Week of Jan. 22, 2026

From the editor’s desk

In last week’s newsletter, publisher Jimmy Boegle called Gov. Joe Lombardo out on the motivations behind his proposal to get prohibitions against transgender athletes into the state Constitution. He wrote:

Make no mistake: This ballot initiative, first and foremost, is not about protecting Nevada’s female athletes; it’s about creating a wedge issue to get conservative voters to the polls.

If you were holding out for confirmation that Jimmy wasn’t just speculating, that confirmation came promptly in the form of a Jan. 16 report from The Nevada Independent. In January, according to the Indy, Lombardo said, “I am not enough of a motivator as a governor candidate to get them off the couch.” And in October, he said:

We’re going to do this thing called Men in Women’s Sports. I’m in the process of raising the money for this ballot initiative to get the signatures to qualify it and put it on the ballot. That’s going to get people out to vote.

If you’d like to hear it in Lombardo’s own words, the Indy included an audio clip.

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On the national front, the word of the moment might be “impeachment.” Or, rather, the term of the moment might be “impeachment attempts.” A few such efforts, targeting various officials, have been floated or forwarded lately, gaining varying amounts of steam.

In December, Rep. Al Green, a Democrat from Texas, called for a vote to impeach Trump, but Dems are nowhere near aligned on the matter. From CNN this week:

The party’s staunchest Trump antagonists wanted to push forward with a showy rebuke of the commander-in-chief over recent violent threats to Democratic lawmakers, but many more feared the move distracted from the party’s own agenda. Fellow Democrats waited for direction from their leadership. Then moments before the vote, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and his deputies issued a statement declaring they wouldn’t support or oppose the bill—instead they were voting “present.”

Then there were House Speaker Mike Johnson’s comments from yesterday about his apparent stance on impeaching judges. From Politico: 

Speaker Mike Johnson now supports the push inside his party to bring impeachment articles against judges perceived as antagonistic of President Donald Trump’s agenda—a notable shift for the Louisiana Republican who over the summer sought to squelch such effort.

“I’m for it,” Johnson told reporters at his weekly news conference Wednesday, responding to the question of whether he would endorse impeaching judges who have ruled against the administration.

The effort that seems to be gaining the most momentum is the three articles of impeachment that Rep. Robin Kelly, a Democrat from Illinois, filed against U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem last week. Yesterday, Kelly told C-Span that “at least 102” Democrats had, by then, signed on to the measure.

The articles charge Noem with obstruction of Congress, violation of public trust and self-dealing.

However, major media outlets seem to agree that it’s unlikely we’ll see an actual impeachment. An explainer from Newsweek, however, says this:

Drives to remove Noem or Trump from office may damage their reputation and standing with their Republican colleagues in a year when voters will head to the polls and participate in the midterms.

Take care,

—Kris Vagner, managing editor