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Tag: Nevada

  • Mystery Nevada fossil site could be ancient maternity ward

    Mystery Nevada fossil site could be ancient maternity ward

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    NEW YORK — Scientists have uncovered new clues about a curious fossil site in Nevada, a graveyard for dozens of giant marine reptiles. Instead of the site of a massive die-off as suspected, it might have been an ancient maternity ward where the creatures came to give birth.

    The site is famous for its fossils from giant ichthyosaurs — reptiles that dominated the ancient seas and could grow up to the size of a school bus. The creatures — the name means fish lizard — were underwater predators with large paddle-shaped flippers and long jaws full of teeth.

    Since the ichthyosaur bones in Nevada were excavated in the 1950s, many paleontologists have investigated how all these creatures could have died together. Now, researchers have proposed a different theory in a study published Monday in the journal Current Biology.

    “Several lines of evidence all kind of point towards one argument here: That this was a place where giant ichthyosaurs came to give birth,” said co-author Nicholas Pyenson, curator of fossil marine mammals at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.

    Once a tropical sea, the site — part of Nevada’s Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park — now sits in a dry, dusty landscape near an abandoned mining town, said lead author Randy Irmis, a paleontologist at the University of Utah.

    To get a better look at the massive skeletons, which boast vertebrae the size of dinner plates and bones from their flippers as thick as boulders, researchers used 3D scanning to create a detailed digital model, Irmis said.

    They identified fossils from at least 37 ichthyosaurs scattered around the area, dating back about 230 million years. The bones were preserved in different rock layers, suggesting the creatures could have died hundreds of thousands of years apart rather than all at once, Pyenson said.

    A major break came when the researchers spotted some tiny bones among the massive adult fossils, and realized they belonged to embryos and newborns, Pyenson said. The researchers concluded that the creatures traveled to the site in groups for protection as they gave birth, like today’s marine giants. The fossils are believed to be from the mothers and offspring that died there over the years.

    “Finding a place to give birth separated from a place where you might feed is really common in the modern world — among whales, among sharks,” Pyenson said.

    Other clues helped rule out some previous explanations.

    Testing the chemicals in the dirt didn’t turn up any signs of volcanic eruptions or huge shifts to the local environment. And the geology showed that the reptiles were preserved on the ocean floor pretty far from the shore — meaning they probably didn’t die in a mass beaching event, Irmis said.

    The new study offers a plausible explanation for a site that’s baffled paleontologists for decades, said Dean Lomax, an ichthyosaur specialist at England’s University of Manchester who was not involved with the research.

    The case may not be fully closed yet but the study “really helps to unlock a little bit more about this fascinating site,” Lomax said.

    ———

    The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • Conferees told Colorado River action ‘absolutely critical’

    Conferees told Colorado River action ‘absolutely critical’

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    LAS VEGAS — The first weeks of 2023 will be crucial for Southwest U.S. states and water entities to agree how to use less water from the drought-stricken and fast-shrinking Colorado River, a top federal water manager said Friday.

    “The coming three months are absolutely critical,” U.S. Deputy Secretary of the Interior Tommy Beaudreau told the Colorado River Users Association conferees ending three-day annual meetings in Las Vegas.

    “To be clear, the challenge is extraordinary,” Beaudreau said of a withering two-decade Western drought that scientists now attribute to long-term, human-caused climate change. “The science tells us it’s our new reality.”

    Beaudreau closed the conference with a call for water managers, administrators and individuals throughout the West “to develop solutions to help us all address the crisis.”

    The first deadline is next Tuesday, when the federal Bureau of Reclamation finishes taking public comment on an effort expected to yield a plan by summer about how to use at least 15% less river water split among recipients in seven Western U.S. states, 30 Native American tribes and Mexico.

    States have until the end of January to come to an agreement. A preliminary report is expected in the spring.

    At stake is drinking water for 40 million people; hydroelectric power for regional markets; and irrigation for farmers tilling millions of acres of former desert, producing most of the nation’s winter vegetables.

    Options range from voluntary agreements among competing interests to use less, to draconian top-down federal cuts in water deliveries — perhaps affecting cities including Denver, Salt Lake City, Albuquerque, Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Diego.

    The problem was demonstrated again and again since Wednesday in new data and charts at workshops and panels: Less water flows into the river in the so-called Upper Basin states of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming than is drawn from it by the Lower Basin states of Arizona, California and Nevada.

    The states share water under an interstate agreement reached 100 years ago that overestimated the amount of water the basin receives annually, mostly through snowmelt in the Rocky Mountains.

    In recent years, as drought has progressed, interim agreements for Lower Basin states to share cutbacks have been enacted. Arizona farmers have been the most affected.

    But unrelenting drought has dropped the river’s largest reservoirs to unprecedented low levels. Combined, Lake Mead behind Hoover Dam on the Nevada-Arizona state line and Lake Powell formed by Glen Canyon Dam on the Arizona-Utah line were at 92% capacity in 1999. Today, they are at 26%.

    River water managers at the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation warn that the surface level of Lake Powell could drop so low in the next few months that intakes to hydropower turbines at Glen Canyon Dam could go dry.

    The words “dead pool” surfaced this week as officials described the possibility that lake levels could shrink so much that neither dam would be able to release water downstream.

    Questions surfaced while ideas were floated including lining and covering canals — along with a call from the Las Vegas-area’s top water manager for at least an accounting of how much water is lost to seepage and evaporation.

    Most discussions, however, focused on conservation to keep water levels up at the two reservoirs.

    Last month, 30 agencies that supply water to homes and businesses throughout the region joined the Las Vegas area in restricting decorative lawns that no one walks on.

    This week, Upper Basin states announced a program to pay farmers to fallow fields so they would need less water.

    “I can feel the anxiety and the uncertainty in this room, and in the basin, as we look at the river and the hydrology that we face,” said Camille Touton, the Bureau of Reclamation commissioner with the power to act if water users don’t.

    “If a solution is not developed by the basin, Commissioner Touton will figure it out for us,” said U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly, a Democrat from Arizona and a former astronaut who spoke fondly Friday of his view from space of the Colorado River flowing through the Grand Canyon.

    Delegates from Mexico and the International Boundary and Water Commission also were among speakers at the conference-closing at the Caesars Palace resort on the Las Vegas Strip.

    “There are a lot of questions; the what, the how,” Touton said, before ending — using Spanish and then English — with encouragement to, “let’s get this done together.”

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  • Colorado River water users convening amid crisis concerns

    Colorado River water users convening amid crisis concerns

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    LAS VEGAS — Living with less water in the U.S. Southwest is the focus this week for state and federal water administrators, tribal officials, farmers, academics and business representatives meeting about the drought-stricken and overpromised Colorado River.

    The Colorado River Water Users Association conference, normally a largely academic three-day affair, comes at a time of growing concern about the river’s future after more than two decades of record drought attributed to climate change.

    “The Colorado River system is in a very dire condition,” Dan Bunk, a U.S. Bureau of Reclamation water manager, declared during internet presentations streamed Nov. 29 and Dec. 2 that invited public comment about possible actions.

    “Flows during the past 23-year period … are the lowest in the past 120 years and (among) the lowest in more than 1,200 years,” Bunk told the webinar audience. The deadline for public submissions is Dec. 20 for a process expected to yield a final report by summer.

    Bunk said the two largest reservoirs on the river — Lake Mead behind Hoover Dam on the Nevada-Arizona state line and Lake Powell formed by the Glen Canyon Dam on the Arizona-Utah line — are at unprecedented low levels. Lake Mead was at 100% capacity in mid-1999. Today it is 28% full. Lake Powell, last full in June 1980, is at 25%.

    Scientists attribute extended drought to warmer and drier weather in the West to long-term, human-caused climate change. The effect has been dramatic on a vast river basin where the math never added up: The amount of water it receives doesn’t meet the amount that is promised.

    Lake Powell’s drop last March to historically low water levels raised worries about losing the ability — perhaps within the next few months — to produce hydropower that today serves about 5 million customers in seven states. If power production ceases at Glen Canyon Dam, rural electric cooperatives, cities and tribal utilities would be forced to seek more expensive options.

    Reclamation water managers responded with plans to hold back more water in Lake Powell but warned that Lake Mead water levels would drop.

    Meanwhile, bodies have surfaced as Lake Mead’s shoreline recedes, including the corpse of a man who authorities say was shot, maybe in the 1970s, and stuffed in a barrel. He remains unidentified. The gruesome discoveries renewed interest in the lore of organized crime and the early days of the Las Vegas Strip, just a 30-minute drive from the lake.

    The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation in June told the seven states that are part of the Colorado River Basin — Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — to determine how to use at least 15% less water next year, or have restrictions imposed on them. Despite deadlines, discussions have not resulted in agreements.

    Bureau officials use the image of pouring tea from one cup to another to describe how water from Rocky Mountain snowmelt is captured in Lake Powell, then released downriver through the Grand Canyon to Lake Mead. About 70% is allocated for irrigation, sustaining a $15 billion-a-year agricultural industry that supplies 90% of U.S. winter vegetables.

    The two lakes, combined, were at 92% capacity in 1999, Bunk noted. Today, they are at 26%.

    “Due to critically low current reservoir conditions, and the potential for worsening drought which threatens critical infrastructure and public health and safety … operational strategies must be revisited,” Bunk said.

    This year’s meeting of water recipients begins Wednesday at Caesars Palace on the Las Vegas Strip. The event theme, “A New Century for the Colorado River Compact,” marks 100 years since a 1922 interstate agreement divvied water shares among interests in the seven states now home to 40 million people and millions of farmed acres.

    Agricultural interests got the biggest share. Native American tribes weren’t included and were referenced in one sentence: “Nothing in this compact shall be construed as affecting the obligations of the United States of America to Indian tribes.”

    It wasn’t until 1944 that a separate agreement promised a share of water to Mexico.

    Today, tribes are at the table and a Mexico delegation is due to attend the conference. U.S. cities that receive river water include Denver, Salt Lake City, Albuquerque, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Diego.

    Many call conservation crucial. Among conference topic titles are “Messaging in a More Water-Challenged world” and “The Next 100 Years Begins Now.”

    “The ongoing drought is a stark reminder that water conservation is not just smart planning but an absolute necessity to save the life of the Colorado River,” Amelia Flores, chairwoman of Colorado River Indian Tribes, said ahead of the event. The tribal reservation in western Arizona includes more than 110 miles (177 kilometers) of Colorado River shoreline.

    “Whether it’s fallowing fields, upgrading irrigation canals, or modernizing farming methods,” Flores said, “decisions made now will have lasting consequences.”

    Throughout the river basin, warnings have increased and measures have tightened markedly in 2022.

    In April, water administrators in Southern California imposed a one-day-a-week outdoor watering limit on more than 6 million people.

    Last month, 30 agencies that supply water to homes and businesses throughout the region joined the Las Vegas area in restricting the planting of decorative lawns that no one walks on.

    Adel Hagekhalil, Metropolitan Water District of Southern California general manager, warned this month in a statement that another dry winter could force officials to make voluntary measures mandatory.

    The four states at the headwaters of the river — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — also recently announced they plan to ask Congress to let them use federal money through 2026 for a program dubbed “strategic conservation.” It would resurrect a 2015 to 2018 pilot program that paid farmers to fallow land to cut water use.

    Camille Touton, bureau commissioner, tempered a warning during the water webinars about federal intervention — she called it “moving forward on the initiation of administrative actions” — with a vow to “find a collective solution to the challenges that we face today.”

    Touton and two top Interior Department officials are scheduled to address the conference on Friday.

    ———

    Associated Press journalists Brittany Peterson in Denver, Sam Metz in Salt Lake City and Felicia Fonseca in Flagstaff, Arizona, contributed to this report.

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  • Winter storm that struck Sierra Nevada heads across US

    Winter storm that struck Sierra Nevada heads across US

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    SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. — A winter storm that sent ski lift chairs swinging and closed mountain highways in the Sierra Nevada will push across the United States and reach the Plains by mid-week, bringing significant rain and below-average temperatures.

    Marc Chenard, meteorologist at the National Weather Service at the national center in College Park, Maryland, said “it will be a busy week while this system moves across the country.”

    Heavy snow fell in the Sierra Nevada while downpours at lower elevations triggered flood watches Sunday across large swaths of California into Nevada.

    The Heavenly ski resort at Lake Tahoe shut down some operations when the brunt of the storm hit Saturday. The resort posted video of lift chairs swaying violently because of gusts that topped 100 mph (161 kph), along with a tweeted reminder that wind closures are “always for your safety.”

    To the south, Mammoth Mountain reported that more than 20 inches (51 cm) of snow fell Saturday, with another 2 feet (.6 meters) possible as the tail end of the system moved through the eastern Sierra.

    The UC Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Lab in Soda Springs, California reported Sunday morning that more than 43 inches (110 cm) had fallen in a 48-hour span.

    A 70-mile (112-km) stretch of eastbound U.S. Interstate 80 was closed Saturday “due to zero visibility” from the northern California town of Colfax to the Nevada state line, transportation officials said. Chains were required on much of the rest of I-80 and other routes in the mountains from Reno toward Sacramento.

    Many other key roads were closed because of heavy snow, including a stretch of California Highway 89 between Tahoe City and South Lake Tahoe, the highway patrol said.

    The U.S. Forest Service issued an avalanche warning for the backcountry in the mountains west of Lake Tahoe where it said “several feet of new snow and strong winds will result in dangerous avalanche conditions.”

    Gusts up to 50 mph (80 kph) that sent trees into homes in Sonoma County north of San Francisco on Saturday could reach 100 mph (160 kph) over Sierra ridgetops on Sunday, the National Weather Service said.

    Heavy rain was forecast through the weekend from San Francisco to the Sierra crest with up to 2 inches (5 cm) in the Bay Area and up to 5 inches (13 cm) at Grass Valley northeast of Sacramento.

    Warnings and watches were also up across Southern California, as heavy rain caused localized flooding in greater Los Angeles.

    “Significant travel delays possible with accumulating snow on several mountain roads. This could include the Tejon Pass and Grapevine area of Interstate 5,” the National Weather Service’s LA-area office said in a statement.

    Forecasters in Arizona issued a winter storm watch for northern and central Arizona beginning Sunday evening for areas above 5000 feet (1,525 meters) including Flagstaff, Prescott and the Grand Canyon, where icy temperatures and up to a foot of snow was predicted.

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  • Storm blowing through California dumps snow in Sierra

    Storm blowing through California dumps snow in Sierra

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    SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. — Heavy snow fell in the Sierra Nevada as a winter storm packing powerful winds sent ski lift chairs swinging and closed mountain highways while downpours at lower elevations triggered flood watches Sunday across large swaths of California into Nevada.

    More than 250 miles (400 km) of the Sierra from north of Reno south to Yosemite National Park remained under winter storm warnings either until late Sunday or early Monday.

    The Heavenly ski resort at Lake Tahoe shut down some operations when the brunt of the storm hit Saturday. The resort posted video of lift chairs swaying violently because of gusts that topped 100 mph (161 kph), along with a tweeted reminder that wind closures are “always for your safety.”

    To the south, Mammoth Mountain reported that more than 20 inches (51 cm) of snow fell Saturday, with another 2 feet (.6 meters) possible as the tail end of the system moved through the eastern Sierra.

    The UC Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Lab in Soda Springs, California reported Sunday morning that more than 43 inches (110 cm) had fallen in a 48-hour span.

    A 70-mile (112-km) stretch of eastbound U.S. Interstate 80 was closed Saturday “due to zero visibility” from the northern California town of Colfax to the Nevada state line, transportation officials said. Chains were required on much of the rest of I-80 and other routes in the mountains from Reno toward Sacramento.

    Many other key roads were closed because of heavy snow, including a stretch of California Highway 89 between Tahoe City and South Lake Tahoe, the highway patrol said.

    The U.S. Forest Service issued an avalanche warning for the backcountry in the mountains west of Lake Tahoe where it said “several feet of new snow and strong winds will result in dangerous avalanche conditions.”

    Gusts up to 50 mph (80 kph) that sent trees into homes in Sonoma County north of San Francisco on Saturday could reach 100 mph (160 kph) over Sierra ridgetops on Sunday, the National Weather Service said.

    Heavy rain was forecast through the weekend from San Francisco to the Sierra crest with up to 2 inches (5 cm) in the Bay Area and up to 5 inches (13 cm) at Grass Valley northeast of Sacramento.

    Warnings and watches were also up across Southern California, as heavy rain caused localized flooding in greater Los Angeles.

    “Significant travel delays possible with accumulating snow on several mountain roads. This could include the Tejon Pass and Grapevine area of Interstate 5,” the National Weather Service’s LA-area office said in a statement.

    Forecasters in Arizona issued a winter storm watch for northern and central Arizona beginning Sunday evening for areas above 5000 feet (1,525 meters) including Flagstaff, Prescott and the Grand Canyon, where icy temperatures and up to a foot of snow was predicted.

    As the storm exits the U.S. West, it will push across the country and reach the Plains by mid-week, bringing significant rain and below-average temperatures, said Marc Chenard, meteorologist at the National Weather Service at the national center in College Park, Maryland.

    “It will be a busy week while this system moves across the country,” Chenard said Sunday.

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  • Storm blowing through California dumps snow in Sierra

    Storm blowing through California dumps snow in Sierra

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    SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. — Heavy snow fell in the Sierra Nevada as a winter storm packing powerful winds sent ski lift chairs swinging and closed mountain highways while downpours at lower elevations triggered flood watches Sunday across large swaths of California into Nevada.

    More than 250 miles (400 km) of the Sierra from north of Reno south to Yosemite National Park remained under winter storm warnings either until late Sunday or early Monday.

    The Heavenly ski resort at Lake Tahoe shut down some operations on Saturday when the brunt of the storm hit. The resort posted video of lift chairs swaying violently because of gusts that topped 100 mph (161 kph), along with a tweeted reminder that wind closures are “always for your safety.”

    To the south, Mammoth Mountain reported that more than 20 inches (51 cm) of snow fell Saturday, with another 2 feet (.6 meters) possible on Sunday as the tail end of the system moves through the eastern Sierra.

    The UC Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Lab reported Sunday morning that more than 43 inches (110 cm) had fallen in a 48-hour span.

    A 70-mile (112-km) stretch of eastbound U.S. Interstate 80 was closed Saturday “due to zero visibility” from the northern California town of Colfax to the Nevada state line, transportation officials said. Chains were required on much of the rest of I-80 in the mountains from Reno toward Sacramento.

    A stretch of California Highway 89 also was closed due to heavy snow between Tahoe City and South Lake Tahoe, the highway patrol said.

    The U.S. Forest Service issued an avalanche warning for the backcountry in the mountains west of Lake Tahoe where it said “several feet of new snow and strong winds will result in dangerous avalanche conditions.”

    Gusts up to 50 mph (80 kph) that sent trees into homes in Sonoma County north of San Francisco on Saturday could reach 100 mph (160 kph) over Sierra ridgetops on Sunday, the National Weather Service said.

    Heavy rain was forecast through the weekend from San Francisco to the Sierra crest with up to 2 inches (5 cm) in the Bay Area and up to 5 inches (13 cm) at Grass Valley northeast of Sacramento.

    Warnings and watches were also up across Southern California, as heavy rain caused localized flooding in greater Los Angeles.

    “Significant travel delays possible with accumulating snow on several mountain roads. This could include the Tejon Pass and Grapevine area of Interstate 5,” the National Weather Service said in a statement.

    As the storm exits California and Nevada, it will push across the country and reach the Plains by mid-week, bringing significant rain and below-average temperatures, said Marc Chenard, meteorologist at the National Weather Service at the national center in College Park, Maryland.

    “It will be a busy week while this system moves across the country,” Chenard said Sunday.

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  • Uber launching self-driving cars in Las Vegas | CNN Business

    Uber launching self-driving cars in Las Vegas | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN Business
     — 

    Ridehailing giant Uber is now offering Las Vegas riders the option on its app to hail a self-driving taxis developed by another company, according to a press release Wednesday. While the autonomous vehicles are currently only available for ride hailing in Las Vegas, there are plans to expand to Los Angeles “at a later date,” according to the release.

    The robocars, made by driverless technology company Motional, are sent with two “vehicle operators” behind the wheel to monitor the technology and provide added support to riders. Uber said it plans on launching a fully driverless service with Motional in 2023.

    Users requesting a ride will be offered an autonomous vehicle if one is available before the trip is confirmed. If a customer opts in, a self-driing Hyundai Ioniq 5 mid-sized hatchback, modified by Motional, will be sent to pick them up.

    Motional has been offering robotaxi services in Las Vegas since 2018 through Uber rival Lyft, though rides before 2020 were offered under parent-company Aptiv.

    Uber and Motional first announced their non-exclusive 10-year agreement in October, two years after the ride-hailing company sold off its own self-driving unit, Advanced Technologies Group, to San Francisco-based startup Aurora. The sale came after a a five-year run of developing self-driving vehicles that was marred by litigation and a fatal crash.

    Waymo, Google’s self-driving company, sued Uber in February 2017 alleging trade secret and intellectual property theft, with Waymo eventually receiving about $245 million in Uber stock as part of settlement and Uber agreeing not to use proprietary information from Waymo. The ridehailing company suffered another blow to its self-driving program a month later when one of its test vehicles in Tempe, Arizona, struck and killed a pedestrian. An Uber test driver behind the wheel, who was supposed to monitor the vehicle and intervene if needed, was watching a television show on her phone.

    Through its partnership with Motional, Uber is attempting to shift its business model away from being solely reliant on its vast fleet of independently contracted drivers, a business model that has posed legal issues for the company in recent years. The Biden administration is currently proposing a new labor rule that could classify millions of these gig workers as employees — a move that would challenge the low-cost labor models behind Silicon Valley heavyweights like Uber.

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  • Las Vegas: Station Casinos buys 67 acres with plans to develop new resort | Yogonet International

    Las Vegas: Station Casinos buys 67 acres with plans to develop new resort | Yogonet International

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    Las Vegas casino chain Station Casinos has purchased nearly 67 acres at the northwest corner of Losee Road and the 215 Beltway in North Las Vegas for $55 million. According to records retrieved by Las Vegas Review-Journal, the company’s plans for the site, in the Villages at Tule Springs master-planned community, call for a new resort.

    The sale was recorded with the county on Monday. The locals-focused casino operator’s plans for the site call for 600 hotel rooms and more than 75,700 square feet of casino space, as well as restaurants, a movie theater, a bowling alley, banquet facilities and other amenities.

    The move further fattens Station Casinos’ land holdings in Southern Nevada. As part of its casino strategy, the company owns big tracts of real estate scattered around the Las Vegas Valley as storage for future properties. The firm said earlier this year it is working on plans to double its portfolio of venues by 2030.

    The North Las Vegas City Council approved project plans for Station Casinos’ latest development last month, following the Planning Commission’s green light in September. The move comes as the firm advances on a separate $750 million resort project in the southwest valley, called Durango. The company is also working on plans for other plots of land.


    Construction of Station Casinos' Durango resort

    But in addition to working on new projects, Station has also started tearing down properties that never reopened after the pandemic, with the intention to sell the sites. It has also unveiled plans to demolish the Wild Wild West hotel-casino near the Strip and redevelop the property.

    Scott Kreeger, president of Station parent Red Rock Resorts, told the Review-Journal this fall that its Losee project was further down the development pipeline. Before the firm develops the North Las Vegas resort, it may first break ground on projects in Henderson’s Inspirada community, in the upper northwest valley’s Skye Canyon community, or at Las Vegas Boulevard and Cactus Avenue several miles south of the Strip, Kreeger said at the time.

    Kreeger also noted in conversation with Review-Journal that Tule Springs is poised to see more development. “We think long term, that’s a very dynamic growth area for residential and business,” he said. “As that area matures, we’re well positioned to take advantage of that.”

    The Losee project would be developed in phases. The first would include 200 hotel rooms, restaurants, three resort-style pools, a 48,000-square-foot casino floor, and a tavern on the corner of the property, Station representative Rebecca Miltenberger told the North Las Vegas City Council at a Nov. 16 hearing.

    The second phase would include more hotel rooms and dining space and expand the casino and entertainment areas, said Miltenberger, real estate attorney with Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, as reported by the cited source. A timeline for the project has not yet been provided.

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  • Tesla delivers electric semis to PepsiCo at Nevada factory

    Tesla delivers electric semis to PepsiCo at Nevada factory

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    DETROIT (AP) — Tesla delivered its first electric semis to PepsiCo Thursday, more than three years after Elon Musk said his company would start making the trucks.

    The Austin, Texas, company formally delivered the trucks at a factory near Reno, Nevada. The event was livestreamed on Twitter, which Musk now owns.

    Musk drove one of three Tesla Semis in front of a crowd inside the factory. One was white, one was painted with a Pepsi logo, and another with Frito-Lay colors.

    PepsiCo, which is based in Purchase, New York, is taking part in a zero-emissions freight project at a Frito-Lay facility in Modesto, California. That project is being funded by a $15.4 million clean-freight technology grant from the California Air Resources Board that includes 15 Tesla battery-electric tractors and other electric- and natural-gas powered trucks.

    Electric semis also would be eligible for a federal tax credit of up to $40,000.

    At an event in November of 2017 unveiling the Tesla Semi, Musk said production would begin in 2019 and the trucks would be able to follow each other autonomously in a convoy. But during Tesla’s third-quarter earnings conference call in October he said the company’s “Full Self Driving” system is not quite ready to be driverless.

    Musk said the truck has a range per charge of 500 miles (800 kilometers) when pulling an 82,000-pound (37,000-kilo) load. The company plans to ramp up Semi production to make 50,000 trucks in 2024 in North America.

    Competitors working on hydrogen-powered semis say battery-powered trucks won’t work for long-haul carriers because it will take too long to recharge the huge batteries. Musk said hydrogen isn’t needed for heavy trucking.

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  • Nevada toad in geothermal power fight gets endangered status

    Nevada toad in geothermal power fight gets endangered status

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    RENO, Nev. (AP) — A tiny Nevada toad at the center of a legal battle over a geothermal power project has officially been declared an endangered species, after U.S. wildlife officials temporarily listed it on a rarely used emergency basis last spring.

    “This ruling makes final the listing of the Dixie Valley toad, ” the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said in a formal rule published Friday in the Federal Register.

    The spectacled, quarter-sized amphibian “is currently at risk of extinction throughout its range primarily due to the approval and commencement of geothermal development,” the service said.

    Other threats to the toad include groundwater pumping, agriculture, climate change, disease and predation from bullfrogs.

    The temporary listing in April marked only the second time in 20 years the agency had taken such emergency action.

    Environmentalists who first petitioned for the listing in 2017 filed a lawsuit in January to block construction of the geothermal power plant on the edge of the wetlands where the toad lives about 100 miles (160 kilometers) east of Reno — the only place it’s known to exist on earth.

    “We’re pleased that the Biden administration is taking this essential step to prevent the extinction of an irreplaceable piece of Nevada’s special biodiversity,” said Patrick Donnelly, Great Basin regional director for the Center for Biological Diversity.

    The center and a tribe fighting the project say pumping hot water from beneath the earth’s surface to generate carbon-free power would adversely affect levels and temperatures of surface water critical to the toad’s survival and sacred to the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe.

    The Fish and Wildlife Service cited those concerns in the final listing rule.

    “The best available information indicates that a complete reduction in spring flow and significant reduction of water temperature are plausible outcomes of the geothermal project, and these conditions could result in the species no longer persisting,” the agency said.

    “Because the species occurs in only one spring system and has not experienced habitat changes of the magnitude or pace projected, it may have low potential to adapt to a fast-changing environment,” it said. “We find that threatened species status is not appropriate because the threat of extinction is imminent.”

    Officials for the Reno-based developer, Ormat Technology, said the service’s decision was “not unexpected” given the emergency listing in April. In recent months, the company has been working with the agency and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to modify the project to increase mitigation for the toad and reduce any threat to its survival.

    The lawsuit over the original plan to build two power plants capable of producing 60MW of electricity is currently before U.S. District Judge Robert Jones in Reno. It’s already has made one trip to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which refused in August to grant a temporary injunction blocking construction of the power plant the bureau approved in December 2021.

    But just hours after that ruling, Ormat announced it had agreed to temporarily suspend all work on the project until next year. Then in late October, the bureau and Ormat asked the judge to put the case on hold while Ormat submitted a new plan to build just one geothermal plant, at least for now, that would produce only 12MW of power.

    Ormat Vice President Paul Thomsen said in an email to The Associated Press on Thursday that the company disagrees with the wildlife service’s “characterization of the potential impacts” of its project as a basis for the listing decision. He said it doesn’t change the ongoing coordination and consultation already under way to minimize and mitigate any of those impacts “regardless of its status under the Endangered Species Act.”

    “Following the emergency listing decision, BLM began consultation with the FWS, and Ormat has sought approval of a smaller project authorization that would provide additional assurances that the species will not be jeopardized by geothermal development,” he said.

    “As a zero-emissions, renewable energy facility, the project will further the Biden administration’s clean energy initiatives and support the fight against climate change,” Thomsen said.

    Donnelly agreed renewable energy is “essential to combating the climate emergency.”

    “But it can’t come at the cost of extinction,” he said.

    The last time endangered species protection first was initiated on an emergency basis was in 2011, when the Obama administration took action on the Miami blue butterfly in southern Florida. Before that, an emergency listing was granted for the California tiger salamander under the Bush administration in 2002.

    Other species listed as endangered on an emergency basis over the years include the California bighorn sheep in the Sierra Nevada in 1999, Steller sea lions in 1990, and the Sacramento River winter migration run of chinook salmon and Mojave desert tortoise, both in 1989.

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  • Dems move to make South Carolina, not Iowa, 1st voting state

    Dems move to make South Carolina, not Iowa, 1st voting state

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats voted Friday to remove Iowa as the leadoff state on the presidential nominating calendar and replace it with South Carolina starting in 2024, a dramatic shakeup championed by President Joe Biden to better reflect the party’s deeply diverse electorate.

    The Democratic National Committee’s rule-making arm made the move to strip Iowa from the position it has held for five decades after technical meltdowns sparked chaos and marred results of the state’s 2020 caucus. The change also comes after a long push by some of the party’s top leaders to start choosing a president in states that are less white, especially given the importance of Black voters as Democrats’ most loyal electoral base.

    Discussion on prioritizing diversity drew such impassioned reaction at the committee gathering in Washington that DNC chair Jaime Harrison wiped away tears as committee member Donna Brazile suggested that Democrats had spent years failing to fight for Black voters: “Do you know what it’s like to live on a dirt road? Do you know what it’s like to try to find running water that is clean?”

    “Do you know what it’s like to wait and see if the storm is going to pass you by and your roof is still intact?” Brazile asked. “That’s what this is about.”

    The committee approved moving South Carolina’s primary to Feb. 3 and having Nevada and New Hampshire vote three days later. Georgia would go the following week and Michigan two weeks after that.

    The move marks a dramatic shift from the current calendar, which has had Iowa holding the first-in-the-nation caucuses since 1972, followed by New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary since 1920. Nevada and South Carolina have gone next since the 2008 presidential election, when Democrats last did a major overhaul of their primary calendar.

    The changes will still have to be approved by the full DNC in a vote likely early next year, but it will almost certainly follow the rule-making committee’s lead.

    The revamped schedule could largely be moot for 2024 if Biden opts to seek a second term, but may remake Democratic presidential cycles after that. The president has said for months that he intends to run again, and White House aides have begun making staffing discussions for his likely reelection campaign, even though no final decision has been made.

    The DNC also plans to revisit the primary calendar again before 2028 — meaning more changes could be coming before then.

    Biden wrote in a letter to rules committee members on Thursday that the party should scrap “restrictive” caucuses altogether because their rules on in-person participation can sometimes exclude working-class and other voters. He told also told party leaders privately that he’d like to see South Carolina go first to better ensure that voters of color aren’t marginalized as Democrats choose a presidential nominee.

    Four of the five states now poised to start the party’s primary are presidential battlegrounds, meaning the eventual Democratic winner would be able to lay groundwork in important general election locales. That’s especially true for Michigan and Georgia, which both voted for Donald Trump in 2016 before flipping to Biden in 2020. The exception is South Carolina, which hasn’t gone Democratic in a presidential race since 1976.

    The first five voting states would be positioned to cast ballots before Super Tuesday, the day when much of the rest of the country holds primaries. That gives the early states outsize influence since White House hopefuls struggling to raise money or gain political traction often drop out before visiting much of the rest of the country.

    Scott Brennan, a rules committee member from Iowa, said “small, rural states” like his “must have a voice in the presidential nominating process.”

    “Democrats cannot forget about entire groups of voters in the heart of the Midwest without doing significant damage to the party in newer generations,” Brennan said.

    The Republican National Committee has already decided to keep Iowa’s caucus as the first contest in its 2024 presidential primary, ensuring that GOP White House hopefuls — which include Trump — have continued to frequently campaign there.

    House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, South Carolina’s lone congressional Democrat and one of Biden’s top supporters in Congress, said the president called him Thursday to inform him of his push to move his state up.

    “I didn’t ask to be first,” Clyburn said. “It was his idea to be first.”

    Clyburn’s endorsement of Biden in 2020 boosted the candidate’s flagging presidential campaign just ahead of South Carolina’s primary, which he won big. That helped Biden shake off early losses in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada and eventually take the White House.

    “He knows what South Carolina did for him, and he’s demonstrated that time and time again, by giving respect to South Carolina,” Clyburn said.

    Still, the vote by the rules committee has faced serious pushback, with some states vowing to ignore the changes altogether. That’s despite the panel approving language saying states could lose all of their delegates to the party’s national convention if they attempt to violate new rules.

    Iowa and New Hampshire have said laws in their states mandate them going before others, and they intend to abide by those, not DNC decrees. Only committee members from Iowa and New Hampshire objected to the proposal that passed Friday, with everyone else supporting it.

    Nevada, with its heavily Hispanic population, initially balked at sharing the second-place slot with New Hampshire, a state 2,500 miles away. Nevada committee member Artie Blanco’s voice cracked as she argued against the change.

    “If we want to build a strong relationship with Latinos,” Blanco said, “then Nevada must stand alone on a date and not have to share that date.”

    After more discussion, Blanco said later that she would support the new calendar. It was “not ideal” for her state to go the same day as another, she said, but “we accept what the will of the president is.”

    Harrison said the new slate of five early voting states will need to show they are working toward moving their primaries to those dates by early next year or risk losing their place. Some state legislatures set primary dates; others have their secretaries of state or the directors of their state parties do it.

    The DNC chair choked up after the vote as he talked about South Carolina once having been the site of the first attack of the Civil War and now being in line to lead off his party’s primary.

    “This proposal reflects the best of our party as a whole, and it will continue to make our party and our country stronger,” Harrison said.

    ___

    Associated Press writer Meg Kinnard contributed from Columbia, S.C.

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  • Tesla delivers electric semis to PepsiCo at Nevada factory

    Tesla delivers electric semis to PepsiCo at Nevada factory

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    Tesla delivered its first electric semis to PepsiCo Thursday, more than three years after Elon Musk said his company would start making the trucks.

    The Austin, Texas-based company formally delivered the trucks at a factory near Reno, Nevada. The event was live-streamed on Twitter, which Musk now owns.

    Musk drove one of three Tesla semi trucks in front of a crowd inside the factory. One was white, one was painted with a Pepsi logo, and another with Frito-Lay colors.

    PepsiCo, which is based in Purchase, New York, is taking part in a zero-emissions freight project at a Frito-Lay facility in Modesto, California. That project is being funded by a $15.4 million clean-freight technology grant from the California Air Resources Board that includes 15 Tesla battery-electric tractors and other electric- and natural-gas powered trucks.

    Electric semis also would be eligible for a federal tax credit of up to $40,000.

    At an event in November of 2017 unveiling the Tesla Semi, Musk said production would begin in 2019 and the trucks would be able to follow each other autonomously in a convoy. But during Tesla’s third-quarter earnings conference call in October he said the company’s “Full Self Driving” system is not quite ready to be driverless.

    Musk said the truck has a range per charge of 500 miles (800 kilometers) when pulling an 82,000-pound (37,000-kilo) load. The company plans to ramp up Semi production to make 50,000 trucks in 2024 in North America.

    Competitors working on hydrogen-powered semis say battery-powered trucks won’t work for long-haul carriers because it will take too long to recharge the huge batteries. Musk said hydrogen isn’t needed for heavy trucking.

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  • Biden proposes South Carolina as first primary state in drastic shake up of presidential nominating calendar | CNN Politics

    Biden proposes South Carolina as first primary state in drastic shake up of presidential nominating calendar | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden has asked Democratic National Committee leaders to drastically reshape the 2024 presidential nominating calendar and make South Carolina the first state to host a primary, followed by Nevada and New Hampshire on the same day a week later, Georgia the following week and then Michigan, a source confirms to CNN.

    Biden’s preferences were announced Thursday evening at a dinner for members of the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee by committee co-chairs Jim Roosevelt, Jr. and Minyon Moore. The committee is set to meet Friday and Saturday in Washington and is poised to propose a new presidential nominating calendar.

    Biden’s expression of his preferences will play a significant role in the process. A DNC source said his elevation of South Carolina to the first-in-the-nation primary has sparked significant debate as members meet Thursday night. But with Biden’s support, this proposal is likely to ultimately gain the support of the committee, though this person emphasized that nothing is final until the votes are held.

    If the DNC ultimately adopts this calendar, it would be an extraordinary shake up of the existing order and would strip Iowa of the first-in-the-nation status that it has held since 1920. Iowa has traditionally gone first, followed by New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina. It would also add a fifth state to the slate before Super Tuesday (the first Tuesday in March) and elevate Georgia and Michigan as early nominating states for the first time.

    South Carolina’s primary would be held on February 6, Nevada and New Hampshire would have their contests on February 13, Georgia’s primary would be on February 20 and Michigan’s would be on February 27, according to the source.

    Biden had also sent a letter to DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee members on Thursday laying out what he believed should be guiding principles for the committee as it discusses the calendar.

    “Just like my Administration, the Democratic Party has worked hard to reflect the diversity of America – but our nominating process does not,” the president’s letter reads. “For fifty years, the first month of our presidential nominating process has been a treasured part of our democratic process, but it is time to update the process for the 21st century. I am committed to working with the DNC to get this done.”

    The president wrote: “We must ensure that voters of color have a voice in choosing our nominee much earlier in the process and throughout the entire early window. As I said in February 2020, you cannot be the Democratic nominee and win a general election unless you have overwhelming support from voters of color – and that includes Black, Brown and Asian American & Pacific Islander voters.

    “For decades, Black voters in particular have been the backbone of the Democratic Party but have been pushed to the back of the early primary process,” he continued. “We rely on these voters in elections but have not recognized their importance in our nominating calendar. It is time to stop taking these voters for granted, and time to give them a louder and earlier voice in the process.”

    Biden said in the letter the Democratic Party should abolish caucuses, arguing they are “inherently anti-participatory” and “restrictive.”

    The Washington Post was first to report on the president’s preferred order for the nominating calendar and the letter he sent to committee members.

    The DNC earlier this year approved a plan to prioritize diverse battleground states that choose to hold primaries, not caucuses, as it considers which states should hold early contests. Beyond the tumult of the 2020 caucuses, Iowa is largely White, no longer considered a battleground state and is required by state law to hold caucuses.

    “There’s very little support for Iowa because they don’t fit into the framework and because of the debacle of 2020. There’s a lot of emotional momentum – it’s not unanimous – but there’s a lot of emotional momentum to replace Iowa with a state that is more representative, more inclusive and instills more confidence and is a battleground state,” one DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee member told CNN.

    Any new proposal by the committee would have to be approved at a full DNC meeting, which will take place early next year. If a new schedule is adopted, it would be the first changes made to the Democratic nominating calendar since 2006, when Nevada and South Carolina were added as early states. It would also break with the Republican calendar, as the Republican National Committee voted earlier this year to reaffirm the early state lineup of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada.

    Democratic Rep. Debbie Dingell, who has spearheaded Michigan’s effort to become an early-voting state, told CNN earlier on Thursday she was “feeling good” about Michigan’s chances and that she believed the state was in a “strong position” heading into the committee meeting.

    “The White House knows that we don’t win presidencies without the heartland,” Dingell said. “And we’ve got to have a primary system where candidates are campaigning in a heartland state that reflects the diversity of this country and that they’re testing them because that’s where we win or lose in general elections.”

    Nevada has been making a play to move up further in the calendar and unseat New Hampshire as the first-in-the-nation primary. New Hampshire has held the first primary on the presidential nominating calendar since 1920 and that status is protected by state law.

    Nevada Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, whose reelection in November was critical to allowing Democrats to maintain control of the Senate, argues her state’s diverse electorate makes it a “microcosm of the rest of the country.”

    “If you’re a presidential candidate and you can win in Nevada, you have a message that resonates across the country,” Cortez Masto told MSNBC earlier this month.

    The Congressional Hispanic Caucus’ political arm, CHC BOLD PAC, on Wednesday announced it was backing Nevada’s application to host the first-in-the-nation primary.

    “The state that goes first matters, and we know that Latino voters will only become even more decisive in future election cycles when it comes to winning the White House and majorities in the House and Senate,” Reps. Ruben Gallego of Arizona and Raul Ruiz of California, leaders of the CHC BOLD PAC, said in a statement.

    New Hampshire Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen tweeted Thursday, “NH’s First-In-The-Nation primary gives every candidate an opportunity to connect directly with engaged, informed voters in a battleground state – and Granite Staters are experts at assessing candidates & campaigns. I’m proud to support NH’s #FITN primary.”

    Earlier this year, the DNC committee heard presentations from 16 states – including the four current early states – as well as Puerto Rico on their pitches on why they should become an early state or hold on to their spot. Amid pressure to boot Iowa from its top position, the Hawkeye State made its case to stay first in the calendar and proposed simplifying the caucus process.

    Minnesota is also among the states jockeying to join the early-state ranks. The chairman of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, Ken Martin, sent a memo to DNC Rules & Bylaws Committee members on Wednesday arguing Minnesota is “more diverse and has a stronger party infrastructure than Iowa, but unlike Michigan, it is not large enough that it would overshadow the other early primary states or make it harder and more expensive for candidates to compete in during this critical window.”

    Both Michigan’s and Minnesota’s cases were bolstered after Democrats in both states won trifecta control of the governor and state legislatures in the midterms. Primary dates are generally set by law, so state parties would need cooperation from their legislatures and governors to become early-voting states. The Michigan state Senate, which is currently controlled by Republicans, this week already took the step of voting to move the presidential primary up a month earlier to February.

    Minnesota Democratic Gov. Tim Walz, along with other party leaders in the state, sent a letter this month to members of the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee pledging to passing legislation moving up the primary date if Minnesota was selected as an early state. The letter, obtained by CNN, argued Minnesota is a “highly representative approximation of the country, paired with a robust state and local party infrastructure, an engaged electorate, and a logistical and financial advantage for campaigns.”

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  • Tesla delivers electric semis to PepsiCo at Nevada factory

    Tesla delivers electric semis to PepsiCo at Nevada factory

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    DETROIT — Tesla delivered its first electric semis to PepsiCo Thursday, more than three years after Elon Musk said his company would start making the trucks.

    The Austin, Texas, company formally delivered the trucks at a factory near Reno, Nevada. The event was livestreamed on Twitter, which Musk now owns.

    Musk drove one of three Tesla Semis in front of a crowd inside the factory. One was white, one was painted with a Pepsi logo, and another with Frito-Lay colors.

    PepsiCo, which is based in Purchase, New York, is taking part in a zero-emissions freight project at a Frito-Lay facility in Modesto, California. That project is being funded by a $15.4 million clean-freight technology grant from the California Air Resources Board that includes 15 Tesla battery-electric tractors and other electric- and natural-gas powered trucks.

    Electric semis also would be eligible for a federal tax credit of up to $40,000.

    At an event in November of 2017 unveiling the Tesla Semi, Musk said production would begin in 2019 and the trucks would be able to follow each other autonomously in a convoy. But during Tesla’s third-quarter earnings conference call in October he said the company’s “Full Self Driving” system is not quite ready to be driverless.

    Musk said the truck has a range per charge of 500 miles (800 kilometers) when pulling an 82,000-pound (37,000-kilo) load. The company plans to ramp up Semi production to make 50,000 trucks in 2024 in North America.

    Competitors working on hydrogen-powered semis say battery-powered trucks won’t work for long-haul carriers because it will take too long to recharge the huge batteries. Musk said hydrogen isn’t needed for heavy trucking.

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  • Ex-con gets at least 18 years in severed head case in Vegas

    Ex-con gets at least 18 years in severed head case in Vegas

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    LAS VEGAS — An ex-convict who led police on a chase around Las Vegas before officers found the severed head and dismembered body of his friend in a stolen vehicle he was driving was sentenced Thursday to at least 18 years in prison.

    Eric John Holland said he was “truly remorseful” for killing Richard P. Miller, whose remains were found in coolers in the bed of a Chevrolet Avalanche in which Las Vegas police stopped Holland last December. Authorities found that Miller had been shot several times, including at least once in the head, before his body was carved up.

    “It’s a terrible thing that happened and I’m just so sorry,” Holland said.

    That provided little comfort to Miller’s daughter, who tearfully and haltingly told a judge she felt “very little relief,” that Holland pleaded guilty in July to a reduced charge and avoiding trial on an open murder charge that could have resulted in a life sentence behind bars.

    “I don’t know how to make sense of it,” sobbed Amanda Dawn Potter, who traveled from Portland, Oregon, for Holland’s sentencing. She called her father’s slaying “the most bizarre thing to ever happen to my family.”

    “My dad didn’t deserve this,” she said.

    Holland, 58, has an extensive criminal history, mostly for forgery and embezzlement, but also including an attempted prison escape in Texas.

    Before Clark County District Court Judge Tierra Jones sentenced him to 18 to 45 years for second-degree murder and felony theft, Holland said Thursday he hoped authorities would continue to investigate his motive for killing Miller.

    “I was going to bring it up in court, but I’m not going to because of family members,” Holland said. “There was a reason, and I hope that they’ll get closure today.”

    Holland’s attorney, Daniel Westbrook, told the judge he would not say more than what his client said. Westbrook declined additional comment after the sentencing hearing.

    Holland was friends with Miller, 65, who lived on a houseboat at Lake Mead, the Colorado River reservoir about a 30-minute drive from Las Vegas.

    Miller was reported missing in November 2021, and investigators later determined he was killed during an argument with Holland.

    The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported Thursday that in jailhouse interviews, Holland said he wanted police to investigate whether Miller was responsible for the disappearance of Miller’s ex-wife, Jing Me Zhu, in 2018 or 2019.

    “I’m going to prison for the rest of my life, and I just want to make sure that she wasn’t forgotten,” Holland told the newspaper.

    Holland said he believed Zhu lived in China and Canada before marrying Miller in 2018. In divorce proceedings less than a year later, Miller alleged in court documents that Zhu left him and moved to China. Records showed that Zhu could not be located to receive a court summons.

    Westbrook told the newspaper that Holland believes Zhu is dead and that Miller killed her.

    Holland did not provide details of Miller’s death, the Review-Journal reported.

    Las Vegas police said Thursday they had no missing person investigation related to Zhu.

    Police previously said Holland drove away from patrol officers trying to stop him on Dec. 23, 2021, in a stolen pickup truck and that he was seen switching vehicles before he was arrested in the second vehicle by officers who tracked him to an apartment complex west of the Las Vegas Strip.

    Police later found receipts in the vehicles for items including a power saw and trash bags purchased from a home improvement store after Miller’s disappearance.

    Holland had been sought since May 2019 on an arrest warrant in a 2018 case in Las Vegas accusing him of embezzlement, identity theft, issuing false checks and theft, according to court records. He had posted $5,000 bail in that case.

    Records show Holland also used the name Eric Allen Holland and served prison time in Nevada for a felony theft conviction stemming from a 2000 forgery case in Las Vegas. He also used names including John Carl Hall, Phil Whidden, Robert Daniel Lauer and Steven Tauber, prison records show.

    Holland had prior felony convictions dating to 1987 in California for embezzlement, assault with a deadly weapon, resisting arrest causing substantial bodily harm and property theft and false identification, according to a Las Vegas prosecutor, prison and court records.

    Records show that Holland was convicted in Texas in a federal counterfeiting case, and later of attempted escape and aiding in an escape.

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  • Election certification avoiding chaos, except in Arizona

    Election certification avoiding chaos, except in Arizona

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    SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Certification of this year’s midterm election results appears to be proceeding smoothly with little controversy across the country, with a small Arizona county being a rare exception, calming fears that local commissions consumed by talk of election conspiracies would create chaos by refusing to validate the will of the voters.

    Action has been orderly even in places where suspicions about election fairness ran deep and led to bitter clashes at local public meetings.

    In Nevada, a state that has been a hotbed of election conspiracy accusations and movements to ditch voting machines in favor of hand-counting all ballots, all 17 counties met a Friday-night deadline to certify election results.

    In rural Elko County, the county commission unanimously certified the results just weeks after questioning the reliability of voting machines and expressing support for hand-counting all ballots.

    Commissioners praised county Clerk Kris Jakeman for a post-election audit that included random hand-counts backing up the results from machine tabulators. Some commissioners had watched the audit and said it helped relieve some of their skepticism.

    “I’ve learned a lot this year,” said Commissioner Delmo Andreozzi. “And I appreciate everybody’s willingness to help educate me and help me become more aware about the whole process.”

    It was much the same story in New Mexico, where several rural county commissions have been under intense pressure by some residents to reject certification since the state’s primary election in June.

    In Otero County, where a crisis occurred this summer when commissioners initially denied certification after the primary, the general election results were certified this week with a drama-free unanimous vote.

    “In my heart of hearts, I think Otero County does a good job,” Commission Chairwoman Vickie Marquardt said. “I have no reason not to certify this election.”

    In another rural New Mexico county, where a livid crowd in June berated county commissioners as “cowards” and “traitors” as they certified the primary results, the room fell silent this week as the all-Republican board pored over vote tallies and signatures from poll judges. Commissioners peppered Torrance County election officials with questions before voting 3-0 to certify.

    The commission had spent months responding to doubts about voting systems with a hand recount of the primary ballots and invitations to attend security testing of ballot-counting machines.

    “I’m not seeing any discrepancies, commissioners. Are you?” Republican commission Chairman Ryan Schwebach told colleagues. He won reelection to the local post with roughly two-thirds of the vote, defeating a challenger who said vote-counting machines can’t be trusted. All but one county in New Mexico certified vote tallies this week.

    Conspiracy-focused protesters rallied Friday outside an election board meeting in Reno, Nevada, with signs reading “Don’t certify before hand count” and “We the people demand hand count.” Despite the protests, the Washoe County commission voted 4-1 to certify the results.

    County Commissioner Jeanne Herman, who represents the most rural part of the county, which stretches north to the border with Oregon, cast the lone dissenting vote. She made a failed attempt earlier this year to push an election reform package that, among other things, would have posted National Guard troops at polling places and relied almost exclusively on paper ballots.

    Christiane Brown, a Reno gun control activist, told the commission that the system worked this year, and even most candidates who had embraced the 2020 election falsehoods conceded defeat.

    “Denying results does not change them,” she said. “The people rejected lies, disinformation, intimidation and ignorance, as well as hatred. The voters spoke, the system worked, and the rule of law held.”

    In Arizona, the state’s 15 counties are just beginning to certify their election results and have until Nov. 28 to do their canvass and send final vote tallies to the secretary of state. Kari Lake, the Republican who lost the race for governor, has refused to concede and in a Thursday video said she has a team of lawyers reviewing whether Election Day issues at the polls disenfranchised some voters.

    The two Republicans who control the board in southeastern Arizona’s Cochise County delayed their certification Friday night after hearing from a trio of conspiracy theorists who argue vote-counting machines are not certified. The board ignored testimony from the state elections director, who said the contention was false.

    The board delayed the vote until the Nov. 28 deadline, saying they wanted to see proof and have the three men evaluate it. State Elections Director Kori Lorick threatened legal action “to compel compliance” and ensure that votes from about 46,000 residents were property reported.

    The state is set to certify results from all 15 counties on Dec. 5, a move needed before a recount can proceed in the race for state attorney general, which is too close to call.

    Under Arizona law, the only role of the elected county boards is to accept the numbers as they are tallied by their elections departments. If they refuse to do so, either the secretary of state or a candidate would sue.

    Election certification emerged as an issue after the 2020 presidential election in Michigan, where Trump and his allies pressured Republicans on both the state certification board and the one for Wayne County, which includes Detroit. The results, showing Democrat Joe Biden winning the state by 154,000 votes, were eventually certified.

    Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey said her office anticipates having no problems with certification of the Nov. 8 general election. By midday Friday, 71 of the state’s 83 counties had certified results.

    “More Michigan citizens cast ballots than ever before in a midterm election, and now bipartisan canvassing boards across the state are certifying the results in accordance with state law,” said Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson. “We are optimistic that all canvassers will continue to demonstrate this level of professionalism and commitment to upholding the will of the voters.”

    ___

    Sonner reported from Reno, Nevada. Associated Press writers Christina A. Cassidy in Atlanta, Ken Ritter in Las Vegas, Gabe Stern in Reno; and Corey Williams in Detroit contributed to this report.

    ___

    Learn more about the issues and factors at play in the midterms at https://apnews.com/hub/explaining-the-elections. And follow the AP’s election coverage of the 2022 elections at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections.

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  • 2024 GOP rivals court donors at big Las Vegas meeting, and some warn Trump is

    2024 GOP rivals court donors at big Las Vegas meeting, and some warn Trump is

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    The Republican Party’s nascent 2024 class, emboldened as ever, openly cast Donald Trump as “a loser” over and over on Friday as they courted donors and activists fretting about the GOP’s future under the former president’s leadership.

    Trump’s vocal critics included current and former Republican governors, members of his own Cabinet and major donors who gathered along the Las Vegas strip for what organizers described as the unofficial beginning of the next presidential primary season. It was a remarkable display of defiance for a party defined almost wholly by its allegiance to Trump for the past six years.

    “Maybe there’s a little blood in the water and the sharks are circling,” Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican presidential prospect himself and frequent Trump critic said in an interview. “I don’t think we’ve ever gotten to this point before.”

    The gathering of the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual leadership meeting, which began Friday, comes just days after Trump became the first candidate to formally launch a 2024 campaign. His allies hoped his early announcement might ward off serious primary challenges, but several potential candidates said that’s not likely after Trump loyalists lost midterm contests last week in battleground states from Arizona to Pennsylvania. His political standing within the GOP, already weakening, plummeted further.

    Ahead of his Friday night address, Mike Pompeo, the former Secretary of State under Trump, mocked one of his former boss’ slogans: “We were told we’d get tired of winning. But I’m tired of losing.”

    “Personality, celebrity just aren’t going to get it done,” he said later from the ballroom stage.

    Trump is scheduled to address the weekend gathering by video conference on Saturday. The vast majority of the high-profile Republican officials considering a 2024 White House bid appeared in person the two-day conference, which included a series of private donor meetings and public speeches.

    The program featured DeSantis, a leading Trump rival, and Pence, whom Trump blames for not overturning the 2020 election. Other speakers included Hogan, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu and Florida Sen. Rick Scott.

    Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, another potential 2024 contender, canceled his appearance after a Sunday shooting at the University of Virginia that left three dead.

    House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, who could become the House speaker when Republicans take over in January, is also scheduled.

    There seemed to be little sympathy for Trump’s latest legal challenges.

    Hours before Friday’s opening dinner, Attorney General Merrick Garland named a special counsel to oversee the Justice Department’s investigation into the presence of classified documents at Trump’s Florida estate as well as key aspects of a separate probe involving the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and efforts to undo the 2020 election.

    Sununu, the New Hampshire governor who easily won reelection last week, said there was no sign that his party would rally to Trump’s defense this time.

    “Those are his issues to sort out,” Sununu said. “Everyone’s gonna sit back and watch the show. And that’s not just his supporters — that’s his money, that’s donors, that’s fundraisers,” said the Republican governor, who easily won reelection last week. “We’re just moving on.”

    With a loyal base of support among rank-and-file voters and a sprawling fundraising operation featuring small-dollar contributions, Trump does not need major donors or party leaders to reach for the GOP nomination a third time. But unwillingness by big-money Republicans to commit to him — at least, for now — could make his path back to the White House more difficult.

    There was little sign of enthusiasm for Trump’s 2024 presidential aspirations in the hallways and conference rooms of the weekend gathering. At Friday night’s dinner, organizers offered attendees yarmulkes bearing Trump’s name, but there were few takers.

    That’s even as Jewish Republicans continued to heap praise on Trump’s commitment to Israel while in the White House.

    “There’s no question that what President Trump accomplished over his four years in terms of strengthening the the U.S.-Israel relationship was unparalleled. He was the most pro-Israel president ever,” said Matt Brooks, the Republican Jewish Coalition’s executive director.

    But that may not be enough to win over the coalition’s leading donors this time.

    “For a lot of people who are attending this conference, this is about the future,” Brooks said. “And for some of them, President Trump may be their answer. For others, they’re interested in what others have to say.”

    New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie leaned into Trump’s political failures during a private dinner with the group’s leading donors on Thursday. In a subsequent interview, he did not back down.

    “In my view, he’s now a loser. He’s an electoral loser,” said Christie, another 2024 prospect. “You look at a general electorate, I don’t think there’s a Democrat he can beat because he’s now toxic to suburban voters on a personal level, and he’s earned it.”

    The annual event is playing out at the Las Vegas Strip’s Venetian Hotel in a nod to the Republican Jewish Coalition’s longtime benefactor, Sheldon Adelson, a billionaire casino magnate who died last year. His wife Miriam Adelson remains a fundraising force within the GOP, though her level of giving in the recent midterm election, which exceeded $20 million, was somewhat scaled back.

    The 76-year-old Israeli-born Miriam Adelson “is staying neutral” in the GOP’s 2024 presidential primary, according to the family’s longtime political gatekeeper Andy Abboud.

    She is not alone.

    Ronald Lauder, the president of the World Jewish Congress and heir to the Estee Lauder cosmetics fortune, backed Trump’s previous campaigns but has no plans to support him in 2024, according to a Lauder spokesman.

    Longtime Trump backer Stephen A. Schwarzman, chairman and CEO of the Blackstone Group investment firm, told Axios this week that he would back someone from a “new generation” of Republicans. Kenneth C. Griffin, the hedge-fund billionaire, is already openly backing DeSantis.

    On Friday, aerospace CEO Phillip Friedman described himself as a “big Trump supporter,” but said he’s open to listening to others moving forward.

    “There’s a couple other people who have his policies but don’t have the baggage,” Friedman said of Trump.

    In his keynote address, Pence focused largely on the Trump administration’s accomplishments, but included a few indirect jabs at the former president.

    “To win the future,” Pence said, “we as Republicans and elected leaders must do more than criticize and complain.”

    He was more direct i n an interview this week.

    “I think we will have better choices in 2024,” Pence told The Associated Press. “And I’m very confident that Republican primary voters will choose wisely.”

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  • Opinion: She had the most endangered seat in the US Senate. Here’s how she held onto it | CNN

    Opinion: She had the most endangered seat in the US Senate. Here’s how she held onto it | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: Sheila Leslie, a long-term Nevada resident, served as a Democrat in the Nevada state legislature for 14 years. She is a columnist for the Reno Gazette-Journal and a retired human services professional. The views expressed in this commentary are her own. Read more opinion on CNN.



    CNN
     — 

    Of all the Senate Democrats said to be at risk of being engulfed by a Republican “red wave,” Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto was widely viewed as the most vulnerable. And yet as we all now know, the incumbent senator from Nevada now will serve another six years, after being declared the projected winner this weekend over her Republican challenger.

    Cortez Masto’s crucial win, which doubters had insisted was unlikely at best, clinched Democratic control of the Senate for the second half of Joe Biden’s presidency.

    When the last large batch of ballot results were released from Democrat-leaning Clark County late Saturday, Cortez Masto took a decisive lead over her election-denying Republican challenger Adam Laxalt. And when she was pronounced the winner, progressives breathed a long sigh of relief. We’ve been waiting for years for the country to regain its sanity and repudiate the lies and misinformation from Trump and his acolytes.

    The full story has yet to be written about how she was able to wrest victory from Laxalt, but if you look at the vote percentages coming in for Cortez Masto from rural Nevada over the last few days, they are surprisingly high given the overwhelming Republican registration there. Those critically important rural votes, added to the urban vote, pushed her over the top.

    Simply put, Cortez Masto was able to siphon away just enough votes from Laxalt, former President Donald Trump’s 2020 Nevada campaign co-chair, by making forays into the MAGA-leaning, rural parts of her state, padding her wins in urban strongholds like Reno and Las Vegas.

    Nevadans are still adjusting to Covid-era election reforms that provide many early voting opportunities, universal mail-in ballots, drop-off boxes and same-day registration. Since much of the mail is counted in the days after the election, Republicans running statewide often see their leads slowly evaporate. It’s expected and explainable, although that doesn’t always stop MAGA Republicans from irresponsibly claiming election fraud when they lose.

    Cortez Masto campaigned vigorously throughout the Silver State, running a textbook campaign, even earning endorsements from high-profile Republicans throughout the state who praised her bipartisan leadership, work ethic and integrity. This was in contrast to Laxalt, who many viewed as a carpet-bagging Virginian, capitalizing on his grandfather’s sterling reputation in the state.

    (Adam Laxalt’s grandfather Paul Laxalt was a beloved former governor and US senator from Nevada, whose family emigrated from the Basque country in the 1920s to raise sheep in the high desert of Northern Nevada.)

    Aside from her outreach to moderate Republicans, Cortez Masto followed a tried-and-true campaign playbook, making fulsome use of the Nevada Democratic establishment’s vaunted get-out-the-vote ground game, honed and perfected by the late Harry Reid, the former Democratic Senate Majority Leader.

    That ground game was bolstered by the influential Culinary Union members who reportedly knocked on over a million doors in a coordinated push to get Cortez Masto across the finish line. She also leaned in on abortion rights, an issue of great interest to voters across the political spectrum.

    The senator received ample support from a variety of progressive advocacy organizations and individual backers, including hundreds of volunteers from California, who streamed into Nevada, where their time and talents are more politically productive, to provide election help.

    And the week before the election, Third Act, a new national group targeting people over 60 to work on climate justice and protecting democracy, sent its celebrity founder, climate activist Bill McKibben to Nevada to meet with hundreds of older Nevadans. He was joined by renowned author Rebecca Solnit and Secretary of State candidate Cisco Aguilar at a “Defend Our Democracy” event in Reno.

    That event inspired scores to show up the next day to walk door-to-door for pro-democracy candidates, shining a bright spotlight on Aguilar who subsequently won a close race against a staunch election-denier, Jim Marchant. He had vowed to “overhaul the fraudulent election system” in Nevada.

    Marchant had a hand in organizing a false slate of “alternative” electors that was sent to Congress after the 2020 election. He indicated he would not have certified the vote in 2020 – and officials in Nevada fear he might not observe the election norms in 2024 if Trump is the Republican party’s presidential nominee.

    The Reid machine and grassroots efforts were not as successful for Gov. Steve Sisolak however. He was denied a second term by Sheriff Joe Lombardo, a Trump-endorsed candidate who was forced to dial back his characterization of Trump in a debate as merely a “sound president.”

    When the former president expressed grumpy displeasure at the comment, Lombardo proclaimed him “the greatest president” a few days later. Lombardo looked weak and beholden to Trump, but he pacified the MAGA crowd and maintained their support.

    Many factors played into Sisolak’s defeat, some of them outside his control, including the global pandemic, which devastated Nevada’s tourism industry for months. Sisolak, to his credit, prioritized public health measures and saving lives while absorbing anger and resentment from Nevadans who valued their mask-avoiding liberty over protecting their neighbors.

    In coordination with casino executives, he closed the Las Vegas strip for months, overwhelming the state’s unemployment system, which couldn’t keep up with the number of people suddenly unable to work.

    Sisolak’s reelection bid suffered from other challenges: He alienated progressives with vetoes of several key Democratic policy bills, including a death penalty abolition bill that certainly won’t resurface under Lombardo’s administration. Progressives likely still voted for him, but with little enthusiasm – complaining about his lack of vision and inaction on many priority concerns. Some undoubtedly chose the unique Nevada option of “none of the above” on their ballots, in a protest against both candidates.

    But aside from Sisolak being given a pink slip, it was a good election for Nevada’s Democrats. They kept their three congressional seats and added to their majorities in the state assembly and state senate, majorities which mean that they can limit any drastic budgetary or policy measures Lombardo may want to enact.

    And, importantly, they kept an election-denier out of the all-important post of secretary of state. In previous election years, that race would have been of back burner interest. But this year, flipping the seat into Democratic hands and away from meddling of the Republican challenger – QAnon-linked Marchant – was a top priority for many Democratic voters.

    The governor-elect will now get an opportunity to wrestle a severely underfunded state government into shape. He may be in for a shock when he discovers just how woefully underpaid the state workforce is and its astronomical vacancy rates.

    Now Nevadans will have to wait to see how Lombardo makes good on his promise to boost the economy by reducing regulations (as if that is what ails the state.) There’s a good reason why Nevada’s Republican governors never make good on their tired promises to cut taxes and ‘waste’ in state government. Lombardo is about to find out.

    If our newly-elected governor absorbs the national message of this election cycle, he’ll approach his new job with a post-MAGA attitude and get to work with the Democratic legislature on the many pressing issues facing Nevadans.

    Voters have shown us they’re exhausted by the political chaos and lack of civility. They want problem solvers, not flame throwers. With its mixed election results, Nevada may lead the way back to a democratic norm that we worried we might not see again.

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  • Democrats Retain Control Of Senate With Nevada Victory

    Democrats Retain Control Of Senate With Nevada Victory

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    The Democrats will retain their control of the Senate after incumbent Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto won a tight reelection race, defying polling expectations and giving Democrats the best overall midterm performance for a sitting party in 20 years. What do you think?

    “Imagine how many progressive policies can be shot down in the next two years.”

    Brianna Leib, Recreational Therapist

    “We’re still doing the whole Senate thing, huh?”

    Martin Akbrud, Olive Pitter

    “The status quo is saved!”

    Vince Wilkin, Package Thrower

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  • Democrats Retain Senate As Nevada Re-Elects Cortez Masto

    Democrats Retain Senate As Nevada Re-Elects Cortez Masto

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    Topline

    Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) won the Nevada Senate race, keeping Democrats in control of the Senate with 50 seats (and Vice President Kamala Harris’s tie-breaking vote), and sending yet another Donald Trump-endorsed candidate—and the Republican Party—home frustrated after a much-predicted “red wave” fizzled at the polls.

    Key Facts

    The Associated Press called the race for Cortez Masto when, as many predicted, she finally pulled ahead of Republican Adam Laxalt after trailing for days when mail-in ballots from the Las Vegas area (Clark County) were counted Saturday night.

    Cortez Masto, the granddaughter of Mexican immigrants and the daughter of the former influential Clark County commissioner, was elected in 2016 by a slim two-point margin to fill Reid’s seat when he retired.

    Laxalt, also a former state attorney general with strong name recognition (he is the grandson of the former senator and governor Paul Laxalt), ran former President Donald Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign in the state and helped push the false claim Trump won the election.

    The polls in the race showed a neck-and-neck contest in the month before Election Day, with Laxalt carrying a 1.4 point advantage as of Monday, according to FiveThirtyEight’s polling average.

    What To Watch For

    Two Senate races remain undecided. Georgia voters will decide a hotly-contested key race between beleaguered Republican candidate Herschel Walker and Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) in a December 6 runoff. In Alaska, Trump-backed Kelly Tshibaka leads Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) 44.2% to 42.8% with 80% of the vote counted, although the state’s rank-choice voting system could bring the race to a second round of counting if neither candidate receives an outright majority. If that’s the case, Tshibaka and Murkowski would square off in a one-on-one round, with ballots that had gone to Democrat Pat Chesbro and Republican Buzz Kelly redistributed based on voters’ second choices in the ranked-choice system.

    Key Background

    In the toss-up race, Cortez Masto—the first Latina elected to the Senate—leaned into her Latino roots and made a strong push to recruit the demographic, which makes up 20% of the state’s electorate, in the final days of the campaign. In ads, she hit Laxalt over his views to ban abortion at 13 weeks, spotlighted the 14 Laxalt family members who endorsed her and cast Laxalt as a 2020 election denier. Laxalt, meanwhile, linked Cortez Masto to two top voter concerns: crime rates (though violent crime actually fell in Nevada in 2021 for the third consecutive year) and inflation, accusing her of voting for federal spending packages Laxalt linked to rising prices.

    Tangent

    In several toss-up races for House seats in Nevada, Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev.) held onto her seat against Mark Robertson, taking 51.3% of the vote, while Democratic Rep. Susie Lee defeated Republican April Becker, with 51.6% of the vote, and Rep. Steven Horsford (D-Nev.) beat Republican Sam Peters with 51.9% of the vote. Republican Rep. Mark Amodei, meanwhile, won his race against Elizabeth Krause with more than 60% of the vote Republican Joe Lombardo unseating Gov. Steve Sisolak (D-Nev.) in the state’s gubernatorial race.

    Further Reading

    These Two Billionaires Are Helping Bankroll An Election Denier In Nevada’s Senate Race (Forbes)

    Jimmy Kimmel Cuts Ad For Cortez Masto In Nevada After Acknowledging His Political Bits Have Dented His Viewership (Forbes)

    Key Senate Race 2022: Nevada’s Democratic Incumbent Cortez Masto, Republican Laxalt Tied In New Poll (Forbes)

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    Brian Bushard, Forbes Staff

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