The extreme heat and dry conditions of the past few years pushed what was already an epic, decades-long drought in the American West into a historic disaster that bears the unmistakable fingerprints of climate change. The long-running drought, which has persisted since 2000, can now be considered the driest 22-year period of the past 1,200 years, according to a study published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Previous work by some of the same authors of the new study had identified the period of 2000 through 2018 as the second-worst megadrought since the year 800 — exceeded only by an especially severe and prolonged drought in the 1500s. But with the past three scorching years added to the picture, the Southwest’s megadrought stands out in the record as the “worst” or driest in more than a millennium.

“Without climate change, this would not be even close to as bad as one of those historical megadroughts,” said Park Williams, a climate scientist at the University of California at Los Angeles. “The thing that is really remarkable about this drought period is that temperatures have been warmer than average in all of the years but one.”

The double whammy of searing heat and persistent drought in recent years reflects the steady increase in global temperatures brought on by the burning of fossil fuels. The authors attribute 19 percent of the severe 2021 drought, and 42 percent of the extended drought since the 21st century began, to human-caused climate change.

This giant climate hot spot is robbing the West of its water

Scientists refer to this combined hot and dry effect as “aridity” — a warm and thirsty atmosphere that can pull moisture from soil and plants, melt snow, and intensify heat waves.

“All of the climate models agree that when greenhouse gases go into the atmosphere and temperatures rise, that’s going to enhance the ability of the atmosphere to pull water out of ecosystems,” Williams said.

This “background drying” brought on by a warmer atmosphere can dwarf occasional wet or cool periods. For example, the Southwest’s 2021 drought maintained its grip despite robust monsoon rains and record summer precipitation in some areas, in part because of extraordinary heat waves early last summer, and generally above-average temperatures.

The study’s tree-ring record also provides a sobering view of what is possible in the West. “The tree rings tell us that there can actually be very, very extreme dryness in the West without the help of climate change at all,” Williams said. “Even without climate change, we can have monumentally severe and long-lasting droughts.”

The study finds that the 21st century has been substantially drier than the previous five decades, with 8.3 percent less precipitation, and nearly 1 degree Celsius (1.8 Fahrenheit) warmer than the period from 1950 to 1999.

The American West’s drought isn’t a disaster. It’s our new, permanently arid normal.

And scientists have made clear that future warming could bring even more crippling and frequent droughts. Last summer, a report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that even as global warming can bring more extreme rainfall and flooding in some areas, it can also fuel more intense drought in many regions.

That analysis found that at the current warming trajectory, droughts in drying regions that previously occurred only once every 10 years are now happening about 1.7 times per decade, on average. If the Earth warms 2 degrees Celsius, scientists expect those once-rare events to take place roughly 2½ times per decade, on average.

But the West’s most recent megadrought isn’t just written in scientific data. It has manifested in the shrinking water levels of Lake Mead and Lake Powell, which last summer reached their lowest on record. These reservoirs have declined during the 21st century with rising temperatures, despite intermittent wet years.

The intensifying drought looks to continue in 2022 — unless a miraculous spring season brings a return of the storm track and moisture-rich atmospheric rivers.

Fueled by climate change, costly Southwest drought isn’t going away

While the study covers only the period through 2021, drought conditions have taken a turn for the worse in 2022. After a promising start to the wet season in December, unusually dry conditions have persisted over much of California since January.

California’s snowpack declined to just 73 percent of normal as of Monday, after being at 160 percent of normal in December.

The Central Sierra Snow Lab run by the University of California at Berkeley tweeted that its snowpack lost 5 percent of its water content amid unusually warm weather over the past week. At its monitoring site, the snowiest December on record has been followed by a record streak of 37 days without precipitation.

The parched conditions laid the groundwork for a recent record-setting winter heat wave in California.

From Wednesday through Sunday, the National Weather Service in Los Angeles issued the first heat advisory on record during the winter months in Southern California. Scores of record high temperatures were set, from San Diego to San Francisco.

Brush fires raged in Southern California amid record heat, worsening drought

Death Valley soared to 94 degrees on Feb. 11, its highest temperature recorded so early in the season.

The hot, dry weather, combined with gusty winds, fueled several brush fires in Southern California late last week. California has seen more than 12 million acres burn in the past decade, and 18 of the top 20 largest wildfires in state history have occurred in the past two decades.

Forecasters at the National Weather Service predict drought conditions to persist through the spring.

The authors of the paper also see no end in sight to the West’s arid reality.

“This drought will very likely persist through 2022,” they wrote, “matching the duration of the late-1500s megadrought.”

Williams said that tree-ring records do provide some reason for hope — megadroughts do eventually end when the rains return. Those rains are arriving in increasingly intense bursts as the atmosphere warms.

“The way you get out of droughts in the West is probably changing,” he said. Droughts may end abruptly during extremely wet years, like 2017, but then quickly reverse course again into another multiyear dry spell.

Brady Dennis and Jason Samenow contributed to this report.

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2022/02/14/southwest-megadrought-worst-1200-years/

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According to the UC Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Lab, this snowstorm surpassed December 1970 as the snowiest December ever recorded by the institute Monday afternoon — and as of Tuesday, is nearing the mark for snowiest month ever recorded since 1970 — with more than 202 inches falling this month. The record was 238 inches in the month of January 2017.

Most major throughways in and out of Tahoe continue to be closed indefinitely because of downed trees, roads narrowed by snow, sleet and ice and a litany of other factors. And for the roads that are currently open, chains or snow tires are mandatory.

The National Weather Service’s Reno office said on Twitter that “one last storm” is set to pound Tahoe from Tuesday night through Wednesday morning. The temperature is also expected to descend to a frigid 10 degrees Wednesday night.

“Very cold air moving in, a frigid NYE and possibly another strong winter storm next week,” the office tweeted Tuesday morning. There is also a chance of snow starting next Monday, according to the National Weather Service’s Tahoe forecast.

In the meantime, these photos show the stunning snowfall currently blanketing the Lake Tahoe area. (see source for photos- https://www.sfgate.com/renotahoe/article/Pictures-Lake-Tahoe-set-record-snowiest-month-16734194.php)

Joshua Bote is an assistant news editor for SFGATE. He grew up in the Los Angeles area, went to UC Berkeley and has previously worked as a reporter at USA Today and a music writer at NPR. Email: joshua.bote@sfgate.com

Source: https://www.sfgate.com/renotahoe/article/Pictures-Lake-Tahoe-set-record-snowiest-month-16734194.php

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The post Caldor Fire closing in on South Lake Tahoe (5:20 AM-1 September) first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. — A ferocious wildfire swept toward Lake Tahoe on Tuesday just hours after roads were clogged with fleeing cars when the entire California resort city of South Lake Tahoe was ordered to evacuate and communities just across the state line in Nevada were warned to get ready to leave.

The popular vacation haven normally filled with tens of thousands of summer tourists emptied out Monday as the massive Caldor Fire rapidly expanded. Vehicles loaded with bikes and camping gear and hauling boats were in gridlock traffic, stalled in hazy, brown air that smelled like a campfire. Police and other emergency vehicles whizzed by.

“It’s more out of control than I thought,” evacuee Glen Naasz said of the fire that by late Monday had been pushed by strong winds across California highways 50 and 89, burning mountain cabins as it swept down slopes into the Tahoe Basin.

Additional strike teams arrived just after dark and many of the new firefighters were immediately dispatched to protect homes in the Christmas Valley area about 10 miles from South Lake Tahoe, said fire spokesman Dominic Polito.

“We’re flooding the area with resources,” he said. “Wherever there are structures, there are firefighters on the ground.”

Ken Breslin was stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic less than a mile from his home in the city of 22,000, with only a quarter-tank of gas in his Ford Escape. His son begged him to leave Sunday night, but he shrugged him off, certain that if an evacuation order came, it would be later in the week.

“Before, it was, ‘No worries … it’s not going to crest. It’s not gonna come down the hill. There’s 3,500 firefighters, all those bulldozers and all the air support,’” he said. “Until this morning, I didn’t think there was a chance it could come into this area. Now, it’s very real.”

As flames churned toward South Lake Tahoe, residents just over the state line in Douglas County, Nevada were under evacuation warnings.

Monday’s fresh evacuation orders, unheard of in the city, came a day after communities several miles south of the lake were abruptly ordered to leave as the fire raged nearby. South Lake Tahoe’s main medical facility, Barton Memorial Hospital, proactively evacuated dozens of patients, and the El Dorado Sheriff’s Office transferred inmates to a neighboring jail.

“There is fire activity happening in California that we have never seen before. The critical thing for the public to know is evacuate early,” said Chief Thom Porter, director of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire. “For the rest of you in California: Every acre can and will burn someday in this state.”

The threat of fire is so widespread that the U.S. Forest Service announced Monday that all national forests in California would be closed until Sept. 17.

“We do not take this decision lightly but this is the best choice for public safety,” Regional Forester Jennifer Eberlien said.

Overnight, the already massive Caldor Fire grew 7 miles in direction in one area northeast of Highway 50 and more than 8 miles in another, Cal Fire officials said.

More than 15,000 firefighters were battling dozens of California blazes, including crews from Utah, Washington, Wisconsin and West Virginia, said Mark Ghilarducci, director of California’s Office of Emergency Services. About 250 active-duty soldiers were being trained in Washington state to help with the arduous work of clearing forest debris by hand.

Crews from Louisiana, however, had to return to that state because of Hurricane Ida, “another major catastrophic event taking place in the country and is a pull on resources throughout the United States,” he said.

Porter said that only twice in California history have blazes burned from one side of the Sierra Nevada to the other, both this month, with the Caldor and Dixie fires. The Dixie, the second-largest wildfire in state history at 1,205 square miles about 65 miles north of the Lake Tahoe-area blaze, prompted new evacuation orders and warnings Monday.

The Lake Tahoe area in the Sierra Nevada mountains is usually a year-round recreational paradise offering beaches, water sports, hiking, ski resorts and golfing. South Lake Tahoe, at the lake’s southern end, bustles with outdoor activities, and with casinos available in bordering Stateline, Nevada.

On weekends, the city’s population can easily triple and on holiday weekends, like the upcoming Labor Day weekend, up to 100,000 people will visit for fun and sun. But South Lake Tahoe City Mayor Tamara Wallace said they’ve been telling people for days to stay away because of poor air from wildfires.

She said she thought the Caldor Fire would stay farther away. Fires in the past did not spread so rapidly near the tourist city.

“It’s just yet another example of how wildfires have changed over the years,” she said as she gathered treasures passed from her deceased parent and her husband’s while they prepared to leave.

The last two wildfires that ripped through populated areas near Tahoe were the Angora Fire that destroyed more than 200 homes in 2007 and the Gondola Fire in 2002 that ignited near a chairlift at Heavenly Mountain Resort.

Since then, the dead trees have accumulated and the region has coped with serious droughts, Wallace said. Climate change has made the West much warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive, scientists say.

Wallace said traffic was crawling Monday, but praised the evacuation as orderly because residents heeded officials’ orders. Authorities have also been more aggressive in recent years, issuing warnings and orders sooner so people have more time to flee.

Not everyone agreed as fierce winds kicked up dust and debris and drivers sat in gridlock. The California Highway Patrol added “quite a bit of additional personnel” to help guide a chaotic evacuation from South Lake Tahoe, as huge traffic jams slowed the evacuation of vehicles, CHP Assistant Commissioner Ryan Okashima said. Congestion had eased by Monday afternoon.

South Lake Tahoe resident John Larson said the evacuation probably went as smoothly as possible, considering how swiftly flames moved into the area.

“The fuel went so fast and it climbed the ridge so quick,” Larson said of the fire after settling into an evacuation center at a park in Carson City, Nevada. Red Cross volunteers set up the facility with 50 cots after another evacuation center in nearby Gardnerville reached capacity.

The fire destroyed multiple homes Sunday along Highway 50, one of the main routes to the lake’s south end. It also roared through the Sierra-at-Tahoe ski resort, demolishing some buildings but leaving the main buildings at the base intact. Crews used snow-making machines to douse the ground.

Cabins burned near the unincorporated community of Echo Lake, where Tom Fashinell has operated Echo Chalet with his wife since 1984. The summer-only resort offers cabin rentals, but was ordered to close early for the season by the U.S. Forest Service due to ongoing wildfires.

Fashinell said he was glued to the local TV news. “We’re watching to see whether the building survives,” he said.

The Caldor Fire has scorched nearly 292 square miles since breaking out Aug. 14. After the weekend’s fierce burning, containment dropped from 19 percent to 15 percent. More than 600 structures have been destroyed, and at least 20,000 more were threatened. Gov. Steve Sisolak on Monday declared a state of emergency in Nevada, citing “the anticipation” that the wildfire in the Lake Tahoe area in California would burn across the state line into the Silver State.

The National Weather Service warned of dangerous fire conditions and winds through Wednesday.

Diane Kinney, who has lived in the city since the 1970s, said this is the first time her neighborhood has been ordered to evacuate. She and her husband were packing up keepsakes, jewelry and insurance papers shortly after noon. They had to leave their 1964 Chevelle, but she hopes it stays safe.

“Everybody wants to live in Lake Tahoe. There are definitely advantages of being in the mountains, being with these beautiful pine trees,” she said. “But we definitely have to get out now.”

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/caldor-fire-sweeps-toward-lake-tahoe-after-mass-evacuation-n1278106

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The post California Wildfire: Caldor Fire Monday night update — Aug. 30, 2021 first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — As several states in the American West face intense drought, it’s shaping up to be a very difficult year for New Mexico farmers because of limited irrigation supplies, with some saying conditions haven’t been this dire since the 1950s.

Snowpack and precipitation are below average, spring runoff is trailing, and New Mexico comes in last among nearly a dozen Western states for dismal reservoir storage levels. Along the Rio Grande, New Mexico’s largest reservoir stands at less than 11% capacity, meaning the irrigation season for farmers in the southern part of the state will likely start late and include only small allotments.

Further north, managers with the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District are in a position not seen in decades. There’s no extra water in the reservoirs and interstate water-sharing agreements are restricting both storage and releases from upstream reservoirs since New Mexico has fallen short of what it owes Texas.

The district was forced to wait a month — until April 1 — to start its irrigation season due to the meager supplies. Farmers were encouraged to consider resting their fields given that demand will surely outpace supply, but many are used to the risk that comes with planting each season so just a fraction of the acres throughout the Middle Rio Grande valley have been fallowed.

Feast or famine — it’s the way of life in the Rio Grande basin.

The lack of water is the culmination of a sequence of unfortunate spring runoffs over recent years, not just a single year, said David Gensler, water operations manager for the conservancy district.

“We continue to be dealt losing hands, hydrologically speaking. We’ve played them for all they were worth, but we just continue to draw bad cards,” he said, noting that water managers could not have done anything differently to get a positive outcome.

Statewide, more than half of New Mexico is dealing with exceptional drought — the worst category. A year ago, there was no exceptional or even extreme drought in the state.

Utah and Arizona are worse off in terms of drought severity, and Nevada is not far behind. California also appears to be in the midst of another drought.

In New Mexico’s largest city, utility officials have issued a drought declaration. Outdoor watering in Albuquerque is limited to twice a week, and fines for wasting water have doubled. Watering restrictions also went into effect Thursday in Las Cruces.

Water managers are warning that it will be a struggle to meet irrigation demands if spring and summer rains do not develop, leaving the Rio Grande to potentially go dry through Albuquerque. The threat of drying this far north isn’t new, but officials do not have any extra water to move around like they did in previous years.

In southeastern New Mexico, on the Pecos River, irrigation allotments haven’t been this low in a century. Meanwhile, officials with the Elephant Butte Irrigation District recently told farmers to plan for a short year, “recognizing that we will all need to make difficult decisions.”

That district went through a similar season in 2013, when farmers were allotted less than a few inches and water was released from a dam for only 47 days. This year, district managers anticipate running for one month.

But the hydrology of the Rio Grande can be volatile and turn on a dime, Gensler said. One well-positioned spring storm could change things or monsoons could develop just in time to keep the river flowing.

“As the saying goes, hope is not a plan,” he said. “It is entirely possible we will hit the wall later this spring, have no water, and the Rio Grande will stop flowing. But until it does, we will manage every drop as carefully as humanly possible for the benefit of farmers, fish, the bosque, the cities, downstream water users, and this fascinating river we all love so much.”

Source: https://komonews.com/news/nation-world/western-rivers-face-pinch-as-another-dry-year-takes-shape

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Kataluna Enriquez won Miss Silver State USA, the biggest preliminary competition for the Miss Nevada USA pageant.

Enriquez has won transgender pageants before and entered other cisgender competitions, but this is a monumental win.

She will now compete for Miss Nevada USA, the state pageant leading to Miss USA and Miss Universe, pageants once owned by Donald Trump and two of the most coveted crowns in the pageant world.

“Miss Silver State was a great experience … to me it was honestly a celebration of womanhood and diversity and this celebration of being your true self,” Enriquez told FOX5.

Her road to the crown has not been that of beauty queens before her. In another pageant outside Nevada, when the organizers found out she was trans, everything changed.

“I was asked to provide documents that were invasive in my opinion physically asking me to get a letter from my doctor,” Enriquez said.

Enriquez was required to meet with a doctor who had to examine her and certify that she was female before being allowed to compete, something not required of anyone else in the competition. At the same pageant, every other contestant was assigned a roommate except her. She did not want to name that pageant in this report for fear of jeopardizing her chances in future competitions.

“It brought me back to time where I felt like I was not welcome,” Enriquez said.

Enriquez contends discrimination is something she, like all transgender people, must face. Awareness of the transgender community is now her pageant platform.

“It gives you higher purpose,” Enriquez said.

Enriquez said she was scared at first to enter but she had no issues at the preliminary pageant in Las Vegas. She won the local title openly disclosing she is a trans person. Enriquez is now looking forward to the next big stage: the Miss Nevada USA pageant in June.

“I have a great feeling about Nevada … I am looking forward to it,” Enriquez said.

Enriquez said she understands change doesn’t come easily and some beauty pageants may not be ready for transgender title holders. FOX5 looked at the rules of the pageant Enriquez said discriminated against her and nowhere do they say competitors must be born biologically female.

Source: https://www.fox5vegas.com/news/first-transgender-titleholder-crowned-miss-silver-state-usa/article_a758ff9e-86e3-11eb-83e0-5783653b0b9c.html

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President Trump‘s campaign is holding an “Evangelicals for Trump” event on Thursday at a Las Vegas hotel and casino, amid a controversial ban in the state on gatherings of more than 50 people in houses of worship while places like casinos are subject to a less stringent 50 percent capacity limit.

The event is scheduled to take place at the Ahern Hotel and Convention Center, one of the many joint hotels and casinos in Las Vegas. It will feature Trump spiritual adviser Pastor Paula White, megachurch Pastor Jentezen Franklin, Pastor Jack Hibbs of Calvary Chapel Chino Hills, and others. The full event title is “Evangelicals for Trump: Praise, Prayer, and Patriotism.”

“In a time when many Nevadans can’t go to church because of overreaching restrictions, President Trump’s campaign is bringing together evangelicals from across the community to pray, worship and discuss key issues facing Americans in the November election,” Trump 2020 deputy national press secretary Ken Farnaso said in a statement.

Calling All Pastors and Ministry Leaders: Join Evangelicals For Trump & Rally Host Pastor Todd Lamphere for INTERCESSION and INFORMATION! Praying for our country and all of Nevada. This is a meeting of purpose and great significance at:

Evangelicals for Trump: Praise, Prayer, and Patriotism – Las Vegas, NV

SUPREME COURT DENIES NEVADA CHURCH’S APPEAL OF ATTENDANCE RESTRICTION AMID COROANVIRUS PANDEMIC

The Nevada rule was subject to a recent Supreme Court challenge by Calvary Chapel Dayton Valley – a church in the same ministry as Hibbs’ Calvary Chapel Chino Hills – that objected to the flat 50-person cap on attendees at religious gatherings.

The church, after being ruled against by lower courts, appealed to the Supreme Court for an injunction, which was denied. All of the Republican-appointed justices except for Chief Justice John Roberts dissented from the court’s decision not to grant the injunction. Leading the way with a blistering dissent was Justice Neil Gorsuch, who was Trump’s first addition to the court in 2017.

“In Nevada, it seems, it is better to be in entertainment than religion,” Gorsuch wrote. “Maybe that is nothing new. But the First Amendment prohibits such obvious discrimination against the exercise of religion. The world we inhabit today, with a pandemic upon us, poses unusual challenges. But there is no world in which the Constitution permits Nevada to favor Caesars Palace over Calvary Chapel.”

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch participates in taking a new “family” photo with his fellow justices at the Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C., U.S., June 1, 2017.

TRUMP CAMPAIGN SUES NEVADA OVER MAIL-IN VOTING PLAN

The state of Nevada has defended its order vigorously, leaning on the broad police powers given to states during emergencies like the current coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 150,000 Americans – more Americans than died during World War I.

“Here, Calvary would have this court substitute its judgment on public health pertaining to a novel coronavirus for that of Nevada’s officials responsible for public health,” the state said in a Supreme Court brief. “At this uncertain moment, where the Constitution reserves public emergency powers to states like Nevada, Calvary and its counsel should not be allowed to continually second-guess Nevada’s efforts to protect public health against a novel, highly contagious virus.”

But Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote a separate dissent in the case joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh – another Trump appointee – pointed out that not only will “[p]reventing congregants from worshiping … cause irreparable harm” under the Constitution’s strict protection of religious liberty, but that there was little difference in the nature of gatherings at a church or a casino, unlike past cases that have upheld restrictions favoring places like retail stores over churches.

“In casinos and other facilities granted preferential treatment under the directive, people congregate in large groups and remain in close proximity for extended periods,” just like churches, Alito wrote.

In this Tuesday, March 17, 2020 file photo Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak speaks during a news conference at the Sawyer State Building in Las Vegas. Sisolak’s pandemic-related restrictions on religious gatherings resulted in a lawsuit that went all the way to the Supreme Court. (Steve Marcus/Las Vegas Sun via AP, File)

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

The office of Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak, a Democrat, who put in place the restrictions that led to the high-profile lawsuit, referred Fox News to Las Vegas when asked for comment on the Trump event. A spokesperson for the city told Fox News that it has contacted the organizers of the “Evangelicals for Trump” event and reminded them to follow coronavirus-mitigating regulations, including social distancing and wearing face masks. Hibbs, in a tweet, said the “event will fill up to capacity…”

Farnaso, in a statement, touted Trump’s record on issues like judicial appointments, which have been front-burner issues for the evangelical community targeted by the campaign’s Thursday event.

“President Trump has appointed 200 conservative judges, he has fought for international religious freedom, and supported staunchly pro-life polices,” he said. “President Trump is an ally for our religious communities in the White House. Joe Biden is pushing a socialist agenda with taxpayer-funded abortions and would trounce on religious liberties. It couldn’t be more clear that President Trump is the only candidate who will fight for the values of evangelical voters.”

Tyler Olson covers politics for FoxNews.com. You can contact him at tyler.olson@foxnews.com and follow him on Twitter at @TylerOlson1791.

Source:  https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-campaign-holds-evangelicals-for-trump-event-in-las-vegas-casino-amid-nevada-church-restrictions

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The 5-4 ruling included dissents from conservative justices who said limiting church gatherings to 50 worshipers while allowing bars, restaurants, casinos, and indoor amusement parks to operate at 50% capacity violates freedom of religion.

Chief Justice John Roberts joined the court’s four liberal justices in turning aside a challenge from a Nevada church. The same five justices ruled the same way in May, when a California church sought to exceed a 25% capacity threshold under the theory that local businesses were allowed to do so. In that case, Roberts said religious observances are comparable to public assemblies, not secular businesses.

More:Pandemic lawsuits from voters, worshipers, prisoners meet roadblock at Supreme Court

In the Nevada case, the five justices in the majority did not explain their ruling. But the dissenting justices wrote 24 pages to complain that churches were not being treated equally with public assemblies, a violation of the First Amendment in their view.

More: Year of surprise Supreme Court rulings shows influence of Chief Justice John Roberts

A woman prays while wearing a face mask at the International Church of Las Vegas. Two other churches seeking to overturn Nevada’s 50-person cap on religious gatherings amid the coronavirus pandemic were dealt a setback when a federal judge sided with the state. John Locher/AP

“The Constitution guarantees the free exercise of religion. It says nothing about the freedom to play craps or blackjack, to feed tokens into a slot machine, or to engage in any other game of chance,” Associate Justice Samuel Alito wrote.

“Under the governor’s edict, a 10-screen multiplex may host 500 moviegoers at any time,” Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch noted. “A casino, too, may cater to hundreds at once, with perhaps six people huddled at each craps table here and a similar number gathered around every roulette wheel there.

“But churches, synagogues, and mosques are banned from admitting more than 50 worshipers – no matter how large the building, how distant the individuals, how many wear face masks, no matter the precautions at all,” Gorsuch said.

And Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh complained that “the risk of COVID-19 transmission is at least as high at restaurants, bars, casinos, and gyms as it is at religious services. Indeed, people congregating in restaurants, bars, casinos, and gyms often linger at least as long as they do at religious services.”

Lawyers for the state had argued that religious services require tougher limits than commercial establishments because of their duration and close quarters. They said other venues, from movie theaters to museums, faced the same 50-person limit.

“Sadly, the types of communal, interpersonal gatherings that put Nevada citizens most at risk for spreading the virus include larger, in-person religious services – which are a major source of COVID-19 infections,” the state’s lawyers said.

The high court’s earlier ruling on the issue came on May 29, when Roberts sided with the liberal justices in a ruling against California’s South Bay United Pentecostal Church. Roberts said choosing when to lift restrictions during a pandemic is the business of elected officials, not unelected judges.

Earlier: Supreme Court won’t force states to speed up church reopenings

At that time, Kavanaugh wrote that “the basic constitutional problem is that comparable secular businesses are not subject to a 25% occupancy cap, including factories, offices, supermarkets, restaurants, retail stores, pharmacies, shopping malls, pet grooming shops, bookstores, florists, hair salons, and cannabis dispensaries.”

More: As churches reopen, outbreaks sprout and some keep doors shut

Coronavirus changing the way people worship
The coronavirus crisis is forcing believers to scramble to maintain traditions without bringing large numbers of people together.

Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/07/24/supreme-court-nevada-covid-rules-can-favor-casinos-over-churches/5454128002/

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LAS VEGAS (KSNV) — MGM Resorts International unveiled it will suspend operations at all Las Vegas properties effective Tuesday, Mar. 17.

Casino operations will cease on Monday, Mar. 16 followed immediately by hotel operations, resort officials said.

RELATED | Wynn temporarily closing resorts for 2 weeks; will pay full-time employees during closure

Chairman and CEO Jim Murren called the closures being made for “the good of our employees, guests, and communities.”

“The people of MGM Resorts have worked to try to find a way to continue delivering high-quality hospitality and entertainment experiences for our guests while keeping our employees doing the jobs they love in a safe environment,” said Murren.

MGM Resorts said it will reopen resorts as soon as it is safe to do so and they will continue to support employees, guests and communities in “every way we can during this period of closure.”

Reservations for arrival prior to May 1 will not be taken at the moment but said to monitor MGMResorts.com for changes.

Details on closing procedures and timelines were forthcoming, the resort operator said.

Source: https://news3lv.com/news/local/mgm-resorts-temporarily-suspending-operations-at-all-properties

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