The Daily Rundown - July 20th, 2026
🪩 Before Celine Dion and Elton John ushered in the era of the big concert residencies, production shows ruled the Strip. They featured everything from dancers and illusionists to acrobats and ventriloquists.
Twenty years ago, the Strip boasted four Broadway shows. As recently as 2013, Cirque du Soleil had seven shows being staged simultaneously on the Boulevard.
Economic factors and lower visitorship have wiped out productions over the last year — including "DiscoShow" and "Bob Marley: Hope Road" in January — but show closures were happening in earnest between 2023 and 2025, and even more in the mid-2010s.
In short, there are myriad reasons why ticket buyers have been prioritizing other forms of live entertainment, but one stands out.
"What Las Vegas has become is a very top-heavy city when it comes to sports and entertainment, hospitality, culinary, and retail," Las Vegas Review-Journal entertainment columnist John Katsilometes recently told KNPR. "When you add all that up, it's taken a big chunk out of the tourist time in Las Vegas, and even those who live here.""I think that what has happened is that people treat Las Vegas as an event-driven destination, and they just focus on the event," Katsilometes said. "They don't think of the second and third thing they're going to do." Hear the full conversation with KNPR's Mike Prevatt here.
🗳️ Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar is pushing back against claims that nearly 16 thousand non-citizens are registered to vote in the state.
The response comes after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security sent letters to election officials in four states on July 16th, warning them of “tens of thousands of non-citizens who are illegally on the states’ voter rolls.”
The department further claims that the information of at least 8,500 of those registered voters matches a noncitizen in its files. The letter did not provide proof of the department’s claims.
Aguilar refuted the claims in a letter of his own, calling the numbers “wildly speculative at best” and saying that the department “hasn’t shared anything that backs it up.”
⚡ Boulder City officials intend to appeal a decision to approve a data center on BLM land and prevent the project from moving forward.
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management released its decision on June 26 to approve the construction of the Townsite Data Center on an 81-acre plot of BLM land in the Eldorado Valley desert, a property adjacent to Boulder City, less than 20 miles south of the city’s center and less than 10 miles south of the original proposed site near U.S. Highway 95 and Interstate 11.
The builder, Houston-based Townsite Solar 2, LLC, originally filed paperwork to build a solar and battery storage facility on the city site and received federal approval in 2023. But in 2025, it amended its application to include a data center. The company still retains the option to build a solar and battery storage facility until December, but the council voted not to allow the data center to move forward without starting the application process over to include provisions for a different use.
City officials say BLM officials never contacted them or worked with them on the approval, which upset many local leaders who voiced their disdain for the decision at a city council meeting this week.
📸 A couple of years ago, as summer camps began to ban screens, a company called Camp Snap began to sell a screen-free camera that children could take along. The point-and-shoot had the vibes of a 1990s Kodak: just a viewfinder, a flash and no way to see the photos until the camera was hooked up to a computer.
What the company didn't see coming was the demand from adults.
"All of a sudden, out of nowhere, a lot of Gen Z, millennial demographic started buying them," says Camp Snap President Trevor George. "We realized very quickly that, OK, this is way beyond kids at summer camp."
Perhaps it was only a matter of time after the cool kids put on low-rise jeans like Britney Spears that photo trends would cycle around too. But they come also as a whiplash — against the era of the smartphone.
Digicams have flooded bars, music venues, festivals and family gatherings. Canon told NPR that sales of the PowerShot, its renowned point-and-shoot, jumped nearly sevenfold from 2022 to 2025. Camp Snap says its sales more than doubled in the past year.
Last year, Camp Snap launched a screen-free retro camcorder too, and it showed up in the hands of celebrities including Selena Gomez and Joe Jonas. One was spotted at Taylor Swift's wedding. Hear the full story by NPR's Alina Selyukh 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.
