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1 week ago | 
thenevadaindependent.com | John L. Smith |JOhn Smith
When it comes to hurling an epithet, Gov. Joe Lombardo can’t hold a candle to Mike O’Callaghan. During O’Callaghan’s first term as the state’s 23rd governor, I heard him roar the F word dozens of times in early-morning phone calls to his administrative assistant, my mother Jan Smith. I wasn’t listening in on the conversation. His voice could be heard two rooms away. Blessed with a street vocabulary as salty as any sailor, mom would return fire and slam down the phone.
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2 weeks ago | 
thenevadaindependent.com | John L. Smith |JOhn Smith
You’re forgiven for not remembering the second Trump administration’s first choice to lead the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). The announcement came in the wake of the 2024 presidential election, and Hillsborough, Florida, County Sheriff Chad Chronister wasn’t exactly a household name.
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2 weeks ago | 
thenevadaindependent.com | John L. Smith |JOhn Smith
Amid a river of sign wavers under a blue Sierra sky in Carson City, lifelong Nevadan Steven Drown couldn’t have asked for better weather for the first protest of his life. Saturday’s “Hands Off!” event drew thousands to the state Capitol to decry the shambles the Trump administration is making of the economy as his Cabinet secretaries and billionaire influencers try to cut programs and departments throughout the federal government.
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2 weeks ago | 
thenevadaindependent.com | John L. Smith |JOhn Smith
The biennial storm of the 2025 legislative session was still forming back on Feb. 18 when members of the Assembly and Senate met for a budget hearing to learn the bad news from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Little did those in attendance know that they might have been experiencing the best of times.
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3 weeks ago | 
thenevadaindependent.com | John L. Smith |JOhn Smith
It’s not exactly as welcome as the swallows’ annual return to Capistrano, or for some it’s more annoying than the buzzing that announces the arrival of years-dormant cicadas to a neighborhood near you.
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1 month ago | 
thenevadaindependent.com | John L. Smith |JOhn Smith
A new Major League Baseball season has begun, and perhaps Resorts World Las Vegas has found its winning team. It’s certainly paying for it. This past week, the resort and its parent company agreed to pay $10.5 million to settle a state Gaming Control Board complaint stemming from an ongoing federal investigation into illegal bookmaking and money laundering that exposed a collapse in the casino’s gambling compliance system. The investigation has been the talk of the Strip for more than two years.
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1 month ago | 
thenevadaindependent.com | John L. Smith |JOhn Smith
SB69 would require companies seeking Comstock-sized tax abatements to agree to defray the costs of their impact on government services. I love Nevada history, and you’ll find plenty of it in Virginia City. From the Fourth Ward School to Piper’s Opera House, its streets are lined with reminders of Nevada’s frontier past.
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1 month ago | 
thenevadaindependent.com | John L. Smith |JOhn Smith
Did you hear the one about the 360-year-old who’s still kicking around inside the Social Security database? Or the millions of centenarians — some as old as 160 — who might be stealing your hard-earned benefits? If you watched chaos King Donald Trump’s marathon state-of-confusion address to Congress, you heard all that and a lot more. Trump dealt disinformation between standing ovations from Republicans and corny protests from Democrats for a numbing one hour, 39 minutes and 32 seconds.
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1 month ago | 
thenevadaindependent.com | John L. Smith |JOhn Smith
Northern Nevada’s full-throttle race to embrace data centers received thoughtful push back from an eclectic group of citizens this week during a Reno City Council meeting. They gathered Wednesday morning to persuade their elected officials to agree to a six-month moratorium on the approval process to ensure new data centers aren’t unduly stressing the power grid and community water supply, or otherwise harming the environment in one of the nation’s fastest-warming regions.
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1 month ago | 
thenevadaindependent.com | John L. Smith |JOhn Smith
Not many years ago, Nevada Republican Party activist Tony Dane was known as a notorious and unrepentant practitioner of political dirty tricks. With his robocalling phone bank working overtime, Dane was capable of sliming Democratic Party enemies with innuendo, deception and outright fabrication. From the sound of things, he made a pretty good living at it. He was even capable of conflating his gutter tactics with doing the Lord’s work.
