BOULDER CITY, Nev. — Janelle Sorenson loves the clear night skies in Boulder City, less than an hour’s drive from the bright lights of the Las Vegas Strip. It’s a small, quiet town, and she thinks an artificial intelligence data center would ruin the community and scar the desert landscape.
So over the summer, she joined with other residents to successfully oppose plans for one of the giant computing warehouses that have popped up around the country.
But their victory was short-lived. The developers withdrew their application and instead sought adjacent land owned by the federal government — and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management signed off.
“Not only did we not get to decide anything or have a say,” Sorenson said, “we were just really kept in the dark.”
The Townsite data center was the first in the country to be approved on federal public land, though construction is stalled after a judge ruled that the government couldn’t use an old environmental review from when the project was intended to be a solar farm.
Tech companies are eager for vast tracts to build data centers that can be as large as 70 football fields, and Townsite could set a precedent for similar projects on federal property with more than a dozen others in the planning stages. President Trump has been a steadfast supporter of the AI industry, which he views as a source of economic growth and part of a global competition with China.
However, data centers have been unpopular in many communities as voters worry about higher electricity bills, declining water supplies and other effects. In Nevada, where 80% of the land is owned by the federal government, Townsite and other projects have become a dominant issue in the battleground state’s closely watched governor’s race.
Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo, one of his party’s most vulnerable incumbents, doesn’t outright oppose building data centers on public lands, as long as they have community support. He recently signed an agreement with Trump’s Republican administration to streamline infrastructure projects, which could include data centers on federal lands.
Democratic nominee Aaron Ford, the state attorney general, has pledged to oppose data centers on public lands, saying affordable housing should be the priority.
Both say the projects, whether on public or private land, must follow state rules, such as requiring data centers to cover their own energy costs and protecting water supplies, or they would lose eligibility for state tax abatements.
Sorenson, the Boulder City resident, considers herself a liberal, but she said her conservative neighbors are on the same page as she is.
“We’re all aligned on this,” she said.
Autumn McGrath-Shook, who lives in the same town, said she recently left the GOP and registered with the Green Party over data centers, though she still identifies as conservative. Worried about the environmental impact on wildlife, she joined forces with “these crazy libs” to oppose the project.
Data centers have quickly become a “catalyzing issue” in the midterms, catching many politicians flat-footed, said David Damore, a political science professor at the University of Nevada Las Vegas.
Some state leaders who were previously supportive of data centers have rushed to respond. For example, Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott paused data center approvals until audits are completed, and Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro signed an executive order removing data center proposals from a fast-track permitting process and requiring them to receive local approval before seeking state approval.
In August, Ford announced his plan to pause new tax abatements for data centers while an audit is conducted to see whether the projects have fulfilled promises about producing tax revenue and economic benefits.
In September, Lombardo, who has said data centers provide enormous economic opportunity for Nevada, signed an executive order placing more guardrails on them and requiring them to pay more taxes to support schools.
The two have successfully “muddied the waters” on their data center positions, Damore said.
Lombardo criticized Ford for co-sponsoring 2015 legislation that created the state’s tax abatement program for the facilities, a measure that received bipartisan support. Ford criticized Lombardo for giving more than $200 million in tax breaks to data centers, which is connected to the legislation that Ford co-sponsored.
Ford told the Associated Press that he would use “every tool” at his disposal to prevent data centers from skirting state guardrails, including withholding tax abatements and pursuing litigation.
Lombardo, whose campaign declined to make him available for an interview, has a similar pitch. His office said he would not hesitate to confront the federal government to advocate for Nevadans.
But that’s not good enough for McGrath-Shook, who is on the fence in the governor’s race. She thinks Ford is soft on crime, but she views Lombardo as more pro-data centers.
“I would much rather vote for Lombardo than Aaron Ford in a normal world,” she said. “But with the looming data centers, it really changes the landscape — and literally.”
Last year, Trump signed an executive order to accelerate permitting for AI data centers, and his administration has rolled back the National Environmental Policy Act, saying the bedrock law needlessly delays federal approval for energy and infrastructure projects.
Dan Diorio, executive vice president of state policy and government affairs for the Data Center Coalition, said the industry wants to be a part of the conversation about responsible development on federal lands.
“The good-faith actors in this space are going to be approaching that development responsibly,” he said, “ensuring that it’s going to do no harm on important federal lands.”
But environmentalists are concerned about data centers developing on federal lands to skirt environmental protections and laws and circumvent permitting processes. They’re generally opposed to using public lands for the projects in the first place.
“We believe that public lands are reserved for public good and should be protected and kept in trust for future generations,” said Olivia Tanager, director of the Sierra Club’s Toiyabe Chapter. “And the idea of using public lands for data center construction totally flies in the face of that set of values.”
She said Congress should pass legislation with new standards for environmental reviews and public engagement that could slow development.
“Short of some type of legislation to that effect,” Tanager said, “we’re staring down the barrel of having many data centers move forward on public lands over the next few years.”
Hill writes for the Associated Press.
FOOTHILL FARMS, Calif. — As a California state lawmaker, Richard Pan authored some of the strongest vaccine laws in the country.
His reward — and part of the backlash, on top of death threats — was being physically assaulted outside the Capitol in Sacramento and spattered with blood thrown from the gallery.
Now, a few years removed from the state Senate and teaching health policy at UC Davis, Pan is running for Congress, in part to fight an old nemesis, the terminally misguided Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and to arrest the Trump administration’s sledgehammering of the nation’s public healthcare system.
“We need people in Congress who have the background, the training, the knowledge to basically hold this administration accountable,” Pan said last week on a baking 100-degree day in the Sacramento suburbs.
“I know what it’s like to be on the front lines,” said Pan, who spent a dozen years teaching and practicing pediatrics before being elected to the Assembly in 2010. “I’ve seen measles, right?”
In fact, his push to toughen vaccination requirements was spurred by a 2014-15 measles outbreak at Disneyland, which, at the time, was one of the largest and most significant epidemics to arise after the disease was supposedly eliminated from the U.S. in 2000.
Little did we know.
Every action has an equal and opposition reaction, a law of physics that’s equally applicable to the realm of politics.
Pan is part of a wave of doctors and scientists running for office this November — for school boards, city councils, state legislatures, the House and U.S. Senate — owing in good part to Kennedy’s quackery and the hollowing out of such vital health and research agencies as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health.
The political organization 3.14 Action — its name a decimal approximation of pi — has recruited and helped elect hundreds of candidates from STEM backgrounds (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) and endorsed more than 500 of those running this year, including Pan in his race in Sacramento and in neighboring Placer and Yolo counties.
Dr. Richard Pan meets Dr. Teah Harris-Johnson and her daughter before participating in a roundtable discussion at Liberty Towers Church in Sacramento.
(Jose Luis Villegas / For The Times)
Shaughnessy Naughton, a chemist who worked on drug discovery and breast cancer research, founded 3.14 Action in 2016 after two unsuccessful tries for a congressional seat in the Philadelphia suburbs. When she started the organization, Naughton noted, there were more talk radio hosts on Capitol Hill than scientists and engineers. (Nearly two dozen doctors and nurses currently serve in Congress. More than 30 have run this election cycle.)
“There isn’t an issue that doesn’t benefit by having fact-based decision-makers, people that will go into office as problem-solvers,” Naughton said from Pennsylvania, which is in the throes of the nation’s worst measles outbreak in more than three decades. Health and Human Services Secretary Kennedy has downplayed the severity, even as the incidence of other vaccine-preventable diseases is rising.
“That’s essentially what scientists and physicians are,” Naughton said. “They are problem-solvers. and clearly our country is facing a lot of problems.”
Among those she cited was “the arsonist in charge of HHS.”
Pan has a history with Kennedy, who has long reigned as one of the country’s preeminent anti-vaxxers.
In 2015, he helped summon hundreds of demonstrators to Sacramento to protest Pan’s legislation tightening vaccination requirements. (Kennedy later apologized for using the word “holocaust” to condemn the proposed law, though he revisited the Nazi analogy during the COVID-19 pandemic.)
In 2019, Kennedy returned to Sacramento to oppose another bill Pan authored, this one tightening the rules for vaccination exemptions. Again, he was joined by an army of protesters. Tensions peaked when a demonstrator threw a cup of blood from the spectators’ gallery onto the Senate floor, halting business for several hours before the bill passed.
Dr. Richard Pan sits between Illinois Rep. Lauren Underwood and Sean Frame, a candidate for state Senate, at the maternal health roundtable.
(Jose Luis Villegas / For The Times)
Pan’s opponent in November is Rep. Kevin Kiley, a conservative Republican running as an independent.
Seeking election in a Democratic-tilting district drawn under Proposition 50, the voter-passed gerrymander, Kiley has sought to distance himself from Trump and the MAGA movement, saying he would not caucus with GOP lawmakers if he returned to Washington.
Like his jury-rigged political persona, Kiley seems to want it both ways on vaccines.
Before going to Congress, while serving in the Assembly, Kiley voted against Pan’s legislation cracking down on fraudulent vaccine exemptions. He’s described vaccines as a vital public health tool, but condemned government mandates and suggested vaccination should be a matter of parental choice. He claims Pan has eroded public trust by politicizing the issue.
As for Kennedy, Kiley told the San Francisco Chronicle a lot of things “that I don’t agree with,” though he’s never called out the secretary for his cuckoo-land theories — vaccines cause autism, the fluoride in public water supplies is making Americans “stupider,” and many more — or denounced his destructive policies.
That passivity, Pan said, amounts to complicity.
“It’s not just simply a talking point,” Pan said of public health policy. “It’s reality and we need to have policy based on what’s really happening, not on some ideological conspiracy theory.”
Dr. Richard Pan participates in a discussion during a Black maternal health roundtable last week at Liberty Towers Church in Sacramento.
(Jose Luis Villegas / For The Times)
Pan’s campaign is focused on more than vaccines and RFK Jr.
Like most Democrats, he’s made affordability a key part of his candidacy, citing higher gas and grocery prices and, inevitably, the rising cost of healthcare and the roughly $1-trillion cut from Medicaid under last year’s Big Sop To Billionaires Bill.
The super-wealthy got tax cuts, Pan told a silver-haired audience at a 55-and-older community in Roseville, while the bill will make healthcare less accessible for millions and undermine both Medicare and Social Security. Kiley supported the legislation, the centerpiece of Trump’s second term. As a doctor and state lawmaker, Pan said, he worked to expand healthcare and address the needs of his community.
“We don’t pass laws to make lives harder,” Pan said. “That’s what he’s done.”
Later, at a forum on Black maternal health, Pan said Trump’s attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion programs and the so-called war on woke ignores glaring disparities in the treatment of Black women versus other patients. “The data is there,” said Pan, speaking before a banner decorated with purple butterflies and the proclamation, “Black Mothers Matter.”
“The facts are there,” Pan went on. “It’s a very, very real problem and it needs to be addressed and it needs to be solved.”
He brought up, somewhat sheepishly, his campaign.
“That’s why I’m running,” Pan said, to “have another person in Congress … who’s going to tell the administration we are not going to bury DEI. We’re not going to bury disparities. These are real problems.”
As is the assault on science, the undermining of research and the promotion of nutty nostrums by those at the highest levels of the federal government.
Hopefully, the midterm election will begin the healing process.
Republican Senator Rand Paul is standing in the way of the bipartisan Connected Vehicle Security Act of 2026, sponsored by Senators Bernie Moreno of Ohio and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, from passing through the Senate. The legislation aims to prohibit the import, manufacture, and sale
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a raft of bills designed to push back on the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement in California, including bans on electric shock gloves and a revamped ban on law enforcement face coverings after a previous law was blocked by a federal judge.
The more than 20 bills approved by the governor Tuesday were crafted to thwart tactics used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, including the use of facial coverings and making arrests outside immigration hearings. Other bills are meant to boost state oversight of federal detention centers in the state.
“Trump has put his political interests above the health, safety and livelihood of American families. California is taking action to strengthen transparency, accountability, and oversight around immigration enforcement in our state,” Newsom said in a statement. “This is about stepping up where the federal government has failed our communities. We will continue protecting our people, upholding the rule of law, and making clear that if the federal government operates in California, we will hold them accountable.”
The governor signed legislation to ban the use of electric shock gloves by any law enforcement in the state, which was hastily written and passed after reports that the Department of Homeland Security planned to spend $20 million to outfit agents with the gloves.
One bill, dubbed the “No Kings Act,” makes it easier for residents to sue federal agents for alleged civil rights violations, such as racial profiling, unlawful searches or interfering with the right to free speech.
Its author, Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) said the law already applies to state and local officials and that his bill, SB 747, closes a loophole that exempts federal officials.
Newsom signed another bill by Wiener that bans ICE agents and other law enforcement from wearing face coverings or masks while on duty. After a federal judge blocked his prior bill, which applied to federal agents but not state police, Wiener passed legislation that applies to both.
Many of the bills Newsom signed Tuesday aim to improve state oversight at immigration detention centers within the state and slowroll the development of new facilities.
Among them is AB 1801, which requires municipalities to wait at least 180 days and hold public hearings before approving any plans to build or convert facilities into immigration detention centers.
Newsom signed a 25% tax on companies that operate immigration detention centers in the state. Most of the detention centers in California are run by the private prison companies GEO Group and CoreCivic, under contracts with the federal government. AB 1633 by Assemblymember Matt Haney (D-San Francisco) would raise an estimated $177 million, according to a fiscal analysis of the bill.
Another new law requires local agencies to disclose 911 calls made from immigration detention centers. It stems from a CalMatters investigation which found alleged sexual assaults at Otay Mesa, a detention center in San Diego, were being investigated by CoreCivic, the company that operates the facility, rather than local law enforcement.
“Our communities deserve safety, and no person in detention should have to resort to throwing notes over the walls of a detention facility to have their needs met and their voice heard,” Sen. Lena Gonzalez (D-Long Beach), chair of the Legislative Latino Caucus and the bill’s author, said in a statement after lawmakers passed her legislation.
Activists and Democratic lawmakers have raised alarms about the rising number of in-custody deaths and poor conditions inside ICE detention facilities. The federal government has reported 57 in-custody deaths during Trump’s second term, up from the 26 deaths reported during the previous four years.
During reviews of detention centers around the state last year, Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office found substandard conditions including overcrowding, delays in medical care and poor quality food and drinking water. At one center, detainees were not given clothing warm enough to protect against extremely low temperatures in the facility, Justice Department staff reported.
Newsom signed legislation indefinitely extending the attorney general’s duty to review private detention centers, which had been set to expire next year.
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a package of bills Saturday that increases protections for LGBTQ people in California, saying the legislation was needed because of recent moves by the Trump administration that threaten that support.
One of the six bills would provide housing, employment and other help to service members discharged from the U.S. military as a result of President Donald Trump’s efforts to ban transgender people from serving.
“I’m grateful to Governor Newsom for signing this legislation and proud that California is standing with the veterans who were unjustly forced out of uniform,” said Assemblymember Chris Ward (D-San Diego), the author of Assembly Bill 1775.
Other bills Newsom signed create stronger privacy protections by limiting the sharing of sexual orientation and gender identity, while also requiring healthcare providers to notify the California Attorney General when they receive a subpoena regarding healthcare activities the state protects.
Another new law will enhance access to drugs known as PrEP and PEP, which are aimed at preventing HIV.
“The Trump administration has launched an all-out assault on the LGBTQ community, using medical records to target U.S. servicemembers and civilians alike, hurting countless people and betraying hard-won trust,” Newsom’s office said in a press release. “California will not stand for it.”
The bills Newsom signed Saturday were priority bills of the California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus.
Since taking office in 2019, Newsom has signed dozens of bills adding protections for LGBTQ people.
The governor’s office noted that this year’s state budget included $66 million to help people get access to gender-affirming care and abortion.
“I’m proud of the work our Caucus has done to advance legislation that meets the real needs of our community, and I thank Governor Newsom for signing these important bills,” said state Senator Sabrina Cervantes (D-Riverside), who is chair-elect of the LGBTQ Caucus.
“This progress reflects what we can accomplish when we work together to build a California where LGBTQ+ people and their families can live with greater safety, opportunity, and dignity,” Cervantes said.
PHOENIX — Former U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl, a longtime Republican lawmaker from Arizona who shaped landmark water policies in the U.S. West and guided the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, has died. He was 84.
Kyl died Wednesday night from a neurological disorder, said Gordon James, a communications professional who is a longtime friend of the Kyl family. Kyl had withdrawn from public life in December 2025 after announcing he had been diagnosed with dementia.
Kyl spent almost three decades in Congress, serving in both chambers, and watched his party undergo a drastic transformation, with his career spanning Ronald Reagan’s presidency to President Trump’s first term.
Former Republican Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, who considered Kyl a mentor, described the former senator in a February 2025 interview with the Associated Press as a true statesman and a “workhorse” among Washington, D.C.’s “showhorses.”
“If you saw him on the plane, he was sitting in the aisle, in coach, and he was reading,” Ducey said. “And he was reading potential bills or Senate business.”
Kyl returns briefly to Senate to fill McCain seat
Kyl rose to a leadership position during his last full term in the Senate, when his Republican colleagues selected him as minority whip. After retiring from politics in 2013 and becoming a lobbyist, Kyl returned to Congress briefly in 2018, when Ducey appointed him to fill the vacancy left by the late U.S. Sen. John McCain.
His appointment drew high praise from Trump, who said he was looking forward to working with “the extraordinary senator.” Kyl stayed for less than four months before rejoining lobbying firm Covington and Burling.
“At the federal level, and I regret to say that this is the case, but probably a lot of my better achievements were in preventing bad things from happening (rather) than forcing good things to happen,” Kyl said in a 2012 conversation with former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.
Lawyer with expertise in water gets elected
Kyl was born in Oakland, Nebraska, on April 25, 1942, and grew up in a rural farming district in Iowa that his father represented in the U.S. House. At 18, he headed southwest to attend the University of Arizona, where he met his wife, Caryll, and earned a law degree.
Before being elected for the first of his four terms in the House in 1987, Kyl was a key participant in shaping Arizona’s 1980 groundwater code as a lawyer representing a large water utility. The first-of-its-kind code created a regulatory framework for managing groundwater in the drought-stricken state, largely centering on the state’s population centers, including Phoenix and Tucson.
In 2004, Kyl authored legislation that provided one of the largest tribal water rights settlements, which, after a decades-long battle, gave the Gila River Indian Community enough water to fill nearly 313,500 Olympic-sized swimming pools annually. Republican U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who later served as majority leader, called Kyl’s work ethic “legendary” in a 2012 floor speech and said Kyl had labored mostly behind the scenes for 15 years to advance the settlement.
“It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, but I was in a position to be the catalyst,” Kyl told the Phoenix New Times in a 2006 interview. “There wasn’t anybody else who could do that water deal. And it had to be done.”
Arizona State University’s Kyl Center for Water Policy takes its name from him. Its director, Sarah Porter, said Kyl was generous with his time and an effective member of the state’s congressional delegation who took a practical approach to water policy. “He’s always sort of cared about the public good and been able to think about, ‘What will this mean for the generations to come?’” Porter said, adding that Kyl remained “quite a dynamo” until recent years, as his wife battled health problems.
‘Giant’ in the Senate kept Republican caucus together
Ducey said Kyl was a “giant” in the Senate, further describing him as serious, engaging, forthright and thoughtful. His biggest impacts, Ducey said, came from the way he kept the Republican caucus together in opposition to Obamacare and his staunch support of Israel.
Kyl also backed legislation to authorize construction of a fence stretching hundreds of miles along the U.S.-Mexico border. He later joined with Democrats to support a bill that would provide a path to citizenship and temporary guest-worker status for those in the U.S. without authorization. The proposal ultimately failed.
As a lobbyist, Kyl helped guide the confirmation of Trump-picked U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. When Kyl returned to the halls of Congress in 2018, he was known as Kavanaugh’s chief Sherpa — an informal but widely known term for a nominee’s guide to the political tundra in the Senate.
In a statement disclosing his dementia diagnosis, Kyl harkened back to the words of Reagan, when the former president revealed his own Alzheimer’s diagnosis and said he was starting a journey that would lead him to the end of his life.
Kyl said he shared Reagan’s confidence for Arizona and the nation’s future, and that despite his diagnosis, he was a “very fortunate man.”
Billeaud writes for the Associated Press. Former Associated Press writer Sejal Govindarao contributed to this report.