News
A space for trans queer Latinx
Attendees drift through the door of the Make the Road Nevada office on Bonanza Road and start personalizing their space. A Mexican themed pride flag is on the wall, the iconic eagle eating a rattlesnake perched on top a prickly pear cactus, a spectrum of color on either side. It’s pinned between a painted tapestry […]
Indigenous people stepping up their opposition to ‘water grab’
Indigenous people are gearing up to fight the next round in a long battle against Southern Nevada’s thirst for other people’s water. Members of several tribes, including the Navajo and the Southern Shoshoni, met in Las Vegas this week to discuss how to step up their opposition to the massive groundwater pumping and piping project […]
D.A. Wolfson embraces wrongfully convicted. Just not all of them.
A television campaign ad for District Attorney Steve Wolfson asserts that Wolfson’s “conviction integrity unit freed” a wrongfully convicted man. DeMarlo Berry, who served 22 years for a murder he did not commit, is the first and only person to be exonerated via Wolfson’s Conviction Integrity Unit, created in 2016. “My goal in creating the […]
A DMV victory for the trans community: What it means, what comes next
Changing the gender on your Nevada driver’s license from male to female or from female to male is now akin to changing your eye color from green to blue. That is to say you just get to tell the DMV what it is. No “proof” required. This process of self-declaration quietly went into effect on […]
Having to be twice as good – African American women in the campaign industry
Too often, Najaah Daniels walks into a room and people assume she is everything but what she actually is – a campaign manager running a congressional race. “People think I’m (state Sen. Pat) Spearman’s assistant, or they think I’m her niece,” she said. “When I say I’m a campaign manager, they give me this look […]
Plea deal raises questions about ties between cops and pimps
Note: The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department is under investigation by the FBI for allegedly protecting certain pimps at the expense of their competitors. Las Vegas Justice of the Peace Melanie Tobiasson says Metro’s failure to investigate one suspected pimp believed to be targeting the children of law enforcement forced her to turn to the […]
Discrimination victims win at Dotty’s
The company that owns Dotty’s, the ubiquitous strip mall slot parlors, will pay a $3.5 million to victims of discrimination to settle a lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the EEOC said in a statement Wednesday. “Since at least 2012, Nevada Restaurant Services violated federal law by maintaining a well-established companywide practice […]
Unhealthy and unregulated: Conditions in local shelters draw complaints
The Shade Tree Shelter in Las Vegas has a unique mission, describing itself as “the only 24-hour accessible shelter designed specifically to meet the needs of women and children in Southern Nevada.” But women and children staying at the shelter have also been exposed to excessive black mold, suffering respiratory related illnesses as a result, […]
Daughters of police, judges lured into prostitution
Las Vegas Justice of the Peace Melanie Tobiasson says she gave Metro Police detectives a road map that may have prevented three murders involving the sex trade, but vice detectives, under investigation by the FBI for allegedly protecting pimps, failed to act. Tobiasson drew criticism from friends and foes alike when she alleged on KLAS-TV […]
DA primary reflects Democrats in transition
In the 1980s, a group of centrists, including a young governor from Arkansas named Bill Clinton, formed the Democratic Leadership Council. Its goal was to shift the party to the right, and away from a declining political left that had suffered Richard Nixon’s landslide victory over George McGovern in 1972, and then found itself no […]
Laxalt’s chief investigator pursues case against daughter’s former pimp
Before Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt named Roland Swanson as his Chief Investigator in 2015, Swanson, according to his bio on the AG’s website, led investigations for the FBI’s public integrity unit in Las Vegas. Now, his office is involved in the prosecution of convicted pimp Kobe Hogue, who happens to be the former boyfriend […]
Send them away, sweep them away… A look at local policy on homelessness
Las Vegas officials claim that “by offering a one-stop shop with access to medical, housing and employment services through a variety of partners” at the city’s Courtyard Homeless Resource Center, “the cycle of homelessness can be broken.” However, the most used service at the Courtyard isn’t providing medical care, a home or a job, according […]