McKenna Ross’ top Nevada politics stories of 2025

The Silver State was plenty purple in 2025.

Nevada has long had a reputation for its libertarian tilt. Nowadays, partisanship leads many political stories. In top state government and politics stories of the year, some political lines were blurred when politicians bucked their party’s go-to stances to make headlines, while other party stances stayed entrenched.

Here are a handful of the biggest stories out of Nevada government and politics in 2025.

Film tax credit saga returns for parts 2 and 3

A large-scale effort to bring a film studio to Southern Nevada was revived — and died twice — in 2025. Sony Pictures Entertainment and Warner Bros. Discovery, who were previously leading opposing efforts to build multi-acre studio lots with tax breaks, joined forces in February to back one bill in front of the Nevada Legislature. They were joined by developer Howard Hughes Corp. in a lobbying push throughout the four-month session, then once again during a seven-day special legislative session in mid-November.

The renewed legislation drew plenty of praise from union and business leaders and created an unlikely coalition of fiscal conservatives and progressives on the left against it. Proponents said the proposal would help create a new industry for Nevada, creating thousands of construction and entertainment industry-related jobs. Opponents criticized the billion-dollar effect it would have on the state’s general fund as a “Hollywood handout.”

In the end, the opposition won out. It passed the Assembly 22-20 in the last week of the regular session and received the same vote count during the special session — though six members switched their votes.

The state Senate voted on the proposed Summerlin Studios project only during the special session, where it failed because 11 senators voted against it or were absent for the Nov. 19 vote. Several lawmakers called out the intense political pressure to pass the bill, despite their concerns of how the subsidies would have affected state coffers.

Democrats fight to strengthen mail-in voting

The movement to enshrine mail-in voting in Nevada also stretched through both 2025 legislative sessions, as well as a federal Supreme Court case.

Democratic lawmakers sought to establish state laws around voting by mail, including about the placement of ballot boxes between early voting and Election Day and the timeline in which clerks had to count mailed ballots received after polls closed.

Assembly Speaker Steve Yeager, D-Las Vegas, proposed a compromise with Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo through a bill expanding ballot drop box access in the run-up to Election Day and implementing voter ID requirements, but Lombardo vetoed the bill.

Democrats found a way during the special session, however. In the final hour before the session’s end on Nov. 19, Senate Democrats introduced and considered a resolution to propose enshrining mail-in voting in the Nevada Constitution via a voter amendment. The resolution must past the next consecutive session before it can go on the 2028 general election ballot.

This all comes as the U.S. Supreme Court weighs a case that could affect Nevada’s existing law that allows ballots postmarked on Election Day to be counted as late as 5 p.m. four days after Election Day.

Cyberattack on Nevada cripples the state for weeks

Nevada state government was crippled for four weeks in the late summer and fall when a ransomware attack was discovered in state systems in August.

Many state services were moved off-line to sequester the IT threats, leading to 28 days of outages after the Aug. 24 discovery of the ransomware attack. Those included worker’s compensation claims, DMV services, online applications for social services and a background check system.

According to the after-action report, a malicious actor entered the state’s computer system as early as May 14. The threat actor had accessed “multiple critical servers” by the end of August. State officials emphasized that core financial systems and Department of Motor Vehicle data were not breached by the hackers.

The state did not pay a ransom, according to officials. Instead, it worked with external cybersecurity vendors to deal with incident response and recovered about 90 percent of affected data. That costed about $1.5 million for those contracts and overtime pay.

Budget woes leave state in status quo limbo

Financial uncertainty clouded Nevada state government throughout the year as the impact of federal purse-shrinking, uncertainty around the effect of Trump administration tariffs and the reduced tax revenue from a tourism slump persisted throughout 2025.

Nevada lawmakers passing the state’s two-year budget cycle were put in a tight spot when economic forecasts projecting state revenue were downgraded during the legislative session and ultimately passed a state budget that avoided funding multiple new programs.