What now? Nevada activists and experts prepare for the second Trump administration

We don’t know yet which of Donald Trump’s cabinet picks will stick when he takes office in January. We can’t predict which of his proposed policies will be mere campaign bluster, and which will come to pass—but many Nevadans are nervous about rollbacks to civil rights and environmental protections, and potential cuts to health and education spending. 

The RN&R spoke with activists and experts in a range of fields to get a read on what they’re anticipating. 

Libraries 

Calls to censor queer-themed materials are likely to escalate 

“Book bans are sweeping across the nation,” said fiction author Naseem Jamnia. 

That’s the case in Washoe County as well, with some residents calling for the Washoe County Library System to remove or reshelve books—mostly those with adult or LGBTQ+ themes. 

“Some people oppose some of the books to the point that library board of trustees meetings have become very disruptive to library business,” said Jamnia, perched in a cozy backroom at The Radical Cat bookstore, where they lead a writers’ group meetup. 

Jamnia and a few others began meeting to discuss ways in which they could support the library staff during these confrontations. The colleagues formed Freedom to Read Nevada, at first a loose coalition, and now formally a branch of the Freedom to Read Foundation, a national anti-censorship group. 

In Washoe County, most of the opposition to library books has come in the form of public comments at Library Board and County Commission meetings, as opposed to formal challenges. Nationwide, the American Library Association reported that formal book challenges increased 65% between 2022 and 2023, the highest jump the group has ever documented. 

“There’s no doubt that more book challenges are coming,” Jamnia said. “We know that these are going to increase, because we’ve seen Project 2025, and we’ve seen the opening pages, and it very clearly lays out what will happen to teachers, authors and librarians who want to advocate for reading material in particular.” 

Project 2025, the 900-page playbook by the Heritage Foundation and more than 100 other conservative groups, lumps together what it calls “transgender ideology” with pornography and the sexualization of children. The foreword reads, in part: “It has no claim to First Amendment protection. Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women. Their product is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.” 

Jamnia predicted that people who have been disrupting libraries will feel emboldened by the election results. “We really want people to understand that we believe in the First Amendment right of all people in the United States of America,” Jamina said. “That includes children. Children have a right to read. Individuals who are concerned do not have the right to put that concern on other families and other individuals. The conversation gets derailed, often because of the misinformation and disinformation that floats around.” 

While Freedom to Read Nevada members are strategizing to oppose book bans in the coming years, they are hopeful that Nevada will see fewer of them than other states. 

“I’ll give this for Nevada conservatives: A lot of them are libertarian, and they want to be left alone,” Jamnia said. “I think the majority of people are kind of just like, ‘Dude, do your thing over there. I’ll do my thing over here.’” 

Pen America, a national group that champions free expression, documented around 10,000 book bans in U.S. public school systems during the 2023-2024 school year. Florida led the pack with 4,561. Nevada had zero. 

Public health 

Childhood vaccination rates could drop. Water fluoridation’s slow progress could be halted. 

On Nov. 14, President-elect Trump named Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as his pick to lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. On Nov. 18, the American Public Health Association released a statement detailing its concerns over the appointment. It said, in part: “Kennedy’s past statements and views on vaccines alone should disqualify him from consideration. He has stated that ‘there’s no vaccine that is safe and effective’ and touted misinformation claiming that vaccines cause autism. A serious candidate for this position would follow the decades of real-world evidence that shows that vaccines are safe and prevent as many as 5 million deaths each year.” 

Dr. John Packham, policy director for the Nevada Public Health Association, is concerned about Kennedy’s appointment as well.  

“We have one of the poorest track records as a state on childhood vaccinations, and that’s just not going to get better,” Packham said. “We’re going to see disease outbreaks that were uncommon 20 or 30 years ago, like measles, pertussis (whooping cough) and other things that were big killers a century ago that we essentially wiped out through 50 years of childhood vaccinations.” 

Vaccines, Packham explained, are administered by public and private clinics at the local level, but their distribution has historically relied on federal funding. 

Kennedy has also said that he’ll recommend removing fluoride from drinking water. Packham called fluoridated water “one of the most scientifically based interventions in public health history,” adding that it has been effective at preventing tooth decay “at the cost of pennies on the dollar.” 

Washoe County’s water is not fluoridated, despite repeated attempts by advocates, so a federal recommendation or order wouldn’t change anything locally in the short run.  

“Water fluoridation efforts have always faced headwinds in state legislatures, and I think that it’s gotten even more challenging over the past decade,” he said. If Kennedy is indeed confirmed, “any progress will be stopped in its tracks.” 

Education 

Keeping an eye on special education funding and LGBTQ+ students 

Trump, throughout his campaign, has scorned the federal Department of Education. The Associated Press reported that he’s prone to “describing it as being infiltrated by ‘radicals, zealots and Marxists,’” and noted that Trump has called for dismantling the department altogether, although that would require congressional approval. 

“In every cycle, and with most politicians, there’s a difference between campaign rhetoric and policy actions,” said Beth Smith, a member of the Washoe County School District Board of Trustees. She emphasized that she was speaking on her own behalf, and not that of the school district, as the board has not yet taken a position on matters related to any potential federal policy decisions. 

Smith isn’t placing any bets just yet regarding the education policies Trump may implement, but there are two things she especially does not want to see happen. 

First: cuts to special education funding. 

“Between federal and state funding for special education students, we only receive (from the federal government) about 48% of what it actually costs to meet those children’s needs,” Smith said. The remaining 52% of WCSD’s special education budget comes from the state’s general fund. 

“The general fund is the money that we’re supposed to be using to provide a baseline education for all students,” she said. A reduction in special-education funding, she said, could be “dramatic and devastating” to those students. “So, I will tell you that I am at the edge of my seat about the threats around discontinuing title funding, and changing special education funding.” 

Second: potential threats to LGBTQ+ students and their families. 

“I am very concerned that we’re going to go back to a time when those families and children became political narratives and not the humans that they are,” she said. “That’s something that I’m personally concerned about, but I have to wait and see what actually comes to pass, because there has been some extremely heated rhetoric, but what that will result in? We’ve yet to see.” 

Smith said Nevadans are fortunate to have a Legislature that’s largely stood by marginalized communities in recent years. “We’ve seen that in, for example, the recent votes to amend the state Constitution regarding some wording,” she said, 

The Legislature placed Question 2 on the Nov. 5 ballot, asking Nevadans to vote to remove outdated terms relating to physical disabilities—such as “deaf and dumb” and “insane”—from the state Constitution; the question received 66 percent of the vote. 

“I feel confident, to a degree, that our Legislature will continue to stand up for these students,” Smith said.  

Smith said she is also worried that “if the federal government deems a district is teaching something that they don’t like, they would cut off all funding to them.” 

She offered a couple of examples: “In 2022, the national fear narrative around education was that kindergarten teachers were encouraging gender transitions, which was a flat-out lie. … And the other ’22 political fearmongering for education was CRT, critical race theory, which is not taught and has never been taught. But who becomes the arbiter of those things? Those are things that we’re just going to have to wait and see, because there have been threats that if school districts are teaching X, Y and Z, then all funding will be withheld from them.” 

LGBTQ+ rights 

Silver State Equality is bracing for rollbacks to protections, including those for transgender military members 

In 2016, the Obama administration lifted a longstanding ban on transgender military personnel. 

In 2018, then-President Trump announced that the ban would be reimplemented. In 2019, he instructed the military to begin discharging its transgender service members. 

In 2021, President Biden overturned the Trump ban. “There is substantial evidence that allowing transgender individuals to serve in the military does not have any meaningful negative impact on the Armed Forces,” he said in his executive order. 

André Wade, state director for Silver State Equality, a statewide LGBTQ+ civil rights organization, predicts that Trump will reimplement the ban as he takes office. He and his colleagues are keeping a watchful eye out for that while following other issues of concern, including threats to marriage equality. He said Silver State Equality is in the planning and strategizing phase, considering what actions it may be able to encourage—or push back on—during Nevada’s 2025 legislative session. 

“Although we have some pretty good protections in Nevada, we can always do more,” Wade said. “We’re hoping to just hear more from LGBTQ+ folks across the state to see what their concerns are, what their fears are, what their questions are.” 

Environment 

Activists and politicians are ready to oppose reopening nuclear facilities 

The Nevada Conservation League is a statewide group based in Las Vegas that works to promote conservation policies and elect pro-conservation candidates.  

Executive director Kristee Watson listed a few of the initiatives the group has worked on in recent years. Provisions in President Biden’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act incentivize clean-energy developments via tax credits for things like home energy audits and solar appliances. Federal oil and gas leasing reforms have protected portions of Amargosa Valley, outside of Las Vegas, and the Ruby Mountains, outside of Elko. In 2023, the area around Avi Kwa Ame (aka Spirit Mountain) south of Las Vegas was declared a national monument by President Biden, protecting more than a half-million acres for both public recreation (such as hunting) and spiritual uses by tribes. She considers that one “a huge win,” because it garnered wide bipartisan support. 

What Trump administration policies could affect conservation efforts over the next four years?  

“We’re already hearing rumors of rollback and shrinkage to that monument,” she said. “Some of the stuff that’s getting a lot of attention right now is the reopening of Nevada Test Site to be used as an atomic testing location. Then, also, Yucca Mountain. I mean, this is something that has been outlined in Project 2025.” 

The playbook’s authors carefully note that they’re not exactly calling for Yucca Mountain to be reopened just yet—but they are calling for it to be considered. 

Trump has come down on both sides of Yucca Mountain, said former U.S. Sen. Richard Bryan, chairman of Nevada’s Commission on Nuclear Projects, as reported by the Nevada Current in July. “He’s been against it before he was for it. So, we really just don’t know. I think it’s a very critical time for us.” 

Due to both nuclear sites’ proximity to Las Vegas, Watson said, there is “real concern about air pollution, water pollution, economic impacts, radiation. … You just really can’t minimize how dangerous and reckless it would be to consider reopening Yucca Mountain as a dumping ground for waste, and then reopening the Nevada Test Site for either above-ground or below-ground nuclear testing. 

“We are strategizing, prioritizing, and then fundraising accordingly. We started the Nevadans Against Nuclear Testing, which is a bipartisan group. Sen. (Catherine) Cortez Masto, the Nevada Conservation League and Gov. (Joe) Lombardo are all part of that coalition that are doing everything we can to get out in front of this issue that would have such a negative impact for our state.