The Old Blog in the Desert

It was a fine April afternoon in Nevada, and the good citizens, who had just shaken off the winter chill, gathered with an old-fashioned purpose: to make a racket about their power bills. Armed with banners, voices, and a fair bit of indignation, they set upon NV Energy like a debtor sets upon a banker who’s been too free with his late fees.

“We want clean energy, no more fossil fuels, and rates that don’t make a fella choose between keeping the lights on or buying his supper,” declared Tori Lee, a local firebrand with the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada. The crowd hummed their agreement, and one could almost hear the silent prayers of every overworked air conditioner in the valley, hoping their next run wouldn’t break the bank.

Tuesday’s protest was aptly named “Fossil Fools Day,” a jab at NV Energy and its apparent love affair with coal and gas. The timing was no accident, as across the nation, similar scenes played out in front of the many-headed hydra that is Berkshire Hathaway’s utility empire. From the plains to the deserts, common folk were crying out for relief from rates that climb faster than a cat up a tree with a dog on its tail.

Berkshire Hathaway, ever the silent type when confronted with an uncomfortable truth, declined to comment. One can imagine the company men, tucked safely in their fine offices, peering through drawn curtains, hoping the rabble outside would tire themselves out before supper.

NV Energy, for its part, did not sit entirely silent. Meghin Delaney, their chosen spokesperson, stepped forward with the grace of a woman well-practiced in delivering news folks would rather not hear.

“We’re adding renewables all the time,” she assured the crowd, “but the battery storage needed for a full switch would cost more than an honest man’s patience.”

In the meantime, they planned to do away with coal—by 2025, at least—which to some ears sounded a bit like promising to start a diet after the next holiday feast.

But it wasn’t just the energy source that had people fuming–it was the cost. NV Energy, ever mindful of its bottom line, has put in for a nine percent rate increase, which may shrink under the watchful eye of the Public Utilities Commission, but only after several hundred days of haggling—an eternity for anyone staring down the arrival of the summer heat.

For those struggling the most, NV Energy dangled a small olive branch. “We’re looking at removing the basic service charge for low-income customers, saving them about twenty bucks a month,” Delaney noted as if a drop of water might quench the thirst of a parched man.

And yet, despite these assurances, the protesters were unconvinced. “I’m really worried about what this summer is going to bring for some people,” Lee admitted. It was hard to blame her. With the price of everything but bad news going up, the promise of an eventual rate decrease sounded about as comforting as a banker promising to lower your mortgage—after he’s raised it twice.

NV Energy sent out a letter to customers, thick with assurances that their investments in infrastructure would lower costs in the long run. They spoke of transmission lines, battery storage, new proposals for low-income rates, and solar adjustments. They even produced a fine chart comparing 2024’s bills to the projected 2025 costs, claiming customers would pay less so long as they didn’t dare use any extra energy.

By 2030, they say, half of Nevada’s energy will be renewable, a number promising until one considers how often promises turn to dust in the desert wind. For now, the people wait, sweating under the weight of another long summer, hoping the power stays on—and they can afford to pay for it when it does.

Archie Dillion was the sort of man who believed himself to be smarter than the law, the kind that figured he could slip a knife between a child’s ribs and walk away clean. But most murder cops know a truth as old as crime itself—killers come back. Whether guilt or arrogance, they find their way to the scene again, like wolves circling a campfire.

After the killing, Dillion drifted into St. Anthony’s, where the townsfolk had gathered for a novena, their prayers rising like smoke for the lost child. He slipped through the crowd, just another face among the mourners.

He strode up the aisle, knelt before the altar, and struck a match. The flame flickered in his fingers as he touched it to the novena candle. He made the sign of the cross, his lips barely moving.

“In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” he murmured, pushing himself up as he whispered, “Amen.”

The glass shattered like a gunshot. Red shards flew, and one found its mark, slicing deep into the side of his neck.

Hot blood spilled fast, running down his collar as his fingers clutched at the wound. The church gasped as he staggered forward, but no hand reached out to catch him. Archie Dillion fell hard on the chancel, his breath rattling once before he went still.

Justice had come, swift and unrelenting, in the house of the Lord.

When the Walker River Paiute Tribe got wind of a taxpayer-funded $20 million grant landing in their laps, tribal leaders must have felt like a prospector who just struck gold—only to find out later it was fool’s gold and belonged to the bank. Their long-suffering water system, more patches than a riverboat gambler’s coat, was finally due for some honest-to-goodness improvement.

But alas! Washington, D.C., the great and terrible wizard of wealth distribution, had other plans.

“Now we can build homes, create jobs, and finally have water pressure that don’t resemble an old man’s spit!” declared Chair Melanie McFalls with all the optimism of a farmer before a locust swarm.

But fate, in the form of shifting political winds, proved as reliable as a poker game in which the dealer keeps changing the rules. Enter the Biden administration, tossing grants around like a spendthrift uncle at a family reunion, desperate to get the money out the door before Trump came striding back into town.

Then, lo and behold, just as the ink dried, the new sheriff arrived, taking a red pen to it, declaring war on anything smelling remotely like “DEI and Environmental Justice.” It included the tribe’s long-awaited windfall.

The Nevada Clean Energy Fund, which had been holding the purse strings, suddenly found its pockets empty, and tribal plans came to a screeching halt.

“Oh, don’t worry,” said the Environmental Protection Agency in its best soothing tones. “We’re just taking a little look-see to ensure this is a proper use of taxpayer dollars.”

It’s Washington-speak for “Don’t hold your breath.”

Meanwhile, the tribe had already sunk over a million dollars into the project, only to be left holding an empty sack. They’d planned for fire hydrants, clean water, a community hub for emergencies, and even a food pantry expansion, but the federal government had other ideas.

The Trump administration’s latest pastime seems to be rooting out any vestiges of environmental justice as though it were a weed overtaking the lawn of crony capitalism. The Department of Agriculture even pulled funding for the tribe’s local food program because heaven forbid people have fresh produce grown within a stone’s throw of their homes.

So now, the tribe’s fate is in the hands of Nevada’s politicians, all scurrying about trying to figure out who still owes them a favor in Washington. Republican Rep. Mark Amodei is making calls, while Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen is shaking her fist at the White House. Governor Lombardo, meanwhile, is doing his best impression of a man considering his options, which is to say he is considering them very, very slowly.

And so, the machinery of government rolls on, grinding dreams into dust as efficiently as ever. Somewhere, a bureaucrat is undoubtedly patting himself on the back for saving the taxpayers a few bucks—while another one drafts a request for a $50 million study on why Nevada’s tribal water systems are in such a state of disrepair.

The Winner is Women

Well, ladies and gentlemen, the great state of Nevada has finally done what it should have from the beginning—shut the barn door before all the horses turned into zebras. The Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association (NIAA)–after what one can only assume was an exhausting amount of hand-wringing and paper-shuffling, has declared that student-athletes must compete in sports according to the sex God and their unaltered birth certificate assigned them, rather than whichever gender they happened to fancy that morning.

The decision met with great rejoicing among those who still believe words have meaning and that fairness in competition isn’t an old wives’ tale. Lt. Gov. Stavros Anthony, never one to mince words, heralded the move as a victory for women’s sports, ensuring that young ladies no longer have to compete against gentlemen in borrowed skirts for their scholarships and trophies.

Of course, there was the usual gnashing of teeth from the professional outrage industry, who immediately began squinting at the Nevada Constitution in search of an escape clause. The ACLU’s Athar Haseebullah declared the decision “patently discriminatory,” proving once again that common sense is an acquired taste.

Meanwhile, some school officials fretted over the logistics, wondering aloud how to verify birth certificates for students without them—though one might reasonably ask whether verifying someone’s birth sex is any more complicated than figuring out if they turned in their math homework. The Board, in true bureaucratic fashion, has scheduled an emergency meeting in May to complicate the obvious even further.

In any case, Nevada has now joined 38 other states in stating the simple truth: girls’ sports are for girls. It is a radical concept, to be sure, but one that worked quite well for several millennia before some folks decided to reinvent reality.

In the meantime, perhaps we can all enjoy the quaint and antiquated notion that fairness, after all, is not just an old relic of the past.

If there is one certainty in this world, crime should not pay. And if you were to ask Joel Vargas-Escobar, a high-standing miscreant in the ranks of MS-13, he might agree, provided he is in a mood for honest reflection, which seems doubtful.

The FBI has plucked him from his den and set him on the well-worn path to justice, where he will find the accommodations somewhat less grand.

Vargas-Escobar, a man of such ill repute that even his own shadow might hesitate to follow him, has been accused of orchestrating a symphony of murder—eleven, to be precise—across the desert wastes of Nevada and California.

A federal indictment, first drawn up in 2021, lays out a grim ledger of crimes in which victims, by all accounts, were kidnapped, hauled off to lonesome stretches of wilderness, and dispatched with the kind of brutality that would make even an outlaw blush. Mind you, this is a man sent packing once before. In 2018, the federal government took the trouble to deport him to El Salvador, but like a bad penny—or perhaps more fittingly, a case of smallpox—he found his way back.

Not content to stay a mere foot soldier in the criminal enterprise, Vargas-Escobar allegedly co-led MS-13’s operations in the Las Vegas Valley, giving orders with all the gravity of a monarch whose kingdom consisted of stolen goods, narcotics, and bloodshed. The law, however, has a way of catching up, particularly when aided by the long arm of the FBI.

Federal agents nabbed him on Tuesday in Long Island, a place where he may have thought himself safe but where fate had other notions. Attorney General Pam Bondi quickly declared victory, promising that MS-13 would get dismantled like a cheap piece of machinery, bolt by bolt.

FBI officials, not ones to mince words, urged the public to come forth with information, reassuring families that they should not live in fear of such villainy. Whether Vargas-Escobar himself will oblige the law with a few choice revelations remains unknown.

For now, Vargas-Escobar’s returning to Nevada, where a federal judge awaits him with all the patience of a cat before a mouse hole. One can only hope that justice proves swift and unrelenting since this rattlesnake’s bite is the worst.

Decides Parents Ought to Know What Their Kids Are Up To

After gathering dust on the legal shelf for nearly four decades, Nevada’s long-ignored parental notification law is finally making its debut, much to the satisfaction of some and the dismay of others. Starting April 30, doctors in the Silver State will have to let parents know before performing an abortion on a minor unless a judge grants an exception.

This turn of events follows a federal judge’s decision to lift an injunction that had kept the law locked away since 1985, back when shoulder pads were stylish–and folks still thought Roe v. Wade was a settled matter. U.S. District Judge Anne Traum, appointed by President Joe Biden, ruled that the legal basis for blocking the law vanished when the Supreme Court overturned Roe in 2022.

The law, mothballed for so long that many Nevadans likely forgot it existed, requires physicians to notify a parent before proceeding. Planned Parenthood of Washoe County successfully argued against this issue in the 1980s, and the courts agreed—until now. In December, district attorneys from several Nevada counties decided it was time to revisit the subject, and the judge ultimately sided with them.

Nevada is now joining 36 other states that require some form of parental notification for minors seeking abortions. Critics warn of burdens on young women, while supporters hail it as a victory for parental rights and common sense. Meanwhile, Nevada voters recently backed an effort to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution, though that effort won’t get done unless approved again in 2026.

For now, the Attorney General’s office remains tight-lipped, and if an appeal gets filed, the case will head to the famously unpredictable Ninth Circuit.

But come April 30–Nevada parents will be more informed about their children—whether their kids like it–or not.

In a turn of events that will surprise precisely no one with common sense, Nye County deputies spent the better part of a day wrangling seven tigers from the property of one Karl Mitchell, a local man with an apparent enthusiasm for testing the patience of both law enforcement and large carnivores.

The operation, which kicked off at the break of dawn, involved code enforcement, animal services, and—one assumes—several deputies questioning their life choices. Sheriff Joe McGill confirmed that Mitchell is now in custody, proving that wrestling with local ordinances is ill-advised–wrestling with deputies is even worse.

Mitchell, a longtime aficionado of keeping things with sharp teeth, has a history of legal entanglements over his tiger collection. His federal license to house these oversized housecats got revoked years ago, a decision that, in hindsight, seems quite reasonable. Nevertheless, in 2019, he won an appeal allowing him to keep the animals, presumably after convincing the Nye County Commission that seven tigers roaming the desert was a perfectly rational idea.

Recent efforts to remove the animals required sedation, a strategy applied liberally to the tigers and, perhaps, should have been considered for Mitchell long ago. Authorities estimate the process will take most of the day, as convincing a tiger to relocate is an undertaking that requires both patience and a distinct lack of fear.

As the tigers prepare for their new home at an undisclosed sanctuary, the good people of Pahrump can rest easy knowing that their odds of encountering a loose Bengal on their morning commute have significantly decreased. Meanwhile, Mitchell will have ample time to reflect on the fundamental lesson that, when it comes to pets, perhaps a nice goldfish would have sufficed.

In the wilds of Kyle Canyon, where nature used to run its course and horses roamed free without so much as a by-your-leave, trouble has been brewing. It seems folks—ever eager to poke, prod, and provide unsolicited handouts—have done what they do best–made a mess of things.

The seven mustangs of Kyle Canyon, including one young foal fresh to the world, are being given their walking papers, not for any fault of their own, but because folks have been getting too close, and the horses—being horses—have reacted in the way of their kind.

“I didn’t think it was getting that bad. It is getting that bad. It’s just dangerous,” said Kim Donohue, who heads up Wild Fire’s Wild and Free Mustangs in Boulder City.

She’s the one the U.S. Forest Service has tapped to take in the evicted herd, seeing as how the animals aren’t trusted to hold their tempers, nor humans to keep their distance. The problem, as it so often is, comes down to food.

Folks keep feeding these wild creatures like they are petting zoo attractions, luring them ever closer to roads, cars, and other hazards. The horses have learned that human hands hold treats, and in their eagerness for another morsel, they have started sticking their heads into moving vehicles.

“The horses are running into traffic. People going 80 miles an hour in a 35, and horses were running out to traffic so they can stick their heads into the car and beg,” Donohue said.

If that doesn’t paint a picture of future calamity, consider last year’s incident where a young girl took a hoof to the head. Earlier this month, a boy met with the same sort of misfortune.

To spare both man and beast from further folly, the Forest Service has decided the herd must go. They will be rounded up within two months and transported to Donohue’s rescue. The only delay is the foal, who needs a little more time before making the journey.

For those lamenting the loss of their free-range Mustang neighbors, let this be a lesson–nature is not a petting zoo, and a free horse fed is a free horse lost.

Ain’t this a turn of events? The Nevada Gaming Control Board has seen fit to publish the latest tally on the northern end of the state’s grand enterprise of chance, and lo and behold, the figures ain’t exactly cause for celebration—unless, of course, you happen to be the sort who takes delight in watching the house lose for once.

In Carson City and the Carson Valley, the gaming tables stood their ground like a stubborn old mule, showing but the faintest retreat—a minuscule 0.48 percent drop in February compared to last year. The good people of Carson, Gardnerville, Minden, and their neighboring haunts wagered and lost a respectable $10,297,812, which is a tidy sum by most reckonings, but still, the coffers jingled just a mite less than before.

When it comes to the total across Nevada, the story turns grim. The state’s nonrestricted gaming licensees—those fine establishments specializing in separating fools from their money—reported a “gaming win” of $1,217,662,484 in February. A handsome figure, no doubt, but it’s 9.28 percent short of last year’s spoils. And for those keeping the books over the long haul, the fiscal year’s tally from July to February is also limping along, trailing by 1.14 percent.

And what of the once-mighty shores of Lake Tahoe? The South Shore casinos took a staggering hit, down 17.35 percent, while their North Shore kin found themselves short by 9.34 percent. Reno, that great citadel of neon and nostalgia, watched its gaming revenue slip 6.44 percent, and Sparks fared only slightly better, down 2.65 percent.

In sum, gamblers have either grown wiser or luck has taken an extended vacation–either way, the house ain’t winning this round, and that, dear reader, is a spectacle rare enough to warrant a good, long look.

It’s not every day that Northern Nevada gets mistaken for a Hollywood backlot, but here we are—snowflakes fallin’ like stage props while a pack of film folks set up shop in Carson City and Washoe Valley. The movie, a Warner Brothers-backed picture, has been described as a “Yellowstone”-esque tale and the age-old question–Are we destined to trip over the same rake our parents did, or can we finally learn to step around it?

Juan Pablo Arias Muñoz, the film’s director, said, “It’s a film about family. It’s a film about tradition.”

With the snow fallin’ thick as a politician’s promise, the media got invited behind the scenes of a sequel to a five-part Amazon Prime series of the same name, Casa Grande. The production company, ESX Entertainment, started shooting in Northern California but decided Nevada had a certain untamed charm.

“When we landed here, we were like, ‘Wow, it looks like a postcard,’” said Ali Afshar, President of ESX Entertainment. “The snow looks so perfect, it almost seems fake.”

One might argue that Nevada winters need no Hollywood magic—it’s been trickin’ folks for free since the Pony Express.

The filmmakers have been good at using the region’s diverse scenery, from farmland to mountain peaks to small-town charm. One day, they were holed up in a house shootin’ some scenes and choreographing a fight—presumably not over who gets the last cup of coffee.

Now, as with most grand adventures, the weather’s been both a help and a hindrance.

“It’s so cool looking with the snow and whatnot, but then cars are getting stuck in the mud,” Afshar admitted. “We’re parking in this field, and we have to tow them out. Also, I went to Scheels and spent a ton of money—we don’t even have Scheels in California!”

There’s nothing like a good old-fashioned snowstorm to turn a filmmaker into a local shopper.

Aiding this cinematic endeavor are some up-and-comers from Nevada’s Future Filmmakers Foundation, a program out of the Cordillera Film Festival.

“They’re really prepared,” Muñoz said. “They show up and already know what they’re doing.”

A rare and remarkable thing, indeed.

Once Casa Grande wraps, ESX Entertainment will take its cameras south to Las Vegas for another film. Afshar hopes Nevada will open its doors wider to the industry so productions don’t have to keep running off to Georgia or parts unknown.

Filming will conclude in Carson City’s prison—though one hopes the actors are only there temporarily. Casa Grande will hit theaters by late 2025 or early 2026, giving audiences a taste of Nevada’s cinematic potential.

And who knows? If Hollywood keeps sniffin’ around the Silver State, we may see Nevada become more than a backdrop for car commercials and cowboy movies—it might just turn into the next great stage for storytelling, snowstorms, and all.