Mackler, president of EMILY’s List, a powerful national organization that supports pro-choice candidates.
Mackler said the issue at the heart of the upcoming is “what is the future that we want for this country, and are people going to choose a path that is about this very narrow world view in which our choices are controlled, or are we going to choose a future in which everybody has an opportunity?”
Rosen lashed out at the Supreme Court, noting nominees “promised the people that Roe was the law of the land and they went back on their word,” she said of the court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade and the constitutional right to an abortion.
Rosen, who has already voiced support for some of Pres. Joe Biden’s Supreme Court reforms, says term limits for the high court’s justices would help hold them accountable and “might take off some of this oppression people feel about appointing judges for a lifetime. They can be there forever, and I think it would make the court more receptive to really doing their job and being arbitrators.”
Biden’s proposed reforms include 18-year term limits for Supreme Court justices, an enforceable code of conduct, and a constitutional amendment that no former president is immune from prosecution for crimes committed in office.
Despite her election year distrust of Republicans, Rosen defended her support of Sen. Ted Cruz’ No Tax on Tips Act, a concept former Pres. Donald Trump says he got from a waitress in Las Vegas while having lunch.
“I got my information from a very smart waitress,” he said at a rally in Las Vegas in June. “They make money. Let them keep their money.”
The Center for American Progress says that because many hospitality workers earn low wages, about a third pay no taxes and would not benefit from the measure. Some may no longer qualify for breaks, such as the Earned Income Credit, if they don’t report tip income.
Additionally, the proposed legislation, if enacted, could spawn abuse by wealthy taxpayers who could find loopholes in the law that would allow them to classify income as tips and avoid paying hundreds of millions of dollars to the government.
“I can tell you that 25% of the Nevada workforce is in the hospitality industry, and they heavily rely on tips,” Rosen said, noting she is the chairwoman of the Commerce Subcommittee on Tourism, Trade, and Export Promotion.
She added that Culinary Local 226 supports the legislation, which was introduced by Cruz in June, and has become a rallying cry for Trump. It is also supported by Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, a Democrat from Nevada. “This is going to help those tipped workers be able to not pay taxes on tips,” Rosen said.
In follow-up questions submitted by the Current, Rosen did not say by deadline whether she’d insist on guardrails to deter taxpayers from exploiting loopholes, or which workers would find tax relief via the measure.
Bethany Khan, spokeswoman for Culinary Local 226, says the union has no data indicating at what income levels workers would benefit from the measure.
A recent Review-Journal letter to the editor mischaracterized Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto’s Southern Nevada Economic Development and Conservation Act, also known as the Clark County Lands bill. As the former executive director of the Nevada Conservation League, I wholeheartedly support this legislation, so I wanted to set the record straight.
Sen. Cortez Masto has been working on this bill for years in partnership with state and local governments, conservation groups like the NCL and local area tribes. It’s true that the Clark County lands bill would open 25,000 acres to help Las Vegas grow responsibly, while setting aside 2 million acres for conservation. It would also help create more affordable housing throughout the valley while ensuring our treasured public spaces can be preserved for generations to come.
What is not correct is that the money from these land sales would go to the federal government’s coffers. In fact, the opposite is true.
The 1998 Southern Nevada Public Lands Management Act is a landmark bill that identified specific public land for future sale and created a special account ensuring all land sale revenues would come back to Nevada. In accordance with that law 5 percent of revenue from land transfers goes to the state of Nevada for general education purposes, 10 percent goes to the Southern Nevada Water Authority for needed water infrastructure and 85 percent supports conservation and environmental mitigation projects in Southern Nevada. This legislation has provided billions to Clark County and will continue to benefit generations of Southern Nevadans. Sen. Cortez Masto’s lands bill builds upon the act’s success.
So here’s the good news: All of the money generated from land made available for sale under Sen. Cortez Masto’s bill would be sent to the special account created by the 1998 law. Rather than going to an unaccountable federal government, the proceeds would continue to help kids in Vegas get a better education, bolster outdoor recreation and modernize Southern Nevada’s infrastructure.
I know how important it is that money generated from the sale of public land in Nevada stay in the hands of Nevadans, and so does the senator. That’s why she opposed a Republican effort last year to sell off 200,000 acres of land in Clark County and other areas of the country that would have sent those dollars directly to Washington.
Public land management in Nevada should benefit Nevadans. We should protect sacred cultural sites and beloved recreation spaces, responsibly transfer land for affordable housing when needed and ensure our state has the resources it needs to grow sustainably. I will continue working with Sen. Cortez Masto to advocate for legislation, such as the Clark County lands bill, that puts the needs of Nevadans first.
Paul Selberg writes from Las Vegas.
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Las Vegas High’s baseball team claimed a 3-2 home win over Coronado on Friday.
Las Vegas (9-13-1) next hosts Rancho at 10 a.m. Saturday. Coronado (13-14) hosts Chaparral at 3:30 p.m. Monday.
Contact Alex Wright at awright@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AlexWright1028 on X.
LAS VEGAS (FOX5) — Nevada’s jobless rate is holding steady, but the state is still adding jobs.
A new report from DETR shows February’s unemployment rate unchanged at 5.3 percent, with the labor force growing by nearly 3,800 people.
MORE ON FOX5: Nevada unemployment rate rises to 5.3% in January
Nevada now has about 1.6 million nonfarm jobs, up 2.2 percent over the past year and 1,500 more jobs than in January.
“This month’s report shows a strengthening labor market,” said David Schmidt, Chief Economist. ”Compared to the report for January, the pace of job gains in the past year increased from 1.9% to 2.2%, building on what was already the fastest pace of job growth in the country. While the unemployment rate remained stable, the labor force participation rate rose to 63.7%, 1.7 percentage points higher than the national level.”
In Las Vegas, employment ticked up by 1,100 jobs in February, about 0.1 percent, and is up more than 25,000 jobs compared to last year.
Reno added 1,000 jobs on the month, while Carson City shed about 200 but is still slightly above where it was a year ago.
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