The Daily Rundown - July 14th, 2026
🎅 On July 24, the Opportunity Village Thrift Store is hosting a Holiday Pop-Up Shop for Christmas in July. The shop will include free cookies, a station to write letters to Santa and other fun surprises. At the same time, the Magical Forest will also open its Holiday Shoppe. Both locations will remain open from July 24 to July 31.
All proceeds go to Opportunity Village and those looking to donate can do so on site or at their satellite donation location. That’s in the parking lot of The Crossing Church at 7950 West Windmill Lane. Students from UNLV’s Colleges of Fine Arts and Education collaborated to create hands-on learning experiences for children enrolled at the Lynn Bennett Early Childhood Education Center.
Taking place during the preschool’s Week of the Child, Professors Tina Vo of the College of Education and Amy Brown of the College of Fine Arts brought together undergraduate students from their respective courses. The students facilitated practical experiences involving a combination of science, music and play.
One goal of the assignment was to give prospective teachers a chance to engage with a real classroom environment while learning flexibility is as important as lesson plans. Preschooler classrooms are considered ideal. That’s because children will naturally explore the world around them without the added pressure to do things a certain way. The prospective teachers also get the chance to learn alongside their students how to create positive experiences for them.
🩸 The American Red Cross of Southern Nevada will give a Fandango Movie ticket in exchange for a donation of blood, platelets or AB Elite plasma through the end of the month. This comes as the nonprofit experiences a severe blood shortage nationwide. The Red Cross says a 25% drop in donations in the past month has widened the gap between available blood and hospital demand.
This, they say, can put trauma victims, cancer patients and others who rely on transfusions at risk. They say busy summer schedules and fewer school blood drives have contributed to the shortfall.
🗳️ President Donald Trump on Monday sharply reduced the size of two national monuments in Utah, undoing protections established by his Democratic predecessors on public lands that are sacred among many Native Americans.
Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in southern Utah have ancient cliff dwellings, petroglyphs and scenic canyons, as well as coal and uranium deposits that state officials want made available for development.
President Trump issued proclamations under the Antiquities Act to reduce their size by about 90% each. He took similar actions during his first term, but those were reversed by President Joe Biden.
The latest move comes as Trump and other Republicans have drastically reshaped the management of vast taxpayer-owned lands concentrated in Western states. Trump administration officials and congressional Republicans have sought to expand drilling, mining and logging on public lands, while removing protections for imperiled species and rolling back rules for conservation.
“They took the land from the people quite honestly,” Trump said at a signing event at the White House Monday. “We’re giving it back.”
President Bill Clinton established Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in 1996, and President Barack Obama created Bears Ears National Monument in 2016 under the Antiquities Act. The 1906 law gives presidents the powers to protect sites considered historic, archaeologically significant or culturally important. Read the full story here.
Correction (07/14): An earlier version of this story erroneously reported the size of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments. Before President Donald Trump’s proclamation reducing their size, they were a combined 1.3 million hectares, not 13 million hectares.
🎵 Here's something American concertgoers might not know: before a musician from another country can take the stage in the U.S., someone has to file paperwork with the federal government on their behalf. And not just any paperwork — a petition, hundreds of pages long, stacked with press clippings, award documentation, testimonial letters from other artists, venue contracts, a detailed tour itinerary, and evidence that the artist is legitimately accomplished at what they do.
And that's just to start the clock in a process that may take over a year to complete.
This is the reality for international artists — from musicians to painters, dancers to comedians — who want to come to the U.S. to share their work. It's a complicated, expensive process that arts advocates say has long made the country a difficult place for foreign artists to access. But now, they say it's gotten much worse.
The time it takes to process a visa has dramatically increased. The number of available interview slots at U.S. embassies is backlogged. Application costs have surged. And there's an added layer of uncertainty: paperwork can be perfect, fees can be paid, and yet artists still can be turned away at the border.
For U.S. audiences, all of this means a quiet loss of global cultural exchange. Read the full story by NPR's Josie Fischels 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.
