New reporting on Trump and the GOP’s “Big Beautiful Bill” from NBC News found that “few places could be affected more significantly than Nevada,” highlighting how the state “is expecting the law’s changes to Medicaid and food assistance to boot hundreds of thousands of residents from crucial social safety net programs”. 

According to the article, Nevada “lawmakers will have to scramble to figure out how to find money in the state budget to keep many of those people covered” while being “extremely limited in how [the state] can find new revenues.” Combined, “the impacts of the law on that budget and the state’s broader finances could be even more significant than in many” other states. 

Nevada will also be “uniquely affected” by the law’s new limit on how much gambling losses can be deducted from taxes, which has sparked “concerns that the provision could cause professional gambling in the U.S. to fold,” harming the tourism and gaming industry that is critical to the state’s economy.

Joe Lombardo, whose reelection was rated as a “tossup” even before the “Big Beautiful Bill” passed and who NBC News identified as the “most vulnerable Republican governor up for re-election”, will be linked to the bill in the upcoming “key” gubernatorial election. After his team initially lied about Republicans’ intentions to cut Medicaid, a cowardly Lombardo celebrated Trump’s tax bill that will, again, “uniquely” harm his state. 

Read more below: 

NBC News: The biggest political fights over Trump’s megabill are converging in Nevada

• When it comes to President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” few places could be affected more significantly than Nevada — one of the country’s most closely divided swing states.

• For starters, Nevada is expecting the law’s changes to Medicaid and food assistance to boot hundreds of thousands of residents from crucial social safety net programs.

• Like other states in similar predicaments, lawmakers will have to scramble to figure out how to find money in the state budget to keep many of those people covered. But the impacts of the law on that budget and the state’s broader finances could be even more significant than in many others because Nevada has no state income tax, and therefore is extremely limited in how it can find new revenues.

• The implementation of the new law in the coming months and years will occur as Nevada is set to play a key role in the next midterm and presidential elections.

• In 2026, Gov. Joe Lombardo — who has walked a fine line between offering praise for certain aspects of the megabill while pushing back against others — is seen as the most vulnerable Republican governor up for re-election. And Nevada’s battleground 3rd District, represented by Democratic Rep. Susie Lee, will be a key race in the fight for the House majority.

• And in 2028, Nevada will likely again host critical contests for the White House and Senate.

• Democrats are already eager to go on offense against the law. State Rep. Steve Yeager, the Democratic speaker of the state Assembly, said he’s already been contacted by many constituents who have expressed “concern about what this bill might mean for them” and how they could be affected by its changes to Medicaid, food assistance, energy credits, taxes on tips and gambling.

• Yeager added he was going “to make sure that every single voter who goes to the ballot box here next year in 2026 knows about this bill and knows about the impact.”

• Approximately 1 in 3 Nevadans are on Medicaid, according to data from the state and KFF, a nonpartisan health policy research group, due in part to a massive expansion of the program back in 2013 by then-Gov. Brian Sandoval, one of the first Republican governors to embark on Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act.

• Trump’s law will institute steep cuts to Medicaid and food aid benefits mostly by establishing new work requirements, restrict state-levied fees on health care providers that are mostly used to fund Medicaid, and preclude the federal government from being responsible for reimbursing states any longer. In Nevada, as many as 100,000 people could fall off Medicaid as a result, according to the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

• But unlike some other states, which may be able to shift funds around in their budgets to build financial support for affected residents, Nevada’s hands are largely tied. It has no state income tax and has a state constitutional provision requiring a two-thirds majority to raise revenue.

• “We don’t have the funds to be able to fill these critical gaps,” Yeager said. “We’re a low-revenue state. … We’re in a really tough place.”

• Starting in 2026, gamblers will have to pay more taxes under the GOP’s new law. That’s because the law will limit what gamblers can deduct from their yearly taxes to 90% of their losses. Bettors can currently deduct the entirety of their losses — up until their winnings.

• Bettors have expressed concerns that the provision could cause professional gambling in the U.S. to fold. And Nevada Democrats say it’s all but certain to impact the bustling and crucial industry in the casino-laden state.

• “This means if someone wins a big jackpot in Las Vegas and then loses that one jackpot later on, they would still be liable for 10% in taxes on gaming ‘income,’ even though they had not brought home anything,” Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., said last week on the chamber floor. “That’s not just bad math, it’s bad policy.”

• Meanwhile, Trump and Republicans have boasted of the law’s provision that they call “no tax on tips.” Trump unveiled the concept during a 2024 campaign event in Nevada, which is among the states with the highest concentration of service workers who rely on tips.

• “If you’re a restaurant worker, a server, a valet, a bellhop, a bartender, one of my caddies … your tips will be 100% yours,” Trump said of the policy idea during a January visit to Las Vegas shortly after he was sworn in for his second term.

• The law allows for a deduction on federal taxes of up to $25,000 in tipped income. At first glance, it appears it could be a boon for workers who rely heavily on tips.

• But economists at the Yale Budget Lab have written that 37% of all tipped workers don’t earn enough money to even pay federal income tax, meaning that these people wouldn’t gain from the new deduction.

• In addition, critics note the cap is relatively small and that it phases out once workers enter a higher income bracket ($150,000 per year). Plus, the provision only runs through 2028.

• Democrats also note that the law froze nearly all of the clean energy funds the state had received under President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. Nevada, where scorching temperatures have led to soaring energy costs for voters and businesses, was among the states that claimed the most IRA funds used to incentivize clean energy investments and jobs, as well as home energy rebates.

• As those funds dry up, so too could financial relief for residents and businesses.

• “With the undoing of some of the Inflation Reduction Act, losing monies that were in the bill, we’re going to lose solar jobs — and I am confident that our power bills are going to increase,” Yeager said.

• Those impacts will loom particularly large in next year’s governor’s race in Nevada. Even before Trump enacted the law, Lombardo, who won his 2022 election over Democrat Steve Sisolak by just 1.5 percentage points, was the only Republican governor up for re-election next year whose race was rated by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report as a “toss-up.”

• Nevada Democrats have already aggressively sought to link Lombardo to the “big, beautiful bill.”

• “Lombardo will have to reckon with the damage done to Nevadans’ lives and livelihoods because he was too cowardly to stand up to Trump,” said Nevada Democratic Party Chair Daniele Monroe-Moreno.

• That tension underscores the bind many Republican incumbents are likely to find themselves in during next year’s midterms as they seek to take credit for some of the tax-saving mechanisms of the bill while distancing themselves from the cuts that Democrats are already hammering them on — all while trying to avoid running afoul of Trump.

• State Attorney General Aaron Ford, who is so far the only Democrat who’s entered the race against Lombardo, slammed the law for its impacts on health care and food assistance. He said “servers and bartenders and hospitality workers are going to be getting played” by Republicans’ “no tax on tips” claims.