The Daily Rundown - May 13, 2026
🏒 The Professional Women’s Hockey League, or PWHL, is bringing women’s pro hockey to Las Vegas. The team is expected to make the official announcement this afternoon, Wednesday, May 13, at T-Mobile Arena, home of the Vegas Golden Knights. Foley Entertainment Group, the owner of the Golden Knights, is reported to be directly involved in the announcement process.
Las Vegas forges new ground by introducing the PWHL to the U.S. southwest, a year after the league expanded into the Pacific Northwest by adding Seattle and Vancouver. In growing to 11 teams in the past week, with eight active teams, there’s one more addition still to come to make it an even dozen for a league preparing to double in size since launching in 2024.
Since the Golden Knights began play in the NHL in 2017, girls' and women's hockey participation in Las Vegas has grown by 600%, the PWHL said.
And the PWHL brings another franchise to a growing sports market that includes the WNBA's Las Vegas Aces, who relocated to the city in 2018. The Aces have won three of the past four league titles and averaged more than 11,000 per outing over the past two seasons.
The yet-to-be-named Las Vegas team will play out of the Golden Knights' home T-Mobile Arena and feature a color scheme of green and gold.
💧 Nevada officials say a plan to cut water usage in the Humboldt River Basin is "on hold." That's according to the Nevada Independent. The decision reverses a proposal from the former state engineer, an official who lost his job before he could release the order.
State leaders now describe curtailment as a last resort, citing legal battles like those in other water districts. Snowpack levels reached near-record lows this year, and many farmers in Northern Nevada will face “a lean season” according to a recent water forecast from federal officials.
✈️ A new analysis from the site Turbli finds that eight of the 10 most turbulent airports in the country are in the Mountain West, where air moving over major mountain ranges can create unstable conditions during takeoff and landing. Denver ranked first, followed by Bozeman, Montana; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Salt Lake City; and Jackson, Wyoming.
Las Vegas ranked seventh, while Reno and Boise also made the top 10. The phenomenon is largely driven by geography; as winds flow across ranges like the Sierra Nevada and the Rockies, they can form “mountain wave” turbulence. Jason Ambrosi, president of the Air Line Pilots Association, International, said pilots are trained to manage those conditions and that airplanes are built to withstand them. Hear the full story by the Mountain West News Bureau's Kaleb Roedel here.
🗳️ Voters can now find polling locations for the 2026 Primary Election online. Additionally, there are interactive mapping tools to help locate places to vote and ballot drop-off locations, according to the Nevada Secretary of State’s Office. Included are maps with Tribal voting information. The primary will be on June 9 with early voting starting on May 23 and running through June 5.
Nevada conducts a closed primary election, meaning voters registered with a political party may only vote in that party’s primary; nonpartisan or minor party voters will only receive a ballot if there are nonpartisan contests available.
🚌 Nevada Democratic Senator Catherine Cortez Masto has introduced legislation to help protect kids who ride school buses, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports. The Safe Bus Routes to School Act would provide federal funds to plan, design, and construct or improve infrastructure such as sidewalks, pedestrian crossings, and bus stops.
Cortez Masto noted that Clark County has the largest school bus fleet in the country, providing rides for some 130,000 students. Indiana Senator Todd Young, a Republican, is the bill's co-sponsor.
📚 The pandemic-era backslide in math and reading scores for students across the U.S. was not a sudden catastrophe but the continuation of a brutal, decade-long "learning recession" that began years before COVID-19's arrival. That's according to the latest Education Scorecard, an annual deep-dive into student data from The Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University and Harvard University's Center for Education Policy Research.
The new Scorecard, released Wednesday and in its fourth year, offers several revelations for families, educators and policymakers looking for clarity — and hope — at a time when public education has been blamed and battered for those persistent declines in student performance.
Among the report's takeaways: Most states are finally making gains in math; federal relief dollars likely helped the lowest-income districts mount a hearty comeback; and, while most states have yet to make gains in reading, those that have all made legislative changes to how it's taught in their schools. Hear the full story by NPR’s Cory Turner here.
Part of these stories are taken from KNPR's daily newscast segment. To hear more daily updates like these, tune in to 88.9 KNPR FM.
