Nevada

The Future Rises Here | Fall 2025 Issue | Nevada Silver and Blue

Published

2 months ago

October 11, 2025

The Future Rises Here | Fall 2025 Issue | Nevada Silver and Blue

Innovation at the University isn’t confined to labs or startups. It flourishes in the humanities, the arts and public dialogue.

In recent years, the College of Liberal Arts hosted a public engagement series, with each event exploring a theme from the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution. One evening, a deputy general counsel to the governor, an English professor and a Ph.D. candidate came together to discuss the phrase “insure domestic tranquility.” Alongside faculty, students and neighbors, they reflected on what that ideal means today, in our homes, our politics and our debates about gender, race and identity. These conversations illustrate the University’s role as a civic institution, one that fosters thoughtful discussion and community connection.

That spirit continues through the Center for Constitutional Law, which was launched in May. “One thing many of us can agree upon is there is a profound misunderstanding of how our government was designed to function under the Constitution,” Rick Trachok ’74 (plant science), the Center’s executive director said.

The Center was created to explore fundamental questions about the constitution, bringing top scholars from around the country to discuss, debate and share with University students and the larger community. The Center also sponsors summer workshops for Nevada’s high school government and civics teachers at the Lake Tahoe campus, bringing national experts to help shape curricula and deepen civic understanding statewide.

Not far from the Quad, the John and Geraldine Lilley Museum of Art opens its doors at no cost to the public, inviting conversations sparked by contemporary work and the University’s own collection.

“The Lilley is like a laboratory,” Stephanie Gibson, director of the Lilley Museum of Art said. “Professors test out new pedagogy in the museum, teaching students how to learn complex topics using our paintings, sculptures and archives. Schools and colleges across campus experiment with new ideas and techniques to expand the way we look at the world.”

The Church Fine Arts Building melds into the glass and steel of the University Foundation Arts Building, housing a combined 300 events each year, and offering rehearsal halls and studios on par with any conservatory, spaces where the next generation of musicians, actors and artists can hone their craft.

This creative energy radiates outward — into the Performing Arts Series, where student performers share the stage with national and international artists, and into the Reynolds School of Journalism, where students have gone on to produce award-winning documentaries and Pulitzer-recognized reporting.

Here, innovation is not limited to technology or science. It is expressed on canvas, on stage and in the pages of our favorite publications — some of which are printed on campus at the Black Rock Press and University of Nevada Press. Innovation lives in dialogue, in storytelling and in the University’s commitment to helping Nevada understand itself — and imagine what comes next.

Source link

Nevada

DOJ sues Nevada for allegedly withholding voter registration information

Published

3 hours ago

December 12, 2025

Press Room

DOJ sues Nevada for allegedly withholding voter registration information

The Department of Justice filed a federal lawsuit against Nevada on Friday, alleging that the state failed to provide statewide voter registration lists when requested, according to a news release.

Colorado, Hawaii, and Massachusetts were also sued, bringing the total to 18 states now facing lawsuits from the Justice Department. The department’s Civil Rights Division filed the complaints.

Francisco Aguilar, Nevada secretary of state, was charged with violating the Civil Rights Act after he responded on Aug. 21 to a letter from U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, saying there was no basis for her request for certain voter information, asserting privacy concerns, according to the lawsuit.

According to the complaint, Aguilar provided a link to the state’s computerized voter registration list. However, the version shared contained incomplete fields, including registrants’ full names, dates of birth, addresses, driver’s license numbers, and the last four digits of their Social Security numbers.

Aguilar’s Aug. 21 letter said his office would follow up, but the attorney general never received the list containing all the requested fields, the lawsuit said.

According to the news release, Congress assigns the attorney general primary responsibility for enforcing the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act, both enacted to ensure that states maintain accurate and effective voter registration systems.

The attorney general also has authority under the Civil Rights Act of 1960 to request, review, and analyze statewide voter registration lists, according to the release.

“States have the statutory duty to preserve and protect their constituents from vote dilution,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon said in the release. “At this Department of Justice, we will not permit states to jeopardize the integrity and effectiveness of elections by refusing to abide by our federal elections laws. If states will not fulfill their duty to protect the integrity of the ballot, we will.”

Contact Akiya Dillon at adillon@reviewjournal.com.

Source link

Nevada

Police: Deadly crash closes all lanes at I-15, Charleston

Published

15 hours ago

December 12, 2025

Press Room

Police: Deadly crash closes all lanes at I-15, Charleston

LAS VEGAS (FOX5) — A deadly crash has closed all lanes at I-15 and Charleston Boulevard, police say.

Nevada State Police posted on social media after 7 p.m. about the crash. Police say drivers in the area should use other routes.

Police have not immediately shared details about the victim or if other people are involved. It’s not yet confirmed if impairment is suspected.

This is a developing story. Check back later for details.

Source link

Nevada

Top Interior Department official has ties to Thacker Pass lithium mine – High Country News

Published

1 day ago

December 11, 2025

Press Room

Top Interior Department official has ties to Thacker Pass lithium mine – High Country News

This story was co-published with Public Domain.

Karen Budd-Falen, a top official at the Department of Interior, has financial ties to the controversial Thacker Pass lithium mine in northern Nevada — a project that the Trump administration worked to fast-track during its first term. In recent months, the administration took an equity stake in the mine and the mine’s parent company.

After an unexplained delay, Public Domain and High Country News obtained Budd-Falen’s financial disclosure earlier this month, which details her family’s extensive land holdings. Among them is Home Ranch LLC, a Nevada ranching operation valued at over $1 million. Nevada’s business search database shows a Home Ranch LLC that listed Frank Falen as the manager in February 2022. Frank Falen is also the name of Karen Budd Falen’s husband.

Karen Budd-Falen, senior partner at Budd-Falen Law Offices LLC, speaks at the 2024 Western Ag and Environmental Law Conference. Budd-Falen is a top official at the Interior Department. Credit: uacescomm / CC via Flickr

In November 2018, not long after Karen Budd-Falen joined the first Trump administration as a top legal official at the Interior Department, Home Ranch LLC agreed to sell water rights to Lithium Nevada Corporation, the company developing the Thacker Pass mine, for an undisclosed amount of money, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. Frank Falen is listed on the document.

A Home Ranch also appears in planning documents that Lithium Nevada submitted to federal regulators during Trump’s first term. A monitoring plan for Thacker Pass, dated July 2021, notes that the company intended to use existing stock water wells owned by Home Ranch LLC to “monitor potential drawdown impacts” from its mining operations.

The water purchase agreement and other records raise questions about potential conflicts of interest. Budd-Falen was appointed in March as associate deputy secretary to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum — a position that does not require Senate confirmation. She also served as a high-ranking legal official at the Interior Department during President Trump’s first term.

It was during that earlier government stint that her official calendar lists a November 6, 2019 meeting in which Budd-Falen was scheduled to have “lunch with Lithium Nevada.”

In 2019, Lithium Nevada, a subsidiary of the Canadian mining firm Lithium Americas, was seeking speedy approval for its Thacker Pass mine in northern Nevada. In the waning days of the first Trump administration it received just that. In January 2021, the Bureau of Land Management approved the mine project, which includes some 5,700 acres of public land.

The $2.2 billion, open-pit mine project has drawn fierce opposition from area tribes and environmentalists, who argue it threatens water resources, endangered species and sacred cultural sites. Thacker Pass, known as Peehee Mu’huh to the Paiute Shoshone people, was the site of an 1865 massacre of at least 31 Paiute people.

Budd-Falen was being considered to lead the BLM during Trump’s first term, but turned down the director job when she learned that she and her husband would have to sell their interests in their family ranches to avoid conflicts of interest, she told The Fence Post in 2018.

Since returning to power, Trump and his team have again worked to move the project forward, as part of a broader push to boost critical mineral mining in the U.S. In September, the Trump administration struck a deal with Lithium Americas to take a 5% equity stake in both the Thacker Pass mine and the company, in exchange for the release of loan money from the Department of Energy.

Budd-Falen has largely worked behind the scenes at the Interior Department. Little is known about what issues she has focused on since returning to the sprawling agency. Notably, Interior officials have yet to release her ethics agreement, which would detail any companies or projects that are off limits.

“Did she have any oversight of the environmental review process regarding Thacker Pass? It is a big question,” said Kyle Roerink, executive director of the Great Basin Water Network, a water conservation group in Nevada. “If she didn’t recuse herself, it would fly in the face of the impartial decisionmaking that Americans expect from government officials.”