The Daily Rundown - June 30, 2026
🎰 Nevada’s gaming revenue saw a notable uptick in May. It made nearly $1.4 billion, more than 7% more than it did in May 2025. Most of those increases came from the state’s tourist hubs, with the Las Vegas Strip rising more than 13%, Reno rebounding 11%, and South Lake Tahoe surging more than 23%.
The May numbers improved upon increases made in April, which went up more than 5%. Fiscal year numbers that ended on May 31 showed a nearly 3% increase.
🏀 After six years of the WNBA’s Commissioner's Cup in-season tournament, the league will crown its first repeat champion tonight when the Las Vegas Aces take on the New York Liberty. The winning team earns a cash prize of $500,000 to split. The Aces will likely have to shoot better than when they faced the Liberty last week. They suffered a ten point loss, shooting less than 30% from beyond the arc. The game tips off at 4.
🚒 Fire crews have made significant progress on containing the Grapevine fire near Caliente, Nevada. The fire spread to over 25,000 acres, but the Bureau of Land Management says it is now 41% contained. The agency reports that the work of fire crews, along with diminished winds and consumption of fuels have reduced the threat of the fire spreading further. They say existing containment features are working well, allowing crews to transition to working on the interior of the fire.
🎞️ When it rains, it pours — just ask Las Vegas filmmaker Hisonni Mustafa. When KNPR last spoke to Mustafa, in 2021, he had just released the full-length feature, “Take Out Girl.” Since then, he’s graduated from the College of Southern Nevada and begun studying film at UNLV, all while grinding away at several short documentary films and PSAs.
Over the last nine months, those works have racked up several awards — including four Student Emmys, a Webby, and, most recently, a Directors Guild of America Student Spotlight Award for Underrepresented Directors, which Mustafa called "the greatest honor I have ever received as a filmmaker." On June 22, Mustafa premiered his latest short film, “Gospel for Ghosts,” in Atlanta — the result of his work with the Tyler Perry Studios Dream Collective incubator. And he's already working on his next two projects.
"I'm a nonstop sort of guy," Mustafa told KNPR's "State of Nevada" a day after debuting "Gospel For Ghosts" and a day before winning his DGA award. "I really want to succeed as a filmmaker, and there's a piece of me that has always believed that that comes from constant output. I think if I get to a point where I have proper financing and proper resources to make a film, I'll slow down and put more energy into those projects. But until then, I'm going at 100 miles an hour." Hear the full conversation with KNPR's Mike Prevatt here.
⚖️ In a sharp rebuke to President Trump, the Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the Constitution guarantees automatic birthright citizenship to virtually all children born in the United States. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the court's 6-3 opinion. The decision firmly rejected the executive order that Trump issued on the first day of his second term.
It sought to bar citizenship for babies born in the U.S. to parents who either entered the country illegally or who are living and working here legally with temporary visas. The executive order never went into effect because every lower court judge who reviewed it concluded, in the words of one judge, that it was "blatantly unconstitutional." Trump has long maintained that the Constitution does not guarantee birthright citizenship.
But as Chief Justice Roberts observed, the men who wrote the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution after the Civil War defined citizenship in broad terms on purpose, rejecting the views of those who wanted to limit citizenship. The resulting language of the amendment says, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States." Find NPR's full coverage of this decision and more 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.
