The Daily Rundown - July 13th, 2026
🗣️ California Governor Gavin Newsom attended a Democratic campaign kickoff in Nevada on Saturday. He campaigned alongside U.S. Representative Steven Horsford and Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford. Ford is running for Nevada governor against incumbent Republican Joe Lombardo.
According to the Nevada Current, Newsom and Ford criticized Lombardo for his record-breaking number of vetoes. The Republican Governors Association seized on the event to attack Ford for aligning with California leadership.
The event also focused on Horsford's competitive congressional race. Democrats view Horsford's district as essential for reclaiming the House majority. Newsom downplayed questions about his own 2028 presidential ambitions during the visit, instead emphasizing the importance of national party unity to win future elections.
📝 The Culinary Union has announced a tentative agreement on a union contract with Allegiant Stadium’s food and beverage provider, Oak View Group. The Union said in a statement that it covers more than 730 workers, including cooks, servers, bartenders, and concessions employees.
The union said that while Allegiant Stadium was named the highest-grossing stadium in the country, the workers were not receiving what the union called the wages and benefits that are standard in Las Vegas, KVVU-TV reports.
🛣️ Scott Allison could have taken the shortest route from Las Vegas to Reno. Instead, he drove nearly 50 extra miles through California. The detour wasn't for the scenery; it was for the chargers.
Allison and his husband recently set out on a six-day road trip across Nevada in their electric SUV, traveling through Death Valley, Lake Tahoe, and Reno before heading east toward some of the state's most remote highways. The goal wasn't simply to see the state—it was to see whether Nevada's electric vehicle charging network could support the kind of long-distance travel many drivers still assume isn't possible.
"It depends on how much Nevada you want to see," Allison said with a laugh. From Las Vegas, he bypassed Nevada's Highway 95—the state's most direct north-south route—in favor of California's Highway 395, where charging stations are more frequent and drivers often have backup options if one isn't working.
His experience highlights a growing challenge as electric vehicle adoption accelerates across Nevada and the broader Mountain West. According to the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles, the state now has more than 90,000 registered electric vehicles. But while more drivers are making the switch, charging infrastructure—particularly in rural parts of the state—hasn't expanded at the same pace. Hear the full story by The Mountain West News Bureau's Kaleb Roedel here.
💸 This just in: money may not buy happiness. That’s a key takeaway from a new report measuring quality of life in all 50 states as the nation celebrates its birthday. The State of the States report shows that economics don’t necessarily determine well-being.
That’s the case in Colorado, Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming, said Tulane University economics professor Douglas Harris, one author of the report. There are relatively low poverty and income inequality rates in those states, but also high suicide and depression rates. For example, Wyoming ranks eighth nationwide on income inequality, but it’s 42nd for depression rates.
“You'd expect some connection there, but the correlation is zero,” said Harris, who worked on the report with think tank members and university researchers across the country.
Harris added that those northern mountain states are mostly doing well on environmental measures like air quality and educational ones like test scores, compared to the rest of the country. Otherwise, it’s hard to find many trends. “That reinforces the point that geography isn't destiny,” Harris said.
He points out, however, that southern mountain states, including Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico, rank poorly for many more measures, and they have higher levels of poverty.
💼 A dozen states, led by California and including Nevada, are suing to block Paramount from buying Warner Bros. Discovery in a Hollywood mega-merger that would unite some of the nation's largest movie studios, television newsrooms, and other entertainment properties.
"The unlawful merger of these two entertainment behemoths would lead to higher prices, lower quality, and less content for film and television, harming movie theaters, basic cable distributors, and ultimately, audiences on every sofa and movie theater seat in the U.S.," California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement announcing the suit, which was filed in federal court in California's Northern District.
The deal would give a wealthy family that has taken pains to show its allegiance to President Trump the effective ownership of the companies' competing movie studios, streamers (Paramount+ and HBO Max), sports programming (CBS Sports and Turner Sports), and news divisions (CBS News and CNN) as well as a suite of cable channels, such as Comedy Central, VH1, and MTV among others.
The president has repeatedly praised Larry and David Ellison, the digital titan and his son who are the controlling owners of Paramount. And he has publicly urged the sale of Warner's CNN to new owners. "We're trying to have CNN go in a normal path," Trump told CNN anchor Jake Tapper yesterday at the end of an interview about the late Sen. Lindsey Graham.
In his statement Monday, Bonta said, "With this lawsuit, California and our sister states are fighting for free and fair markets, not rigged markets. America has no kings in government or our economy." Read the full story by NPR's David Folkenflik here.
Part of these stories are taken from KNPR's daily newscast segment. To hear more daily updates like these, tune in to 88.9 KNPR FM.
