‘What the landlord wants, the landlord gets,' effort to change Nevada state law for tenants
Assembly Bill 223, introduced Monday at the Committee on Commerce and Labor by Assembly Member Venicia Considine, would allow tenants to pay reduced rent and file a verified complaint for unhabitable conditions.
Renters' rights and 13 more bills to watch at the 2025 Nevada Legislature
Tenants can currently withhold rent in Nevada for unhabitable conditions, but they must deposit the money with the justice court. That rarely happens, according to supporters of the bill, and the end result is eviction. 'What you often see is how habitability presents itself as a tenant Is there on the eviction,' Jonathan Norman of Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada told legislators. 'They have their phone and they say, 'Judge, I have pictures,' and it can be, you know, sewage backing up in their bathtub. It can be, you know, really horrific stuff, and the judge looks at them and then asks if they escrowed the rent, and the answer is almost always no because people don't understand how they're supposed to do that, how they can take advantage of that and then the judicial officer orders the eviction.' Assembly Bill 223 would allow the tenant to turn to court first. Numerous groups and individuals testified in support of the bill. 'I have stared into the eyes of cockroaches. I have sweated in the broken air conditioner night. I have breathed the dangerous poles of mold. I have felt trapped. I have felt meaningless. I have felt like I did not matter,' Noah Cicero testified. 'I have felt like that I too have become a cockroach, a pest that doesn't matter to anyone. Cockroaches can be evicted just as quickly as I can in the state of Nevada. What the landlord wants, the landlord gets.' Opponents of the bill, including the Nevada Realtors Legislative Committee, testified laws are already in place to address landlord and tenant issues.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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The Intercept
08-08-2025
- The Intercept
Trump Orders State Department to Overlook International Human Rights Abuses
The State Department is gutting its human rights reporting by excising information detailing abuses by foreign governments from the department's annual reports, The Intercept has learned. Officially called 'Country Reports on Human Rights Practices,' the annual documents are required by law to be a 'a full and complete report regarding the status of internationally recognized human rights' in nearly 200 countries and territories worldwide. They are used 'by the U.S. Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches as a resource for shaping policy and guiding decisions, informing diplomatic engagements, and determining the allocation of foreign aid and security sector assistance,' according to the State Department. The reports will no longer call out governments for abuses like restrictions on free and fair elections, significant corruption, or serious harassment of domestic or international human rights organizations, according to instructions issued earlier this year to the State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL) which, itself, has been eviscerated under an 'America First' reorganization by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The undated memo from earlier this year, reviewed by The Intercept, says the reports will also turn a blind eye to the forcible expulsion of refugees or asylum-seekers to countries where they may face torture or persecution. This comes as the Trump administration is building a global gulag, pursuing deals with around a third of the world's nations to expel immigrants to places where they do not hold citizenship. Once exiled, these so-called 'third-country nationals' are sometimes detained, imprisoned, or in danger of being sent back to their country of origin — which they may have fled to escape violence, torture, or political persecution. A recent Intercept investigation found that the nations that the Trump administration is collaborating with to accept expelled 'third country' immigrants are some of the worst human rights offenders on the planet, according to last year's State Department human rights reports. The new country reports, expected to be released within days, will effectively launder abuses by nations that the administration is targeting as potential deportee dumping grounds. The memo also instructs the agency to 'identify and delete references to discrimination or violence against 'LGBTQI+' persons, 'transgender' persons, or similar framing.' 'People will suffer. Immigration courts in the United States and asylum claim adjudicators around the world look at these reports for guidance.' 'Donald Trump has made it his personal mission to limit transparency and accountability, and the State Department's upcoming human rights report — or what remains of it — will certainly reflect that,' Senator Peter Welch, D-Vt., told The Intercept. 'He's more concerned with denying human rights here and abroad, and cozying up to dictators and authoritarian leaders, than he is with fighting for those who need it most.' The State Department did not respond to repeated questions from The Intercept regarding the human rights reports. Annelle Sheline, who served as a Foreign Affairs Officer in DRL's Office of Near Eastern Affairs until last year and previously worked on annual country human rights reports, expects the forthcoming documents to be completely hollowed out. In conversations with former colleagues, she heard that a working draft on human rights in Egypt, which in past versions has run 70 or 80 pages, had been slashed down to only 20 pages. She said she heard that a 60-page Tunisia draft report submitted early this year had been stripped down to just 15 pages. The instructions to DRL issued earlier this year take specific aim at non-refoulement — derived from a French word for return — which forbids sending people to places where they are at risk of harm. It is a bedrock principle of international human rights, refugee, and customary international law, and is embedded in U.S. domestic law. State Department employees were specifically instructed that the upcoming country reports should 'remove any reference' to 'refoulment of persons to a country where they would face torture or persecution,' according to the memo. State Department officials did not respond to repeated questions by The Intercept concerning the role the Trump administration's own third-country deportations played in the new directive. Experts say that watering down the human rights reports will cause real harm. 'People will suffer. Immigration courts in the United States and asylum claim adjudicators around the world look at these reports for guidance. If you redefine what persecution looks like in a particular country or what fear of retribution means, it can do real damage to real people,' said Amanda Klasing, national director of government relations and advocacy with Amnesty International USA. 'The U.S. government has an obligation of non-refoulment – that is to ensure it isn't sending or deporting people back to torture,' Klasing said. 'If theTrump administration ignores or rewrites the extent to which torture or other threatening conditions are happening in a country, it can create at least the façade of plausible deniability of allowing refoulement for individuals it is deporting, and that's dangerous.' More than 8,100 people have been expelled to third countries since January 20, and the U.S. has made arrangements to send people to at least 13 nations, so far, across the globe. Of them, 12 have been cited by the State Department for significant human rights abuses. But the Trump administration has cast a much wider net for its third-country deportations. The U.S. has solicited 64 nations to participate in its growing network of detainee dumping grounds for expelled immigrants. Fifty-eight of them — roughly 91 percent — were rebuked for human rights violations in last year's State Department human rights reports. The newest additions to America's global gulag are among the least free countries on the planet. Last month, the administration expelled five men — from Cuba, Jamaica, Laos, Vietnam, and Yemen — to the Southern African kingdom of Eswatini, an absolute monarchy with a dismal human rights record. The move closely followed the U.S. deportation of eight men to violence-plagued South Sudan, one of the most repressive nations in the world. The State Department's 2024 assessment of South Sudan catalogs an enormous range of serious abuses, including reports of extrajudicial killings; disappearances by or on behalf of government authorities; and instances in which 'security forces mutilated, tortured, beat, and harassed political opponents, journalists, and human rights activists.' The human rights report on Eswatini from last year refers to credible reports of arbitrary or unlawful killings, including extrajudicial killings; torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by the government; serious problems with the independence of the judiciary; and the incarceration of political prisoners. Experts emphasize that the State Department's record on calling out human rights violations has been imperfect at best – and has suffered a severe crisis of credibility over Israel's war in Gaza. Still, even critics have commended the DRL's annual reports. Sheline, who resigned in March 2024 to protest the Biden administration's support for Israel's war in Gaza, referenced the longtime disconnect between the State Department's rhetoric and action in terms of human rights and its selective outrage over violations. 'All that said, there still was a certain expectation there that the United States cared about human rights. So now to have totally abandoned that is significant,' she told The Intercept, noting that even last year's report on Israel's human rights abuses 'was pretty damning, even with some material stripped out of it.' Sheline added: 'What we would hear on the ground in foreign countries is that the reports mattered to human rights groups who could point out to their governments that the 'United States is watching you.' Even if it didn't impact U. S. policy, it still carried the weight of a U.S. government document.' Josh Paul, who spent more than 11 years as the director of congressional and public affairs at the State Department bureau that oversees arms transfers to foreign nations before resigning in 2023 over U.S. military assistance to Israel, echoed these sentiments. 'For all the failings of the U.S. government when it comes to policy decisions, the Human Rights Report has long been a key and trusted annual snapshot of the state of global human rights whose conclusions, although often hard-fought within the bureaucracy, have rarely pulled their punches,' he said. 'Sadly, that is not what we expect this year, in which it is clear that Secretary Rubio has demanded a more politicized approach that will result in a report that lacks credibility.' Last Friday, a group of senators including Welch introduced the Safeguarding the Integrity of Human Rights Reports Act,which aims to 'ensure that the Department of State's annual Country Reports on Human Rights remain robust and free from political influence' and mandate inclusion of abuses that the Trump administration ordered DRL to strip away like restrictions on participation in the political process and violence or discrimination against LGBTQI+ individuals, persons with disabilities and indigenous people, among others. 'The original purpose of these reports is to inform Congress about how to ensure taxpayer funding is not going to countries that undermine human rights,' said Klasing. 'It's a check on the executive. It's Congress holding the president – any president – accountable to making good long-term human rights-centered decisions instead of short-term diplomatic wins.'
Yahoo
15-07-2025
- Yahoo
‘I'm running,' Cannizzaro announces she will run for Nevada Attorney General's seat
LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — Nevada Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro announced on Tuesday that she is starting her campaign for the attorney general's office in 2026. She is the second major candidate to do so. 'Our leaders should be focused on making Nevada safer and stronger, but the Trump administration and Congress have continued their assault on ordinary Nevadans, cutting Medicaid and funding for our schools, attacking Planned Parenthood and reproductive rights, and raising the cost of energy, housing and groceries,' she said in a news release. Cannizzaro is a lifelong Nevadan, a former prosecutor, and the first woman to serve as Majority Leader of the Nevada State Senate. Her announcement also included a YouTube video. Cannizzaro will go up against state Treasurer Zach Conine in the democratic primary. The former attorney and consultant was the first major candidate when he announced in May that he would seek the attorney general's office. According to his campaign website, he is 'running to be Nevada's next Attorney General because Nevadans deserve someone who isn't afraid of rolling up their sleeves to take on big fights.' It also states, 'Whether it's protecting Nevadans from overreach by the federal government, leveling the playing field for workers, families, and small businesses, or delivering results for Nevadans who are struggling.' Current Attorney General Aaron Ford announced his plans to challenge Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Forbes
30-06-2025
- Forbes
Secretary Rubio – It's Not Too Late To Prioritize Human Rights
HONG KONG - JUNE 04: Participants take part at the candlelight vigil as they hold candles at ... More Victoria Park on June 4, 2015 in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong. Hong Kong residents held a candlelight vigil as it marks 26th anniversary of 1989 student-led Tiananmen Square protest. (Photo by) Pending the legal fall-out, last week marked a turning point in U.S. foreign policy away from safeguarding and defending human rights. As part of a planned reorganization, approximately 80 percent of employees in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor at the U.S. Department of State are expected to be put on administrative leave and democracy and human rights organizations in the U.S. and around the globe began receiving notifications that all but two previously awarded grants for this year have been cancelled. These drastic cuts, if carried out, lack strategy and foresight, and contrary to public messaging, the vast majority of these programs have nothing to do with any 'woke' agenda. Instead, many of these programs are designed to protect fundamental freedoms. These cuts would put America on its back foot as it faces challenges from rights-violating countries like China, North Korea, Russia, and Iran. Many Americans want to eliminate wasteful spending. But a mandate to cut waste is not a directive to compromise national security. Ordinary Americans deserve to know that the types of programs being cut weaken America and undermine our ability to counter emboldened adversaries. I have just returned from a trip to South Korea where I met with incredible leaders in civil society devoted to defending human rights in North Korea and holding the Kim regime accountable. Many of the grants fund cost-effective and life-saving information access efforts that educate ordinary North Koreans on the goodness of the U.S. and the truth about the outside world. North Koreans who have left North Korea universally acknowledge that access to information was what motivated them to escape in the first place. The U.S. has already degraded critical information access efforts conducted by Radio Free Asia which ended radio broadcasts into North Korea at the end of April. That information void is being backfilled by the Chinese Communist Party and flooding North Korea with pro-China information through other means. Other grants fund research on the Kim regime's forced labor programs. Forced labor serves as a critical funding source that lines the private coffers of the regime and may even be used for the regime's development of weapons — including weapons that can be used to strike the continental U.S. In other words, these grants advanced U.S. national security. Without essential support, many of these organizations will not exist by the end of the year. Similarly, some of the most important human rights organizations countering the malign influence of the CCP will also be severely hit. Bethany Allen at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute covered this topic in great detail when 'stop work orders' were issued and grants were temporarily suspended earlier this year, warning that many groups may face extinction if cuts proceed. Suffice it to say that some of the most important organizations advocating for basic freedoms for Hong Kongers, Uyghurs, Tibetans, and others persecuted by the CCP will be diminished in capacity if not outright shuttered if things proceed as planned. Among other valuable reasons, these groups are often a critical source of information to the U.S. government and civil society about the CCP. Losing access to these resources at the same time the U.S. is increasing efforts to counter the CCP is counter-productive and potentially crippling to U.S. foreign policy. It's fair to ask why these organizations do not have more diversified funding streams. But to put it simply, the private sector has too often found funding for human rights programs to be at odds with its financial interests and desire for market access, particularly when it comes to China. And that's where the US has historically come in. The US is the only country in the globe with the technical skills and capacity, historical involvement, and funding to support human rights efforts at scale. This is to say nothing of the loss of institutional capacity. Many of the State Department staff who may be cut have saved innumerable lives. They have burned the midnight oil to secure the release of political prisoners, rescued and provided safe haven to political dissidents in closed societies, all while advancing U.S. interests. These individuals deserve promotions and to be honored for their public service, not put on leave and removed from careers devoted to the American people and advancing the cause of freedom. If cuts to these critical programs in Asia are any indicator, these measures will not just hamstring global civil society efforts to safeguard and defend human rights, they may downright end them, at least as we know them. Apart from a swift change in course, generations of people around the globe will feel the reverberations and impacts of these decisions for years to come. So what can be done? First, Secretary Rubio has the authority to change course at any time. His congressional legacy of advancing human rights and freedom hangs in the balance and that legacy risks being permanently tarnished. The Trump administration's own legacy of advancing human rights through its promotion of religious freedom in the first term similarly hangs in the balance. At minimum, grant funding for 2025 should be restored as organizations were counting on these budgets to continue their operations through the end of the year. Critical staff at DRL should also be retained. Some programs at DRL, no doubt, can and should be cut strategically, but dropping nearly all pre-existing human rights programming is like cutting off a limb and expecting US foreign policy to be able to function. Second, Congress must act. As a conservative administration, a decision to pivot away from Reagan's peace through strength policy paradigm which recognizes the essential values of possessing both a strong national defense as well as a strong arsenal of tools to defend human rights, merits serious questioning. The legacy and success of peace through strength stands on its own and a pivot from those successful policies requires justification. Furthermore, Congress has historically led on human rights and that means that many programs administered by DRL are congressionally mandated and appropriated. Congress must stand its ground in ensuring the continuation of those programs and work tirelessly to appropriate funding next year to try to at least mitigate some of the damage from proposed cuts. Finally, individuals and the private sector must step up to fill in the void. Now, not next year, is the time to give generously to support civil society organizations in need. Their continued existence may depend on it. I have faith in the resilience of civil society's ability to weather this storm. But leaving so many groups in the lurch without funding and technical support from the U.S. is incredibly consequential. As Ronald Reagan aptly said, 'Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.' May that not happen on our watch.
