Better late than later. “We therefore ask you to halt implementation of the Department’s zero tolerance policy,” wrote a dozen Republican senators Tuesday, including Nevada’s Dean Heller, in a letter to Attorney General Jefferson B. Sessions. A cynic might see a purely political calculation from the most vulnerable Republican senator on the 2018 ballot to avoid getting clobbered by association with a Trump policy that is routinely called inhumane and immoral. From a policy standpoint, however, why Heller signed it is not as important as the fact that he did sign it.
Tracking them to help them. “A lot of people don’t know how they have been impacted until months or even years later.” A Southern Nevada crime victims program is still trying to locate survivors of the Las Vegas mass shooting, because the survivors are eligible for help. Lots of interesting angles and numbers in this good read from April Corbin in the Current.
Going on offense. You know how nefarious forces always seem to be out to suppress democracy with shady shenans designed to disenfranchise people? Yes, boo. Nevada, meantime, has an opportunity to go in a much more pleasant direction, representative-government-wise, says Martin Fitzgerald of Let America Vote in a Current guest op-ed.
Go Reno, go Reno… A couple hundred people rallied against Trump’s aforementioned “inhumane” family separation policy in Reno Tuesday. And “Organizers were encouraging protesters to show up to another planned protest on Monday when Attorney General Jeff Sessions is expected to give the opening remarks at a school safety conference at the Peppermill Resort,” the RGJ reports. Maybe Heller will be among them, carrying a “Dump Trump” sign.
But which immigration bill? Trump can be, among other things, a scatterbrain, and Republican lawmakers don’t know which immigration bill will prompt him to yell at the them the hardest if they pass it. Or don’t pass it. Oy. A good wrap of the Nevada delegation’s positioning amid the context of possible congressional action is in the Indy this morning, btw.
MGM down, just a few more to go. The contract between MGM, which owns all the casinos (OK that’s an exaggeration, but not much of one) and the Culinary was approved Tuesday. AP reports the contract includes job safeguards for immigrants working under temporary protective status. And yes, you did read about the Culinary’s emphasis on that in the Current a couple weeks ago.
School district cuts 563.5 jobs. Oh well. At least we’ll always have the supercalifragilistic state-tromping-on-local-control school district reorganization. Meantime, a reminder: With a handful of exceptions, Nevada’s fast-growing, publicly funded but privately operated charter school industry is neither a part of nor accountable to the Clark County School District nor its Board of Trustees (nor any other publicly elected board), and so not affected by the budget cuts.
“Lost in these US-centric arguments is the role of our foreign policy in creating the conditions that push people in Central America and Mexico to make the long, arduous, and frequently fatal trek north. For at least 150 years, the United States has intervened with arms, political pressure, and foreign aid in order to protect the business and military elites of these countries who have prospered by impoverishing their people.” Just saying.
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