🗳️ Ballots are in the mail, and early voting began on May 23. The 2026 primary election is underway. With hundreds of names appearing on ballots across the state, KNPR helped Nevadans get ready to vote by breaking down key races and issues with two reporters who have been thinking about the primaries for months already. One race that has garnered significant attention is the search for a replacement for Republican Congressman Mark Amodei.
Amodei announced he would not seek reelection as Northern Nevada's representative in Congress. More than two dozen candidates announced their candidacy for the office. KRNV-TV Politics Reporter Ben Margiott says a handful of frontrunners will likely get the Republican nomination, including Retired Lieutenant Colonel David Flippo and James Settlemeyer, the former director of Nevada's Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, former Senate minority leader, and rancher from Douglas County.
And while Democrats are optimistic they have a shot at the congressional seat now that Amodei is retiring, Margiott says the money is still on the GOP to retain the seat. See the full story by KNPR's Paul Boger here.
📻 Paul Laxalt died on August 6, 2018, four days after turning ninety-four. He was both a governor and a U.S. senator. He did a lot to shape modern Nevada, and had a bigger impact on America and the world than many realize. He was known as Tall Paul. Physically, he wasn’t a giant. But he’s a towering figure in our history. Paul Laxalt took an unusual route to law and politics for a Nevadan.
He graduated from high school and went to Santa Clara University. After serving in World War II, he graduated from law school at the University of Denver. When Laxalt was going to law school, Pat McCarran was putting numerous Nevadans through law school in Washington, D.C., by employing them in his office.
One of them was John Laxalt, Paul’s brother. Others included Alan Bible and Grant Sawyer. Paul Laxalt would encounter them in the future. Hear the full episode of Nevada yesterdays here, or wherever you get your podcasts.
🏥 Clark County Commissioners, last week, approved the development permits for Nevada’s first standalone children’s hospital. Construction is set to begin on a 31-acre plot of land in the Spring Valley neighborhood. Plans call for an eight-story facility and a helipad. Utah-based Intermountain Health, which is building the hospital, secured the land in 2025 on a lease from UNLV. The hospital is expected to open to patients in 2030.
⚖️ Controversy surrounding the polluted Anaconda Copper Mine site continues. On may 21st, a group of environmentalists and Indigenous tribes filed a lawsuit against the federal Bureau of Land Management. It concerns the agency’s final environmental assessment and transfer of land around the mine site.
The plaintiffs claim the BLM gave the Atlantic Richfield Company more than 2,000 acres for free, when a sale would have properly upheld the public interest. They also say the government failed to adequately address environmental and cultural issues at the site.
The BLM, which approved the plan on May 1st, says it will allow Atlantic Richfield to expedite the site’s remediation. The company stopped mining copper at Anaconda in 1978, and the Environmental Protection Agency later declared it a Superfund site, meaning it was a priority for cleanup.
💻 For two years, Molly Quinn trusted her therapist with things she hadn't told anyone else. So when her therapist mentioned trying an artificial intelligence tool to take notes, Quinn didn't immediately refuse. The 31-year-old librarian from Fayetteville, Arkansas, asked to research it first.
She wanted to understand where her words would go — whether they would stay local or be processed somewhere in the cloud. Across the U.S., a growing number of therapists are experimenting with artificial intelligence tools that record sessions, generate transcripts and draft clinical notes automatically. Software companies say these tools can save hours of administrative work each week.
One company, Berries, markets its platform as a way to lighten paperwork so therapists can focus more fully on their clients and have a better work-life balance in their own personal lives. "Berries is designed to reduce administrative burden without interfering with the therapeutic experience itself," Tal Salman, the company's Co-CEO, told NPR. "It supports clinicians being more present with their clients."
When activated, the system records the conversation, transcribes it and generates a draft clinical note for the therapist to review. Therapists can edit, revise or discard the draft. They can also save it to a medical record. Hear the full story by NPR's Windsor Johnston here.
