The Daily Rundown: September 15, 2026
✨ Renowned fashion and costume designer Bob Mackie died Monday (Sept. 14) at the age of 87.
Mackie was best known for his elaborate, often sequined outfits for celebrities like Tina Turner and Dolly Parton.
He made a name for himself in Las Vegas with his showgirl costume work for the Donn Arden production shows “Hallelujah Hollywood,” from 1974 to 1980, and “Jubilee!,” from 1981 to 2016.
He also designed the wardrobe for Mitzi Gaynor’s run at the Riviera from 1966 to 1971, as well as Cher’s two residencies between 2008 and 2020. Some of Mackie’s Strip-production costumes are on display at the Showgirl Museum in East Las Vegas.
📨 The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld a lower court’s decision blocking President Trump’s executive order regulating mail ballots in a way that would have especially impacted Nevada.
The executive order would require states to implement a standardized design for mail-in ballot envelopes and upload voter eligibility data to a new online portal. The Postal Service could refuse to deliver ballots to states that didn’t comply.
According to a whistleblower report, enforcing these regulations could prevent millions of mail-in ballots from ever being delivered.
Nevada has one of the higher shares of voter participation by mail-in ballot. 44% of its voters opt to vote by mail, according to a recent report to Congress.
Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar celebrated the ruling, saying also that “Nevada election officials remain focused on providing safe, secure and accessible elections for voters this fall.”
⚖️ Democratic-led states and cities filed lawsuits Monday challenging a federal rule set to begin Friday that they say gives President Donald Trump’s administration broad discretion to deny green cards to immigrants who rely on public assistance for food, health care, housing and other basic needs.
New York Attorney General Letitia James, who is leading a coalition of 21 other states in one of the suits, said the rule would force needy immigrant families to choose between seeking assistance and seeking legal status in the country. California, Colorado, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico and Wisconsin are among the states involved in the legal challenge.
“This rule preys on that fear and counts on families forfeiting the food assistance, health care coverage, and other public benefits to which they are legally entitled,” she said Monday at a news conference in City Hall alongside New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and immigrant advocates.
Mamdani filed a separate suit with leaders of other U.S. cities, including Chicago, San Francisco and Seattle. He said the rule would have a “chilling effect” not just on immigrants seeking legal status but other residents of the nation’s largest city.
“The new public charge rule seeks to push immigrant families away from the programs that have kept people fed and healthy for decades,” the mayor said. “New Yorkers will be afraid to see a doctor or ask for help they are legally entitled to. That fear will not stop at the families that the federal government is targeting.”
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which is named in the lawsuits, dismissed the dire warnings.
“Let’s get this straight, sanctuary states are terrified they will lose federal funds because hundreds of thousands of illegals and noncitizens might remove themselves from American welfare programs,” the agency said in a statement. “We’re shaking in our boots over this supposedly terrible outcome.”
The lawsuits challenge DHS’s plan to revive a “public charge” rule the Republican president originally imposed during his first term, only to have it reversed under his successor, Democratic President Joe Biden.
The lawsuits, which were both filed in federal court in Manhattan, argue the new rule is “arbitrary and capricious,” exceeds the DHS’s statutory authority, and departs from the longstanding meaning of the federal government’s public charge provision.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta called the rule a “cruel policy.”
Federal law already requires those seeking permanent residency or legal status to demonstrate they will not rely on public benefits.
The new rule does not specify the programs that could be taken into account. It simply says officers, “using good judgment and discretion,” will make “individualized, fact-specific public charge inadmissible determinations, based on a totality of the alien’s circumstances.”
🏥 The federal government has awarded Boulder City Hospital a more than $2.5 million grant to improve infrastructure and expand care, according to reporting by KNPR's Anne Davis.
The Rural Health Transformation Program, administered by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, allotted the $2.65 million grant to Boulder City Hospital.
It’s part of a larger $50 billion initiative approved in 2025 under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. It aims to offset recent Medicaid cuts for rural hospitals. Officials awarded Nevada $180 million for the program’s first year.
Boulder City Hospital says it plans to use its new funding to expand services and enhance its current facility.
It comes less than a year after hospital leadership announced the facility’s redesignation as a Rural Emergency Hospital, which prioritizes rapid emergency services in exchange for increased Medicare funding. That means the hospital no longer offers inpatient services.
🗳️ Indigenous people continue to face barriers throughout the election process. That’s according to a new report that says those challenges can begin well before a voter reaches the ballot box.
The report from the Native American Rights Fund (NARF) says voting disparities have deep historical roots. Even after Native Americans were granted U.S. citizenship in 1924, some states continued using laws and voting requirements that prevented Native people from casting ballots.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 removed many of those restrictions, but NARF says barriers remain today.
NARF analyzed federal data from 2020 through 2024 and found issues ranging from voter registration rejections to difficulties with mail-in ballots. In counties where Native Americans make up at least one-quarter of the population, rejected voter registration applications increased by an average of 200%.
Allison Neswood, who is Navajo and a senior staff attorney at NARF, says the findings provide new statistical evidence of long-standing voting barriers in Native communities.
“Voting is not just one act,” Neswood said. “It’s a series of steps from acquiring identity documents to registering to vote, to casting a ballot, to having that ballot counted, and the report illustrates that Native people are more likely to get hung up every step along the way.”
Read the full story by the Mountain West News Bureau's Daniel Spaulding 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.
