Tag: nevada

Nevada Senate Passes Joint Resolution Calling On Congress To Reschedule Psychedelics And Streamline Research

The Nevada Senate has approved a joint resolution that calls on Congress to reschedule certain psychedelics, provide protections for people using the substances in compliance with state law and streamline research.

About a week after the legislation from Sen. Rochelle Nguyen (D) cleared committee, the full chamber passed it in an 18-2 vote on Friday. It now moves to the Assembly for consideration.

Nguyen said on the floor that the proposal “sets forth the argument that certain research and therapeutic trials have demonstrated promising results for the use of these substances in the treatment of disorders such as traumatic brain injury, post-traumatic stress disorder, certain depressive disorders and other mental health conditions.”

“The measure notes the low abuse potential for classic psychedelics and highlights their safety in therapeutic session settings,” she said, adding that “SJR 10 expresses Nevada’s continued support for expanded research opportunities…and urges Congress and the appropriate federal agencies to increase related funding” for psychedelic medicines.

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Nevada Investigates Hundreds Of Potential ‘Double Vote’ Cases In 2024 Election

Nevada’s Secretary of State’s office is investigating more than 300 cases of possible double votes during the 2024 election, according to a recent report released by the office.

State elections officials received at least 303 complaints about individuals trying to vote twice in the November election, the report found. Each individual who allegedly attempted to vote twice in the election was caught before they cast their second vote.

Five of the cases have been closed, including one that was referred to an unspecified “outside agency,” and the four remaining cases were marked as “civil notice/no violation,” the office said in the March 21 report. The remaining possible cases, 298, are still marked as “open” in the report.

The 303 potential cases represent about 0.02 percent of the ballots cast in the Silver State during last year’s General Election, the office said.

“The Secretary of State’s Office takes every allegation of election integrity violations very seriously and investigates them to the full extent of the law,” the report said.

The office is now working “very closely with the Attorney General’s Office through the investigative process,” the report added. “Once a determination is made regarding the validity of any allegations, a report is prepared and cases are referred to outside investigatory agencies, including the Attorney General’s Office and county District Attorney offices.”

In the report, officials provided examples of double-vote complaints and investigations.

“A father and son with the same name who live in the same household both receive a ballot. The son votes in-person. The father mistakenly fills out his son’s ballot and mails it to his County Clerk or Registrar’s Office,” it said, adding that the registrar or clerk may detect a double vote for the son but doesn’t count the second ballot that was cast.

An investigation is then launched, and the secretary’s office sends a Civil Letter Notice to the father.

“The letter details the situation and outcome of the investigation, with a warning that attempting to vote twice is illegal, however, no intent was found and no further action will be taken unless more information is revealed. All civil notices are tracked by our office to monitor potential future irregularities,” the report said.

It’s not clear whether the example is based on a real-world incident or was one of the cases that were investigated during the 2024 election.

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Nevada Lawmakers Discuss Plan To Create Psychedelic Therapy Pilot Program

A Nevada bill that would create a psychedelic therapy pilot program for military veterans and first responders had its first committee hearing on Wednesday. Lawmakers heard testimony from reform advocates, veterans and their families and members of a state Psychedelic Medicines Working Group, which late last year called on lawmakers to establish a system for regulated access.

The legislation, AB 378, was filed March 10 by Assemblymember Max Carter (D) and 18 other cosponsors. Under the proposal, the state would establish an Alternative Therapy Pilot Program under the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

The program would allow the medically supervised use of psychedelics including psilocybin, DMT, ibogaine and mescaline, specifically among military veterans and first responders with certain mental health conditions.

While the Assembly Committee on Health and Human Services didn’t act on the legislation at Wednesday’s hearing, they took testimony and asked questions of some speakers.

Carter, speaking to the panel, said that psychedelic therapy—involving ketamine, which is not part of the current bill—helped him overcome “profound, deep grief, treatment-resistant depression” and complex post-traumatic stress disorder after the traumatic death of his wife.

He explained that the pilot program would focus on first responders and military veterans because “those are demographics that everybody can identify with, but more importantly, they’re ones with accelerated—or exacerbated—suicide rates.”

“When we come back here in two years,” Carter told colleagues, “my belief is this will be mainstream therapy.”

Notably, no members of the public at Wednesday’s hearing spoke in opposition to the proposal, nor did any offer neutral comments.

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Nevada Senators Take Up Resolution Calling On Congress To Reschedule Psychedelics And Streamline Research

Nevada senators took up a joint resolution on Tuesday that calls on Congress to reschedule certain psychedelics, provide protections for individuals using the substances in compliance with state law and streamline research.

As the Nevada legislature pushes forward with psychedelics reform, the Senate Legislative Operations and Elections Committee discussed the resolution from Sen. Rochelle Nguyen (D), hearing testimony from experts in the field.

“It is very much a grassroots, bipartisan issue. It is a Nevada issue,” Nguyen said in her opening remarks. “This is such an important issue. And this may seem like it’s an innocuous [resolution] where we’re sending a letter, but it is super important that we as a state send a message to the federal government—send a message to Washington, D.C.—that we need to start helping our community.”

“We have a mental health crisis. I don’t think you go into a committee room where you don’t hear about this,” she said. “This is just another solution to a problem that we have across our state.”

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Nevada Secretary of State’s Office Launches Investigations into Potential 2024 Election Fraud Violations Including 180 Cases of “Double Voting”

The Nevada Secretary of State’s Office has announced the launch of investigations into potential election law violations during the 2024 election cycle.

The investigations, detailed in the Secretary of State’s third quarterly election security report, stem from reports filed by citizens, automated security measures, and interagency collaborations.

The office emphasized that each case is being thoroughly investigated to determine the validity of the allegations and assess any necessary legal actions.

“Election security is a top priority for my office, and we’ve taken significant steps to ensure that Nevada’s elections are some of the safest in the country. The Secretary of State’s Office invested in enhanced cybersecurity, technology and investigative teams to ensure that our elections are protected and any issues that may come up can be addressed immediately,” said Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar.

“The 2024 election cycle was more secure than ever, and voters should be confident in the electoral process and their vote.”

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National Guard troops on standby in Washington state, Oregon and Nevada as a precaution for ‘potential’ election unrest

Ahead of potential civil unrest due to Tuesday’s presidential election, the National Guard is on standby as a precaution in several states, including Washington state and Oregon, where hundreds of ballots were damaged or destroyed after at least three ballot drop boxes were recently set on fire, officials say.

Almost all the ballots set ablaze on Monday were in a drop box in Vancouver, Washington, while most ballots in a drop box in Portland, Oregon, survived a fire set the same day, election officials said. The incidents are believed to be connected to a third fire on October 8, also in Vancouver. Portland police released a physical description of a suspect but said they’ve not identified him.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee addressed the ballot box fires in a news release Friday announcing the National Guard being placed on standby, saying, “The southwest region of Washington state has already experienced specific instances of election-related unrest.”

Inslee did not disclose how many troops would be activated on Tuesday, but said they will be available to support law enforcement from Monday to Thursday, according to the news release.

The US Department of Homeland Security has warned that threats to “election infrastructure” remain high, Inslee added.

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Nevada Election Chief Blocks Inspection of Suspect Voter Names in Swing State

Nevada’s top election official told local election directors not to investigate the names of thousands of people who left the state but remain on its voter rolls.

The watchdog group Citizens Outreach Foundation recently sued four jurisdictions in Nevada to force a review of the voter registration lists. 

The plaintiff, responding to an August memo from the office of Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar, a Democrat, asks that the court order the local offices to process or review challenges to some voters’ names.

In what Citizens Outreach Foundation President Chuck Muth calls a “David vs. Goliath” battle, the Left’s well-financed big guns have intervened to fight any efforts to maintain the accuracy of voter lists. Those big guns include Democratic superlawyer Marc Elias and the American Civil Liberties Union.

The foundation flagged the suspect names using data from voter registration files and the U.S. Postal Service’s change-of-address list.

“Several counties had started to process the challenges, until the secretary of state memo,” Muth told The Daily Signal. “After that, they said that in light of the secretary’s memo, we are not going to process.”

Litigation was the last resort, Muth said, asserting that election clerks “got caught between a rock and a hard place.” 

The Citizen Outreach Foundation is suing the state’s largest jurisdiction, Clark County, which includes Las Vegas. The suit also targets Washoe County, Carson City, and Storey County.

The foundation established what it calls the Pigpen Project, aimed at cleaning Nevada’s voter registration rolls. It’s critical that election offices process challenges in order to flag mail-in ballots from ineligible voters, Muth said. 

The organization initially flagged just under 4,000 names for election clerks in late July. After findings in late August and early September, the total number of suspect names on Nevada’s voter rolls is about 33,000 statewide, Muth said. 

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AI ruling on jobless claims could make mistakes courts can’t undo, experts warn

Nevada will soon become the first state to use AI to help speed up the decision-making process when ruling on appeals that impact people’s unemployment benefits.

The state’s Department of Employment, Training, and Rehabilitation (DETR) agreed to pay Google $1,383,838 for the AI technology, a 2024 budget document shows, and it will be launched within the “next several months,” Nevada officials told Gizmodo.

Nevada’s first-of-its-kind AI will rely on a Google cloud service called Vertex AI Studio. Connecting to Google’s servers, the state will fine-tune the AI system to only reference information from DETR’s database, which officials think will ensure its decisions are “more tailored” and the system provides “more accurate results,” Gizmodo reported.

Under the contract, DETR will essentially transfer data from transcripts of unemployment appeals hearings and rulings, after which Google’s AI system will process that data, upload it to the cloud, and then compare the information to previous cases.

In as little as five minutes, the AI will issue a ruling that would’ve taken a state employee about three hours to reach without using AI, DETR’s information technology administrator, Carl Stanfield, told The Nevada Independent. That’s highly valuable to Nevada, which has a backlog of more than 40,000 appeals stemming from a pandemic-related spike in unemployment claims while dealing with “unforeseen staffing shortages” that DETR reported in July.

“The time saving is pretty phenomenal,” Stanfield said.

As a safeguard, the AI’s determination is then reviewed by a state employee to hopefully catch any mistakes, biases, or perhaps worse, hallucinations where the AI could possibly make up facts that could impact the outcome of their case.

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Nevada receives grant to establish state-run hate crime reporting hotline

A new grant from the Department of Justice will be used to set up a Nevada hate crime reporting hotline.

Earlier this month, Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford announced his office will receive $1,164,424 in funding.

Nevada is the only state this cycle that will receive the grant.

“In seeking justice for hate crimes, it is important to remember victims need resources and support to feel safe and valued in their communities,” Ford said. “This funding will aid in bridging the gap between hate crime victims and the services available to them.”

The funding will be used to establish policies and procedures for the hotline, implementing focused training for staff regarding the new hotline, hiring new staff members, and integrating the hotline into the Attorney General office’s preexisting Constituent Services framework.

The FBI defines a hate crime as a “criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity.”

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Scientists still baffled from giant human skeletons up to 10 feet tall decades after initial discovery

A series of mysterious giant skeletons up to 10 feet tall reportedly discovered in and around Nevada caves last century — dubbed the “Giants of Lovelock” — are still baffling scientists decades later.

The claims about supersized humans who roamed the area around Lovelock, a remote town 90 miles northeast of Reno, thousands of years ago are rooted in Native America lore, which tells of fierce, redheaded, pale-skinned giants who arrived from Central America by boat and attacked local tribes.

After years of war, the foreign invaders were chased into a cave and slaughtered en masse, according to stories passed down by the indigenous Paiute people.

Experts believe the tale of the giant warriors’ violent extermination is likely a legend, but reports of discoveries made in the area of Lovelock decades ago have continued to raise many unanswered questions.

The first foray into the Lovelock cave was made in 1911, when a pair of miners searching for guano, or bat excrement used as fertilizer, allegedly unearthed 60 human skeletons, including some measuring between 7 and 8 feet tall.

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