From left, U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna, activist and social media influencer Carlos Eduardo Espina, moderator Memo Del Rio of Entravision Communication, SEIU Local 1107 member leader Brian Lenihan, and Joe Spica member of Culinary Workers Union Local 226 participate in a town hall discussion Wednesday, Aug. 19 2026, at Teamsters Local 631 in Las Vegas.Ava Chatlosh
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Ava Chatlosh
Thursday, Aug. 20, 2026 | 11:20 a.m.
Casino dealer Kanie Kastroll first saw it on the news — a robotic arm clumsily attempting to deal blackjack at a Las Vegas trade show, slow and fumbling its way through a hand.
“It was so primitive. It was painfully slow. And I thought oh man, they’re coming, you know?” Kastroll said.
Her fear of technological displacement drew her Wednesday evening to a town hall at Teamsters Local 631 in Las Vegas, where Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and Rep. Steven Horsford, D-Nev., gathered with workers from the Culinary Workers Union Local 226, Voto Latino, Teamsters and other organizations to discuss the future of artificial intelligence and automation in Nevada’s economy — and to warn that workers, not corporations, should be the primary beneficiaries of the coming technological wave.
“If automation makes a company more productive, the benefit should mean safer jobs, better wages, shorter hours and more security,” Horsford said. “Not pink slips for our workers, and big profits for billionaires.”
It was Khanna’s sixth visit to Nevada since the 2024 election, and it comes as the Silicon Valley congressman has said he is “thinking seriously” about a 2028 presidential run. No Democrat being discussed as a potential 2028 candidate has visited Nevada more frequently. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore have each made visits to the state this year.
Asked whether his Nevada travels were connected to a presidential bid, Khanna attributed them to his longtime relationship with the state — then acknowledged the trips were also tied to building a national economic platform.
“This is a really important place for me to hear from service workers, from Teamsters, from the community,” Khanna said.
Nevada’s importance to Khanna’s political ambitions was not hard to read between the lines. The Democratic National Committee voted Saturday to adopt a 2028 presidential primary calendar that places South Carolina first on Jan. 22, followed by Nevada on Feb. 1. Khanna called Nevada “one of the most important states” for this year’s midterms, and said that importance carries into 2028.
“It’s a multiracial state. It’s got a Latino community, Asian community, an African American community, the white working-class community, entrepreneurial community — it’s really a microcosm for America,” Khanna said.
The AI conversation Wednesday was not merely theoretical. The Las Vegas Valley is home to 43 planned or constructed data centers, and automation has already made inroads in the region’s casinos and warehouses.
In 2019, MGM Resorts introduced automated cocktail dispensing machines in its service bars — a change that Culinary Union member Joe Silva said shifted added responsibility onto cocktail waitresses. That experience pushed the Culinary Union to seek technology protections in the five-year contracts it negotiated with Las Vegas resort companies in 2023, securing advance notification requirements when new technology is introduced, training for affected workers and severance pay for those who lose jobs to automation.
More recently, about 50 workers lost their jobs in March when Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits automated its Las Vegas warehouse secretary-treasurer of Teamsters Local 14, who also spoke at the town hall
Horsford advocated for legislative guardrails: advance notice and training for workers when new technology is introduced and the use of collective bargaining as a tool to keep employers accountable.
Khanna also pressed his recently introduced Data Center Bill of Rights, a resolution he introduced this month that would affirm communities’ right to ban data centers in residential areas and within 2,500 feet of homes, schools, childcare facilities, hospitals or nursing homes, reject proposed data center projects through a transparent community process and require data centers to use clean energy.
“We should not be putting data centers in residential communities and our own farm land,” Khanna said. “There’s a lot of undeveloped land that could go on industrial land.”
Electronic table game machines have already replaced live dealers at Golden Gate casino on Fremont Street — though ownership said the affected dealers were offered reassignment at sister properties in downtown Las Vegas rather than laid off.
Kastroll, a dealer at Wynn Las Vegas, hopes her employer’s reputation for five-star service provides some insulation from the same fate. But she takes no comfort in how crude the blackjack robot appeared on the newscast.
“The fact that they even thought about creating it is the scary part,” Kastroll said. “Because you will get better and better in time.”
“We’re hoping that because we’re at a high-end place with a five-star service that is hard to replicate across the Strip, we have some advantage based on our service skills,” she added.
