The DOJ is sending election monitors to Utah. Should that worry you? Or reassure you? Today we’ll tell you what state election officials, supporters, and critics are saying. Then, writer and editor Erica Royer’s take.

But first…

We’re looking for writers. And the best place to look is our readers. That’s you 🫵.

If you’d like to write for The Plum, email nick@theplum.org with a sample of something you’ve written. Any political orientation is welcome. We’re looking for logic, fairness, and careful research.

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Okay. On to the monitors.

Today’s Read
Research and writing: about 16 human hours
Reading time: about 12 minutes

Last week, Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson posted on Threads that the Department of Justice is sending election monitors to Utah. At the time, she didn’t know where or how many. Later that day, DOJ Civil Rights Division Chief Harmeet Dhillon confirmed the news in an interview with KUTV. She didn’t identify which counties they would visit.

Henderson said the monitors must follow Utah’s poll-watching laws. They won’t carry weapons, approach voters, or interfere with voting. They’ll identify themselves to election workers but won’t wear badges identifying them to voters.

Utah isn’t alone. NPR reported Wednesday that counties in at least five other states had received notices. The DOJ says it’s prioritizing competitive elections and places required to provide voting materials in languages other than English.

What is an election monitor?

Election monitoring is a routine part of American elections. Political parties, candidates, advocacy groups, and ordinary citizens can all serve as poll watchers to help ensure elections are fair and the rules are followed. Some are there to protect voters’ rights, while others watch for procedural mistakes, document problems, or gather evidence that could be used in court.

After Georgia’s 2018 election, for example, a federal judge ordered additional review of provisional ballots in a case supported partly by evidence gathered through a civil rights group’s election-protection efforts.

Utah law gives poll watchers a front-row seat to nearly every stage of an election. They can watch voters check in, observe how signatures are verified, and follow the ballots all the way through counting and certification. But watching is where their authority ends. They can't interfere with the process or compromise anyone's ballot secrecy, and county clerks can remove them if they break the rules.

DOJ election monitors have a more specific job: watching for violations of federal voting laws. Traditionally, they’ve been civil rights attorneys and legal support staff. This year, the department is also sending criminal prosecutors from U.S. Attorneys’ offices.

However, DOJ monitors don’t have special enforcement powers at polling places. They’re expected to follow the same rules as other poll watchers. They aren’t there to make arrests, handle ballots, or operate voting equipment.

Nevertheless, some civil rights organizations are preparing to monitor the federal monitors themselves.

Is this new?

DOJ election monitoring? No. The scale? Yes.

The DOJ has monitored elections since the 1960s, under both Republican and Democratic administrations. Utah’s San Juan County, which includes part of the Navajo Nation, had monitors in 2016, 2018, 2022, and 2024. The county has a long history of disputes over voting access for Navajo residents, including whether voters could get election information and assistance in their own language.

What’s different this year is the scale. The DOJ plans to send about 1,000 monitors across all 50 states in a nonpresidential election year. By comparison, Obama’s DOJ deployed around 780 monitors in 2012, about 250 in 2014, and roughly 500 in 2016. Biden sent at least 289 monitors in 2022.

A thousand monitors is more than two and a half times Biden’s 2022 midterm total. And no previous administration has monitored elections in every state.

Meanwhile, the DOJ has spent the past year clashing with state election officials, including Henderson. In February, the department sued her after she refused to turn over Utah’s complete voter registration database.

In July, it warned Henderson that election officials who knowingly leave noncitizens on voter rolls could face criminal charges. In September, she learned she was under federal investigation, prompting Gov. Spencer Cox to condemn the investigation while Sen. Mike Lee defended the DOJ.

The tension escalated last week when Henderson told “60 Minutes” that threats to Utah’s elections now also come “from within our own [federal] government.” Four days later, she received notice that federal election monitors were coming to Utah.

What is the DOJ’s justification?

The DOJ says it’s routine election oversight, not retaliation against Henderson.

In her interview with KUTV about the monitors, Dhillon said they would watch for violations of federal election laws, including requirements that polling places be accessible to voters with disabilities.

Historically, federal monitors have focused on protecting voters from discrimination and ensuring everyone has access to the ballot. This year, the DOJ is also emphasizing election fraud, particularly voting by noncitizens.

And the monitors aren’t necessarily just watching for problems that can be fixed on Election Day. A senior DOJ official told Reuters that their reports could contribute to investigations after the election.

That raises questions given the DOJ’s investigation of Henderson and its recent legal defeat over Utah’s voter records. But there’s no public evidence that the monitors are coming to Utah because of those disputes or that the department plans to challenge Utah’s election results.

What Utah election officials are saying

• Salt Lake County expects routine oversight, with DOJ monitors following the same rules as other observers.

• San Juan County is accustomed to election monitors from the DOJ and other organizations.

• Utah’s lieutenant governor welcomes additional scrutiny.

Salt Lake County Clerk Lannie Chapman told The Utah Plum she expects this year’s monitoring to look much like previous years.

“They’ve always monitored me because we are under Section 203, and anytime that you’re under a federal election law, they have the duty to ensure that we are complying, and that’s what they’re doing. I’m going to take them at face value and assume that that’s why they’re actually coming in person. …

“I will treat them like any other observer. They are not allowed any special access to anything other than what is allowed and required by state and federal law of what they can observe, how they can observe, what they can do, but more importantly, what they cannot do. They cannot interfere. They cannot intimidate either voters or my poll workers. So I’ll be working closely with them to ensure that they’re able to see everything they need to see to be able to check off that in fact Salt Lake County runs amazing elections, but at the same time, also making sure that all of our voters do not feel intimidated and have meaningful access to cast their vote this November.”

Lyman Duncan, San Juan County clerk, told The Plum that monitoring in this election isn’t likely to be different from any other.

“It’s a normal operation that we have here in San Juan County. We’ve always had DOJ and ACLU and other organizations oversight — Navajo Nations, Human Rights — they’ll have poll watchers. So we’re fairly used to it. Our staff and election workers are prepared for it, and generally, it runs real well.”

Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson said DOJ monitoring is normal and any problems monitors uncover will be investigated and corrected where possible.

“We’re not really sure what to expect, except that they did give us some assurances that I think are good. They won’t be approaching voters. They won’t be wearing any sort of insignia. They have said that they will give us any feedback after the election is over on any challenges or issues that they saw. So I think things will be pretty normal. I want to make sure voters are calm and know that things are going to be OK. …

“I welcome any kind of scrutiny that the administration wants to give to the state of Utah. I am confident in our processes, and you know what? If they uncover some sort of problem, if we’re violating someone’s civil rights in some way, I absolutely want to know about it. We rely on people to tell us when there are problems. We can’t be everywhere in the state. So, if any problems are found, we absolutely will be grateful for that information and look into it and correct it if we can.”

What supporters of DOJ monitors are saying

• Election monitoring is a routine safeguard that shouldn’t be controversial as long as observers don’t interfere with voting.

• The monitors are not retaliation against Lt. Gov. Henderson. The DOJ is enforcing election laws consistently across red and blue states.

• Federal monitors are there to report potential violations for review after Election Day.

Rob Axson, Utah Republican Party chair, told FOX 13 News that observation is an ordinary safeguard that shouldn’t be controversial as long as nobody interferes.

“I have no concerns because we have a very vibrant and history and process of transparent elections in this country.

“The DOJ being here is no different than political organization Y and concerned citizen X that is also there, as long as no one’s interfering with the process.”

Harmeet Dhillon, assistant U.S. attorney general, denied any connection between the deployment and Henderson’s dispute with the DOJ.

“We actually don’t have any ongoing tension with Lieutenant Governor. She seems to think she’s being picked on, but I’ve sued every state that didn’t give us the voter rolls. There’s nothing special about Utah or about your lieutenant governor. It’s our job to administer the election laws, and we’re doing that evenly throughout the United States. And I’ve also sued other red states, West Virginia, Georgia, some others, and as well as many Democrat jurisdictions.”

DOJ spokesperson Kiersten Pels stressed that federal election monitors will not be interfering on Election Day.

“All monitors must meet the same legal and ethical requirements, including that they not interfere with the voting process. … Every monitor has the same role: observe for potential violations of federal law and report concerns to the Department, which the Department will review after Election Day and act where appropriate.”

What critics of the DOJ monitors are saying

• They raise concerns about voter intimidation and efforts to undermine confidence in elections.

• The administration may have ulterior motives. Monitors could be used for election interference or political retaliation against Lt. Gov. Henderson.

• Elections should remain under state rather than federal control.

In a statement on its website, the Utah Democratic Party criticized the DOJ’s decision to send election monitors to Utah as an overreach by the Trump administration.

“For years, Donald Trump and his allies have attacked election officials, spread baseless conspiracy theories about voter fraud, and tried to convince Americans that elections are rigged whenever Republicans lose. Now, the Trump administration is escalating its involvement in elections by deploying federal monitors to polling places across the country, including Utah.

“Utahns should never have to walk into a polling place wondering whether their own government is there to protect their rights or undermine them. Our elections belong to the people who participate in them, not politicians looking for new ways to cast doubt on the results.”

In a statement, Forward Party of Utah Chair Michelle Quist said she wouldn’t be surprised if the Trump administration had ulterior motives for sending election monitors to Utah.

“President Trump and the national Republican Party have given Utahns ample reason to question their intentions when it comes to elections. If this is election interference dressed up as oversight, we will oppose it,” Quist wrote to Fox 13 News.

“If it is political retaliation against a Republican official for refusing to fall in line, we will oppose that, too. Neither motive would surprise us. Our democracy is in serious trouble when protecting voters can put an election official at odds with her own party. A two-party system that rewards loyalty over principle invites exactly this kind of pressure.”

Barry Short, chair of the Utah Libertarian Party, said his party opposes “the very idea of federal election monitors.”

“Elections are the responsibility of the state, not the federal government. When it comes to election integrity, the answer is fifty different systems, not one top-down system. If someone wanted to tamper with elections, there is nothing they would want more than having one central administration over all elections. It’s LOT harder to tamper with 50 systems than it is to tamper with ONE.”

My Take

• Some DOJ hiring decisions raise fair questions about impartiality.

• I’m less worried after looking into it. Federal monitors have limited authority, and only 12 are expected in Utah.

• I trust Henderson’s assessment. She welcomes the scrutiny and expects Election Day to proceed normally. So do I.

When I first heard the news that election monitors were coming to Utah, I pictured carbon copies of Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones from Men in Black descending on every major polling place in Utah.

The administration has given voters plenty of reasons to wonder what’s coming next. In the past year they’ve:

• Refused to fully rule out immigration enforcement at polling places, though DHS says it has no plans for it

• Sued 30 states for their voter records

• Repeatedly asked the Supreme Court to intervene in last-minute disputes over mail-in ballot rules

• Offered a $1 million reward for tips that lead to voter fraud convictions. I’m half-tempted to commit voter fraud, then tip off the authorities.

But the more I’ve read about what these monitors can actually do, the less worried I’ve become about what Election Day will look like in Utah.

Utah law is pretty explicit here. Poll monitors can’t get in the way of election workers, disrupt voting, or compromise anyone’s ballot secrecy.

The DOJ has emphasized that its monitors will follow state laws and won’t interfere with voting. They won’t approach voters or carry weapons — concealed or otherwise. In other words, most voters probably won’t even know they’re there.

My guess is that Nov. 3, 2026, will run more or less like any other Election Day in recent Utah history.

Still, a few of the DOJ’s personnel choices have given me pause.

The most troubling example is David Michael Levin, a Florida attorney who pleaded guilty after illegally accessing government election websites. Records identified him as part of the DOJ’s 2026 election monitoring operation in Arizona. If pleading guilty to improper election conduct isn’t disqualifying to be an election monitor, what is?

Other monitors have histories that aren’t exactly impartial. Joseph Voiland, who monitored Virginia’s primary in Fairfax County, was a lawyer for the Trump campaign in its bid to overturn Wisconsin’s 2020 results. At least two other monitors also worked on 2020 election challenges.

I don’t find it surprising that Trump would hire attorneys who represented him or his allies. And if he genuinely believes the 2020 election was stolen, I can understand why he’d want closer scrutiny of future elections. But I hope the other 996 election monitors are a little more neutral. I’d feel better about the DOJ’s oversight knowing its monitors were approaching the election with open minds rather than looking for evidence to confirm what they’ve been previously paid to argue in court.

Even with some less-than-ideal monitors, I find the practical details of DOJ monitors in Utah much less alarming.

Henderson says the DOJ is sending 12 election monitors to six or seven locations in Salt Lake County.

And the DOJ’s monitors won’t be the only ones on Election Day. According to the Associated Press, tens of thousands of volunteers from political parties and voting-rights organizations are preparing to observe elections nationwide, including some who plan to watch the federal monitors themselves. There’s something reassuring about knowing that no single group gets to be the only set of eyes on an election.

Lt. Gov. Henderson isn’t worried about what the monitors will find. After listening to her press conference, I felt considerably better.

“We have open processes,” she said. “The public can go watch any of these processes … I welcome that. I welcome people examining. What I don’t welcome is any kind of interference.”

I love that welcoming, collaborative attitude. The more people watching, the more reason everyone involved, from federal monitors to local election officials, has to be on their best behavior.

What I expect on Election Day

In 2024, I took my dad to vote in person. He’d recently moved to Utah, and we needed some help sorting out his registration. The polling place was packed, with voters coming and going and election workers trying to keep everything moving. We had questions, but the workers were patient and helpful, and we got everything straightened out. Between navigating the crowd and making sure my dad could cast his ballot, I barely noticed anything else going on around us.

For all I know, a federal monitor could have been standing six feet away, and I wouldn’t have noticed — at least not without the dark glasses and mysterious earpieces, à la Men in Black.

I suspect that’s how this Election Day will go for most Utahns: We’ll show up, cast our ballots, and go about our day.

Which is exactly how it should be.

One more question before you go.

Happy Friday! It’s Editor-in-Chief Nick Huey.

Today we’re covering the lawsuit Utah AG Derek Brown filed Tuesday against Kalshi, the prediction market app where you can buy a contract that pays a dollar if the Jazz win tonight. Kalshi says that’s a trade, not a bet. Utah says “tomato, tomahto.” We’re about to dive into the nuances of bets, swaps, and other financial mumbo jumbo.

But first, let’s look at the results of the Amendment B article from last week.

Plum readers started out leaning against Amendment B, 54% to 17%, which is the mirror image of the Noble poll of Utah voters (50% for, 21% against). So don’t read our polls as representing Utah yet. I hope to get more representative of Utah as our audience grows and our articles naturally cut both ways.

After reading both takes, “For” and “Against” both gained exactly 13 points. Shout-out to Billy Hesterman of the Utah Taxpayers Association for his strong rebuttal.

Now let’s talk about the shares.

The article has been shared 102 times across Facebook, Instagram, and other sources, more than 8X any article we’ve published. I’ve also been told that it showed up in a news aggregator and an HOA GroupMe. And we have no way to measure how many private forwards the email had. Judging by the engagement, there were a fair few.

But what made me happiest is how it was shared.

On the whole, the shares were civil and helpful, exactly the kind of discussion that I hope The Utah Plum invites.

The comments under the article itself were just as thought-provoking, from both “yes” and “no” voters.

A big ol’ “thank you” to all you thoughtful sharers, commenters, and readers.

Okay. On to Kalshi.

Today’s Read
Research and writing: about 18 human hours
Reading time: about 17 minutes

Background

On Tuesday, Oct. 20, Utah Attorney General Derek Brown filed a 63-page lawsuit against Kalshi in 3rd District Court in Salt Lake City. The suit names the prediction platform, three of its affiliates, and Susquehanna International Group, a Wall Street trading firm that acts as a market maker on Kalshi, meaning it stands ready to take the other side of users’ trades.

The state is asking a judge to do three things:

1. Order Kalshi to stop offering “sports, elections, politics, culture and mention bets” in Utah, with a court-approved geolocation provider checking that the platform complies.

2. Make Kalshi give up the money it has made from Utahns.

3. Declare the whole operation a public nuisance.

The complaint says more than 32,000 Utahns had verified Kalshi accounts as of February, that Utah accounts have placed more than $3 billion in wagers over Kalshi’s lifetime, and that Kalshi’s fee of one to two cents per contract works out to somewhere between $30.6 million and $61.2 million in fees from Utah. The state also estimates Utahns have lost at least $5.5 million on the platform. Those are estimates built on Utah’s share of Kalshi’s national volume, but the complaint says the actual figures are “likely much greater.” Brown told reporters he expects to get a clearer picture as the case moves forward and more evidence comes to light.

Why civil and not criminal? Brown said his office is focusing on the civil case for now and “we don’t comment on existing criminal investigations or potential criminal investigations.” Why Kalshi and not Polymarket or Robinhood, which offer similar contracts? He said the office is “focusing on Kalshi” for now and that other companies operating here should read the complaint.

What is Kalshi?

Kalshi is a New York company that lets people bet on whether something will happen in the future, from election results to sporting events. Here’s how it works: You buy a contract predicting a yes-or-no outcome for anywhere from 1 cent to 99 cents. If you’re right, you get a dollar. If you’re wrong, you get nothing. The price changes as people buy and sell, much like a stock. You’re trading against other customers or large financial firms (like Susquehanna), not Kalshi itself. The company makes its money by charging a small fee on trades, whether you win or lose.

Kalshi is regulated by the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the same agency that oversees trading in commodities like oil and wheat. That gives Kalshi a different legal status from a traditional sportsbook. It spent years securing federal approval and won a court battle with the CFTC in 2024 that allowed it to offer contracts on election outcomes.

Last year, Kalshi started offering contracts on sports, and the company took off. CEO Tarek Mansour told RotoWire in September that Kalshi is “edging close to 30 million customers.” Of the $179.4 billion traded on Kalshi this year through early September, $128.3 billion was on sports or sports “combos,” which is Kalshi’s word for parlays.

Utah’s complaint lists contracts on game outcomes, point spreads, player props, and parlays, plus elections (“Blue wave this year?”), politics (“Trump’s approval rating Friday”), culture (who headlines Coachella in 2027), and “mentions,” which are contracts on whether someone will say a particular word at an event.

Back up. Isn’t gambling illegal in Utah?

Yes. Utah and Hawaii are the only two states with no legal gambling of any kind. Utah’s ban is in the state constitution, which has said since 1896 that “the Legislature shall not authorize any game of chance, lottery or gift enterprise under any pretense or for any purpose.”

So how is Kalshi operating in our state?

Kalshi says Utah’s law doesn’t apply to it.

The argument goes like this. The federal Commodity Exchange Act gives the CFTC “exclusive jurisdiction” over swaps traded on registered exchanges. Kalshi says its event contracts are swaps, so a state can no more ban Kalshi’s sports contracts than it can ban wheat futures in Chicago. And since the contracts are legal under federal law, Kalshi argues they’re a “lawful business transaction,” which is exempt under Utah’s own definition of gambling.

Utah’s complaint says Kalshi has been offering contracts to Utahns since at least September 2024 and alleges that a Kalshi representative filmed an ad on BYU’s campus.

How’d we get to a lawsuit?

Kalshi sued Utah first. In February, Gov. Spencer Cox told Bloomberg that companies like Kalshi are “illegal in Utah and will continue to be so,” and Brown wrote a Deseret News op-ed naming the company. Within days, Kalshi sued Cox and Brown in federal court to block any enforcement before it started.

On Aug. 4, U.S. District Judge Robert Shelby ruled for Utah and closed the case. He held that Utah’s gambling laws apply to Kalshi’s sports contracts and that federal law does not preempt them. Kalshi appealed. On Sept. 8 the 10th Circuit denied Kalshi’s emergency request to block Utah from enforcing its laws while the appeal is heard. The appeal itself is still pending.

But Kalshi kept taking Utah trades.

States versus the federal government

Utah is one of at least nine states that have taken legal action against prediction markets. The legal battle has three unusual features.

First, the federal government is on Kalshi’s side.

The CFTC has sued six states to stop them from enforcing gambling laws against registered exchanges. In June, it proposed a rule that would define which prediction-market contracts count as gambling. Under the proposal, betting on the outcomes of sporting events would generally be allowed. Forty-four state attorneys general oppose the rule.

Second, the federal appeals courts disagree with each other.

In August, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Nevada, 3 to 0, holding that Kalshi’s sports event contracts are not swaps. In April, the 3rd Circuit sided with Kalshi against New Jersey, 2 to 1, holding that sports event contracts are swaps and that the CFTC’s jurisdiction is exclusive. New Jersey has asked the Supreme Court to take the case.

If it does, the answer will apply in Utah too.

Third, gambling states and tribes with casinos are on Utah’s side.

States where gambling is legal, like Nevada and New Jersey, are also taking on Kalshi, but for different reasons. They argue the CFTC is overstepping its authority.

There’s also a lot of money at stake. Kalshi competes with casinos and sportsbooks, which are a substantial source of these states’ tax revenue. Nevada collects about $1.1 billion a year in gaming taxes. State regulators have warned that revenue could shrink as more betting moves to prediction markets that aren’t taxed like sportsbooks. The tribes that joined the Supreme Court case have raised similar concerns.

What do Utahns think?

A Deseret News/Hinckley Institute poll last November found that 38% of Utah adults thought legal sports betting was bad for society, compared with just 8% who thought it was good. Another 44% said it was neither.

Today, we’ll share views from both sides of the debate. Then, Editor-in-Chief Nick Huey shares his take.

What Utah and its allies are saying

• Utah has banned gambling since 1896. Calling a bet a “contract” doesn’t change what it is.

• Congress did not authorize the CFTC to take a wrecking ball to all sports gambling regulation.

• Betting is bad for society, whether you call it betting or not.

Utah Attorney General Derek Brown, announcing the lawsuit:

“Utah has said no to gambling since statehood in 1896, and that didn’t change when betting moved onto cellphones. Effectively, Kalshi bet today that Utah would not enforce its gambling laws. Well, we are enforcing it. So on that point, Kalshi has now lost their bet. …

“Ultimately, this is part of a larger investigation. But the reality is, Utah law is very specific. And under our system of government, every state can choose how they treat this issue.”

Judge Ryan Nelson, writing for a unanimous 9th Circuit panel in Kalshi’s case against Nevada:

“We have recognized that a ‘swap’ allows two parties ‘to exchange (“swap”)’ cash flows on obligations such as ‘interest rates, currency rates and security or commodity prices,’ to hedge risk on those obligations. As Nevada points out, Kalshi’s sports event contracts do not help institutions or investors hedge against risk; they create risk, largely for ordinary consumers, where none previously existed. …

“Congress did not take a wrecking ball to all sports gambling regulations built up over decades by federal, state, and tribal governments when it amended the CEA to add the definition of swap we are considering today.”

President D. Todd Christofferson, second counselor in the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints:

“The smartphone has transformed gambling from an occasional activity requiring a trip to a casino, racetrack, or lottery kiosk into an activity available continuously, privately, and almost anywhere. This has led to an explosion in gambling. Worldwide surveys spanning multiple years indicate that 46 percent of adults gambled in the last 12 months — that is about 2.3 billion people. The global gambling industry generated estimated revenues of $758 billion in 2025. Of course, the industry’s revenue is the gambler’s loss. Simply put, the industry’s entire business model is built on its customers losing money.

“The growth in worldwide gambling is primarily driven by three new online markets. First is online sports betting, which involves wagers on sports scores, statistics, or events. Second is online casino-type games, sometimes referred to as internet or iGaming: slot games, roulette, blackjack, poker, and so on. A third, relatively new platform is what are called ‘prediction markets’ that allow participants to bet on whether something will or will not happen and when. It could be tied to anything: interest rates, elections, sports, wildfires, or even, if you can imagine, the timing of the Second Coming. (Where would you go to collect on that bet?)”

What Kalshi and its defenders are saying

• Kalshi is an exchange, not a bookie. You can actually gain wealth consistently on Kalshi.

• One federal regulator protects market participants from inconsistent and contrary rules.

• Ban sports contracts and the useful prediction markets may go with them.

Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour, asked by RotoWire to describe the difference between Kalshi and a sportsbook:

“People come up to us [and] say: ‘It quacks like a duck, and it looks like a duck …’ I would say two things to the duck arguments. The law is not ducks. Because if it was, then gambling in grain would still be regulated at the state level. The number two thing, which is very important, is that the people actually using Kalshi, they know the difference. What is that difference? There are very concrete differences in the product experience. If you’re a winner on Kalshi over the last 10 to 12 months, you’re still trading on Kalshi. You’re probably bigger than ever, and you’re winning more than ever. That is impossible on traditional sportsbooks. You get limited, and you would get banned in ways that you basically would not on prediction markets because of that structural difference between the two exchanges.”

Judge David Porter, writing for the 3rd Circuit majority in Kalshi’s case against New Jersey:

“The outcome of a sports event certainly can be associated with a potential financial, economic, or commercial consequence. …

“Kalshi’s sports-related event contracts are swaps traded on a CFTC-licensed DCM, so the CFTC has exclusive jurisdiction. …

“This state regulation is exactly the patchwork that Congress replaced wholecloth by creating the CFTC.”

CFTC Chairman Michael S. Selig, announcing the agency’s lawsuits against Arizona, Connecticut, and Illinois:

“The CFTC will continue to safeguard its exclusive regulatory authority over these markets and defend market participants against overzealous state regulators. This is not the first time states have tried to impose inconsistent and contrary obligations on market participants, but Congress specifically rejected such a fragmented patchwork of state regulations because it resulted in poorer consumer protection and increased risk of fraud and manipulation.”

Eric Zitzewitz, an economist at Dartmouth College who studies prediction markets, asked by The Plum what reporters miss about this fight:

“The non-sports prediction markets can be really valuable, and the sports prediction markets help bring people to these markets and/or give prediction markets’ operators a reason to help them succeed.

“We are now seeing, for the first time, liquid prediction markets on thousands of elections a year, all over the world, geopolitical risks that are first-order for anyone investing in any affected country, climate change, future pandemics, FDA approvals, company earnings and key performance indicators, economic numbers, etc. There are even prediction markets on Rotten Tomatoes ratings, so you know which movie to not take your date to.

“But my suspicion, and I am working on research to test this hypothesis, is that a lot of this will go away if we ban sports prediction markets. I suspect that the sports prediction markets have a side benefit that betting at an online bookmaker or a traditional casino do not — they both cross-subsidize and draw traders to socially valuable prediction markets.”

My Take

• Kalshi is fairer than any sportsbook.

• Futures markets protect American industry, and the CFTC is right to guard them.

• But Utah is right. A contract on the Jazz winning shouldn’t count as a swap.

• Congress should update the law: Real hedging stays with the CFTC, and bets go back to the states.

This one is fascinating.

Before I started researching this article, I had no idea the CFTC was against Kalshi a couple of years ago. In 2023, the agency told Kalshi it couldn’t list contracts on which party would control Congress because betting on elections was gambling and against the public interest. Kalshi sued its own regulator, won, and the contracts went live before the 2024 election. Then the administration changed, and now the CFTC isn’t just letting Kalshi operate. It’s actively suing any states that say no thanks.

Talk about a 180.

Part of it is obviously a turf war. CFTC Chairman Selig’s own words were that states are “overzealous” and that Congress rejected a “fragmented patchwork” on purpose. If states can tell a federally registered exchange which contracts it can list, the CFTC stops being the only cop on the street.

The other part is politics. This administration is pro-crypto and pro-deregulation, and Donald Trump Jr. is a paid adviser to Kalshi who has also received company shares, raising concerns about conflicts of interest.

Still, I kept getting stuck on a simpler question: Why did Congress give so much power to the CFTC to regulate futures in the first place? Why is it so bad if Utah tells Chicago we’re not accepting wheat futures?

Why swaps matter in the first place

Futures markets were created to help businesses protect themselves from unpredictable prices.

Think of a wheat farmer who plants in the spring but won’t sell his crop until fall. If wheat prices drop in the meantime, he could lose a lot of money. A futures contract lets him lock in a price at planting. Airlines do the same thing with jet fuel; cereal companies do it with corn. Farmers and airlines walk onto the exchange carrying risk. The exchange lets them sell it to somebody else.

But this system only works if the contracts are protected across state lines. A corn contract traded in Chicago might involve buyers and sellers from anywhere in the country. If individual states could suddenly declare those contracts illegal gambling, the farmer could lose his protection right when he needed it. In fact, many states did just that in the 1800s. That’s one reason Congress put the whole thing under one federal regulator, the CFTC, in 1974, and gave it “exclusive jurisdiction” over these markets.

Kalshi argues that event contracts are simply the next step in the evolution of futures markets. They started with grain, expanded to oil and interest rates, and now include predictions about future events.

So is a Jazz game contract a swap?

“Swap” means you’re swapping away a risk your business already has. But if I buy a contract on the Jazz winning, what risk is it swapping?

As far as I can tell, none. It’s only introducing a new risk that I win or lose my money, which is exactly how a bet works.

Judge Nelson from the 9th Circuit agrees. He wrote that Kalshi’s sports contracts “do not help institutions or investors hedge against risk” and instead “create risk, largely for ordinary consumers, where none previously existed.”

Kalshi argues, and the 3rd Circuit agrees, that a Jazz game’s outcome is associated with economic consequences for teams, sponsors, and TV networks. The company is right, but by that rationale, anything counts as a swap: who headlines Coachella, a celebrity breakup, whether Trump says the word “ballroom” in a speech (that’s a real one).

If that’s the test, there’s no such thing as a bet anymore, and we might as well erase every betting law on the books.

Is Kalshi gambling?

Kalshi says it offers consumers a better deal than traditional sportsbooks. There’s some truth to that. The popular online sports betting company DraftKings sets its own odds, takes the other side of every bet, makes money when you lose, and limits your bets if you win too often. On Kalshi the price is set by other customers, the company charges a penny or two per contract either way, and it doesn’t punish consistent winners. If I were going to bet on the Jazz (don’t worry, AG Brown, I would never), I’d much rather do it on Kalshi.

But just because Kalshi offers a better experience doesn’t mean it isn’t gambling. To the consumer, the experience of paying $1 and receiving $2 back on a swap or a bet is objectively the same.

And look at what people actually trade on Kalshi. It’s not a $40 billion market for wheat futures. Of the $179 billion traded on Kalshi this year through early September, $128 billion was sports. Parlays, point spreads, player props. Pretty much everything you’d find at a sportsbook. Until recently, Kalshi even advertised itself as “the first app for legal sports betting in all 50 states.”

If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and puts up ads that say, “Hey guys, I’m a duck!” we should probably start treating it like a duck.

What I think should happen

Utah could be completely right about Kalshi and still lose in court, because the courts are interpreting a law that was written before anyone imagined a world full of pocket-sized magic mirrors that let us swap trade just about anything. The law hasn’t kept up with the technology, and it’s Congress’ job to fix that.

Three things the updated law should include:

1. Clarify that “swap” means “a hedge against economic risk.” A contract should only count as a swap if the thing it’s about is economic in itself: crop prices, jet fuel, interest rates. A game, an election, or a word in a speech doesn’t qualify.

2. Bets go back to the states. Sports contracts, election contracts, and the rest get treated as what they are, gambling. And gambling has always been the states’ call. Utah gets to say no.

3. A state can only say no to Kalshi if it says no to sportsbooks, too. Right now Nevada is on Utah’s side, most likely because it has casinos to protect. But a legal gambling state shouldn’t get to ban Kalshi just to protect its gambling tax revenue at the expense of its citizens. Congress should give registered exchanges like Kalshi the right to operate under the same rules as a licensed sportsbook.

Sen. Curtis’ bipartisan bill, the Prediction Markets Are Gambling Act, gets us partway there. It tells every CFTC-registered exchange that it can’t list a contract on “any sporting event or athletic competition” or any casino-style game, and it says in plain words that nothing in federal law overrides a state’s right to regulate or ban them.

Rep. Blake Moore has one that would ban gaming contracts on federal exchanges unless a state expressly permits them, and Sens. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Andy Kim, D-N.J., have another bill that would let prediction markets operate only in states that set up a program for them, with a 21-and-up rule.

None of these match my criteria perfectly, but they all preserve Utah’s right to make and enforce its own gambling laws.

Getting the perfect bill is pretty rare in Congress, and we’ll probably have to link arms with gambling states to get something passed. I’ll take what I can get. The most important thing is that we let states decide whether they allow betting within their own borders.

If I were a betting man (or a Kalshi trader), I’d say we’ll probably get that.

What would change my mind

1. If the Supreme Court sides with Utah’s reading of the law. If the Court takes New Jersey’s case and agrees with the 9th Circuit that a sports contract isn’t a swap, the law as written already does job one, and “Congress has to fix it” becomes “Congress should lock it in.”

2. If sports are what keep the useful markets alive. Zitzewitz is researching whether the valuable prediction markets dry up without sports. If they do, then I need to reckon with whether banning some event contracts is worth the valuable data prediction markets provide around elections, geopolitical risks, climate change, and more.

By Nick Huey, Editor-in-Chief

Ballots are hitting mailboxes this week! I want to pre-empt your reading today to tell you three things:

1. My personal take is at the end (I say how I’m voting, so skip it if you’d rather not know).

2. We gave Billy Hesterman, president of the Utah Taxpayers Association, exclusive access to this article and invited him to write a rebuttal. You can find his take right below mine.

3. If you want civic bonus points, I wrote this article on Amendment A, which will also be on your ballot. Amendment A is less controversial, but still has its detractors.

Reading time: about 15 minutes
Research & writing: about 18 human hours

What is Amendment B?

Amendment B asks one question: Should a citizen initiative that raises taxes need 60% of the vote to pass instead of a simple majority?

If Amendment B passes, any initiative voted on after Nov. 1, 2026, would need at least 60% if it does any of the following:

• creates a new tax,

• expands an existing tax to cover more items,

• raises a tax rate, or

• changes a property tax rate so that it “decrease[s] less than it would under current law.”

That last clause needs some explaining. Under Utah’s Truth in Taxation system, property taxes automatically fall as property values rise, keeping local governments from collecting more money simply because properties are worth more. Under the amendment, even an initiative that froze property tax rates, allowing the government to collect more as values rise, would count as a tax increase and require 60% voter approval.

It’s important to note that Amendment B covers taxes, not spending. An initiative that costs money but doesn’t raise a tax would still pass at 51%.

Who wrote Amendment B?

Lawmakers put this on your ballot with SJR2, sponsored by Sen. Lincoln Fillmore, R-South Jordan, and Rep. Jason Kyle, R-Huntsville. In the 2025 session, the Senate passed it 21-8. All 21 yes votes were Republicans. Six Democrats and two Republicans voted no. The House passed it 55-17, again with only Republicans in favor and 13 Democrats plus four Republicans against. Lawmakers had tried once before: A near-identical proposal stalled in 2024 after then-Senate Majority Leader Evan Vickers said too many amendments “really muddies the field when a voter goes to the polls.”

What do Utahns think?

Noble Predictive Insights surveyed 602 registered Utah voters in September and found 50% in favor, 21% opposed, and 23% unsure. Support climbs with age, from 29% among voters 18 to 29 up to 64% among those 65 and older. Independents are the least settled group, with 35% unsure.

Today, we’ll share views from supporters and critics of Amendment B. Then I’ll give my take.

What supporters of Amendment B are saying

• A tax increase takes money from the half that voted no. Laws like that should require broader consensus.

• Lawmakers can be held accountable. Your neighbor who voted to raise your taxes cannot.

• Ballot initiatives lack the debates and flexibility of legislation, making mistakes harder to correct.

Sen. Lincoln Fillmore, R-South Jordan, the amendment’s sponsor, presenting it to the Senate Revenue and Taxation Committee in January 2025:

“The question here is very simple. Do the people of Utah want 50.1% of the people in the state to be able to raise taxes on the other 49.9%? Or, when it comes to this type of a question, should there be a broader consensus? I don’t know what the people will decide. … But I’m certainly not afraid to ask.”

At the same hearing, Fillmore explained why a tax passed by lawmakers should face a lower bar than one passed by voters:

“If your representative votes to raise your taxes, there is a maximum of 18 months before you will get a chance to vote for or against that representative. There’s a maximum of three-and-a-half years, 42 months, before you’ll have a chance to vote for or against the senator who voted to raise your taxes. You will never get a chance to vote for or against your neighbor who voted to raise your taxes.” (KUER)

“I think there really is a difference with the ability for you to hold electorally accountable the people who vote to raise your taxes, and the people that you will never be able to hold electorally accountable for raising your taxes.” (Utah News Dispatch)

Senate President Stuart Adams, R-Layton, speaking to reporters in 2024 when the first version of the amendment was moving through the Legislature:

“You get something on the ballot and you just have to vote it up or down. You can’t amend it, you can’t substitute it, you can’t discuss it. And sometimes there are mistakes made, things that need to be tweaked.”

What opponents of Amendment B are saying

• The Legislature can already rewrite a tax initiative it doesn’t like, and has. The 60% rule solves a problem that doesn’t exist.

• This is one more piece of legislation designed to make citizen initiatives harder to pass.

• If 60% is the right threshold for a tax increase, it should be applied to lawmakers too.

Katharine Biele, president of the League of Women Voters of Utah, in an exclusive interview with The Plum:

“The Legislature already has the power of the purse and can revise any citizen initiative (unless it is one to change the form of the government). In other words, Amendment B is unnecessary.

“Requiring a 60% threshold for initiatives gives a minority of voters the power to block popular policies and those that could fund needed public services.”

Helen Moser, director of voter services for the League of Women Voters of Utah, testified on her own behalf at the January 2025 Senate committee hearing:

“It would make it significantly higher for citizens to enact any kind of meaningful change through the ballot initiative process. In addition, it allows a minority of voters to overrule a majority of voters, which really undermines the fundamental principles of our country.”

When the House took up the amendment alongside SB73, Moser warned:

“Together with SJR2, (SB73) really makes it nearly impossible for grassroots efforts to succeed while large, well-funded interests can still navigate the system. … these extra barriers only silence the people.”

Rep. Jennifer Dailey-Provost, D-Salt Lake City, the House minority whip, in committee in 2024, on the first version of the amendment:

“I would be less opposed to this if we first imposed on ourselves a requirement to get to 60%, but to sit here and say ‘I think we should do this as legislators’ and not actually follow up with anything substantive … does nothing more than continue to erode the confidence the public has in us.”

My Take

• Tax laws are complicated, and mistakes in ballot initiatives can’t be fixed until after voters decide.

• We should expect our lawmakers to amend citizen initiatives to make them better. That’s their job.

• Raising the bar to 60% serves legislators more than voters, and weakens one of our most powerful tools as citizens.

I’ll start with where I believe supporters are right. Writing good legislation is extraordinarily difficult, even when it’s your full-time job. A bill at the Capitol can be amended right up to the final vote. In contrast, a citizen initiative gets a fiscal estimate, seven public hearings and one chance to revise, and then it’s locked in for a yes-or-no vote. Whatever flaws are still in it on Election Day are in it the day it becomes law. That makes it hard to get a tax law right, especially one that’s going to raise taxes for every Utahn who didn’t vote for it.

In that context, this amendment seems perfectly reasonable. If you’re going to raise taxes in this way, you need a supermajority to do so.

But there was one thing that I didn’t quite understand. Why was the Legislature making this a priority now?

That’s when I started looking at the most recent tax-related citizen initiatives to see what could have inspired this amendment.

Which recent initiatives would Amendment B have affected?

A lot of Utahns assume that this amendment is a response to Prop. 4, the 2018 initiative that created an independent redistricting commission, but Prop. 4 didn’t raise a tax, so Amendment B wouldn’t have actually affected it.

However, there are two other recent citizen initiatives from 2018 that Amendment B would have likely stopped from passing:

• The Our Schools Now initiative would have raised roughly $700 million a year for schools by raising both the income and sales tax rates by 0.45 percentage points. But the petition was dropped after the Legislature cut a deal with the architects to keep it off the ballot.

• The Prop. 3 Medicaid Expansion initiative sought to give more Utahns access to Medicaid, paid for by raising the state sales tax from 4.7% to 4.85%. The state’s share of the cost was estimated at about $77 million a year, and the tax was expected to bring in about $90 million.

  
  After it passed with 53% of the vote (short of the 60% Amendment B would require), the Legislature passed SB96 to repeal it and replace it with a smaller expansion. It covered adults up to the poverty line instead of 138% of it, added work requirements, and let the state cap enrollment if costs ran high. Its sponsor, Sen. Allen Christensen, R-North Ogden, argued that full expansion was not financially sustainable.

  
  The backlash was not fun for lawmakers.

  
  On the day of the House vote, faith leaders knelt in front of the chamber doors with their elbows locked, praying. One of them, the Rev. Curtis Price of First Baptist Church of Salt Lake City, called the bill “a war on the poor.” Inside, then-Speaker Brad Wilson, R-Kaysville, warned he’d clear the gallery after an outburst, and protesters unfurled a “Respect our vote” banner anyway. Utah Decides Healthcare, the group behind Prop. 3, had already spent more than $100,000 on TV ads, and its spokesman accused politicians of “striking backroom deals designed to overturn the clear will of the voters.” Prop. 3’s backers called SB96 “a dark day for democracy in Utah,” and The Salt Lake Tribune’s editorial board called the repeal “a cruel lie to the people of Utah.”

These two initiatives are the clearest motives I can find for writing and passing Amendment B now. In fact, when the Legislature struck its deal with Our Schools Now, Senator Fillmore said the compromise bill “ends the threat of the largest tax increase in the state’s history.” It’s not hard to draw a line from this deal to Amendment B, which would make anything like it much harder to pass again.

Fillmore rejects this reading. Amendment B “is not designed to stop any particular initiative,” he told The Plum. “It is designed to require broad public support and consensus before a bare majority of voters can impose higher taxes on everyone else.” He may well see it as a general rule, but the timing is hard to ignore. Since 1952, Utah voters have approved seven citizen initiatives, and Prop. 3 is the only one that raised a tax.

I can’t know what’s in his head. But I think 2018 is why this is on your ballot.

If I’m right, I don’t actually blame Senator Fillmore. Citizen initiatives like these must be a massive headache for legislators. In the case of Our Schools Now, the initiative handed enormous bargaining power to the sponsors, forcing the Legislature to give up more than they wanted in order to fend off a larger tax increase at the ballot box. And in the case of Prop. 3, legislators had to weather months of bad press and attacks on their motives for what they saw as protecting Utahns from fiscally unsound legislation.

With Amendment B, most of that headache goes away. Legislators don’t have to try to convince half of Utah that they are changing this tax-raising legislation for their good. Because now, that legislation will probably never make it to their desks.

That sounds like a really good deal for the Legislature. Is it as good of a deal for Utahns?

Legislators would say yes because it’s an extra barrier against runaway taxation. And they’re right. This does make it harder for Utahns to pass tax increases.

But that barrier is already pretty high.

Barrier #1: Publicly disclosed funding mechanics (SB73)

SB73 requires sponsors to spell out how they’ll pay for the initiative, including any new tax and its rate or the existing programs that would lose money. If the lieutenant governor finds the math doesn’t add up, the initiative is rejected before sponsors can collect a single signature.

Barrier #2: Collecting signatures

Sponsors need signatures from 8% of active voters statewide and in 26 of 29 Senate districts. That's about 140,750 valid signatures, roughly the population of West Valley City.

Barrier #3: Paying to publish the initiative

Starting in 2027, sponsors have to publish their entire initiative application the same way the state publishes a proposed constitutional amendment. The Salt Lake Tribune estimated that it could add about $1.4 million to the cost of an initiative.

NOTE: If Amendment A, the other amendment on your ballot, passes, these notices could go online instead of into newspapers and most of that cost would disappear.

Barrier #4: Winning at the ballot box

After all of that, 51% of voters would have to approve the initiative.

Barrier #5: Surviving the Legislature

And if the initiative survives, the Legislature could still repeal or amend it how they see fit, which is exactly what happened to Prop. 3.

We can add a sixth, 60% threshold barrier on top of all this if we want to. Before we do that, we should understand what we would be giving up to add it.

We would be giving up one of our most powerful tools as citizens: the ability to force the Legislature to talk about issues we care about between elections.

Voting someone into (or out of) office is powerful, but voting about a specific policy is a different kind of leverage. It’s our one way to say to whoever is in office, “We care about this issue. Here’s our best guess for how to fix it. Now keep this law, or explain why you changed it.”

To me, that changes the calculus of this debate and makes me hesitant to accept the 60% threshold the Legislature wants. I think it serves the Legislature more than the people because it allows them to avoid a conversation that a lot of voters apparently want them to have.

A 60% bar is a blunt instrument. It makes no distinction between good initiatives and flawed ones. It just makes them all harder to pass. If we keep the current majority threshold, lawmakers could still address problems by refining the initiatives that pass into more thoughtful, effective laws.

Lawmakers may not like the political cost of stepping in and changing these initiatives, but I think that’s an important feature. When lawmakers rewrite something voters passed, they do it in a recorded vote, and they answer for it at the next election, where voters can judge whether the rewrite kept faith with what they passed.

Yes, that’s a headache for lawmakers. But if Utahns are willing to go through the effort to pass a ballot initiative, I think it’s a headache that’s owed them.

If 51% of Utahns want the Legislature to consider expanding Medicaid, then I think the Legislature should go ahead and have the hard conversation about Medicaid. And if lawmakers decide against the changes voters passed, then they should clearly explain why.

By the same token, citizens shouldn’t automatically get mad when the Legislature changes an initiative. In fact, I would argue that as citizens we should expect them to change the initiative.

The first draft of a law is rarely the last, even at the Capitol. So I wouldn’t judge lawmakers for amending an initiative. I would judge them on whether the amended version is true to the goals of the version that voters approved.

Citizen initiatives are one of the few levers we have outside of elections to pressure our lawmakers into addressing the issues we want them to address.

Amendment B would weaken that lever.

What would change my mind:

• If SB73’s money check turns out to be toothless. SB73 is new. If the lieutenant governor’s office were to start approving funding plans that clearly don’t add up, one of the barriers I’m counting on wouldn’t really be a barrier.

• If lawmakers lost the ability to fix a flawed initiative. My whole argument depends on the Legislature being able to amend a tax initiative that passes. In 2024, the Utah Supreme Court limited how much lawmakers can change initiatives that reform government, like Prop. 4. That ruling wasn’t about tax laws. If courts ever extend it to tax-raising initiatives, a higher bar at the ballot box starts to make a lot more sense.

• If fear of voters kept lawmakers from fixing a bad tax law. If lawmakers start leaving seriously flawed tax initiatives alone because they’re afraid of public backlash, I would reconsider whether citizen initiatives are a good thing altogether.

A rebuttal: The case for Amendment B

By Billy Hesterman, president of the Utah Taxpayers Association

From my perspective, Amendment B isn’t solely about increasing taxes. It is also about protecting Utah from being overrun by outside interest groups.

While it sounds nice in theory to imagine a scrappy group of Utahns coming together and doing the grassroots work necessary to put a proposed change to state law on the ballot, that just isn’t how things typically happen. Initiative campaigns cost hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars to pass. As we’ve seen with ballot initiative campaigns over the last 10 years, these efforts have not been funded primarily by local families and businesses. Instead, they’ve been supported largely by out-of-state organizations that stand to benefit from the proposals being approved.

According to the state’s financial disclosure website, for Proposition 3, the initiative to expand Medicaid in Utah, the largest donor was a Washington, D.C.-based group known as the Fairness Project, which poured about $3.5 million into passing the initiative. United Way of Salt Lake was the largest Utah-based donor, contributing $75,000 to the effort.

For Proposition 2, the initiative to allow medical marijuana to be dispensed in Utah, the Washington, D.C.-based Marijuana Policy Project was the largest donor at about $318,000, while the local libertarian think tank Libertas Institute was the largest Utah-based organizational donor at $135,000.

For Proposition 4, perhaps the most well-known ballot initiative because it created Utah’s Independent Redistricting Commission, many of the largest donors were also from out of state. Action Now Initiative, a Texas-based philanthropic organization associated with billionaires John and Laura Arnold, donated more than $1 million to pass the initiative. The California-based Campaign for Democracy gave $100,000, as did SEIU-United Healthcare Workers, which is also based in California.

I believe in free speech, so I don’t mind if out-of-state organizations choose to spend their money on issues in Utah. But that’s also precisely why I believe Utah needs a higher standard when someone wants to raise taxes.

Raising taxes means less money in Utah families’ bank accounts. It means less money for a business to pay its employees, and it means less money for Utahns to spend at their favorite local restaurants or retail stores.

Simply put, raising taxes should not come down to who spends the most money during an election cycle. When even a single dollar is going to leave a Utahn’s pocket, I want to be certain that a substantial majority of Utahns support that decision, rather than having it decided by a simple majority persuaded by catchy advertising campaigns and political parties’ get-out-the-vote efforts.

Is this a belt-and-suspenders approach to raising taxes? You bet it is. But I don’t apologize for that. Raising taxes should be difficult.

For local elected officials to raise property taxes, they must hold a public hearing to inform residents of the proposed increase. A notice of that hearing is sent to every property owner in the jurisdiction. These hearings are often painful experiences for elected officials, who must listen to residents and answer difficult questions about why they believe additional tax revenue is necessary.

For the Legislature to raise taxes, lawmakers must consider the proposal in a public committee meeting, where members of the public have an opportunity to comment on and question the proposed increase before it can move forward.

Then, both local and state elected officials must answer to their constituents for those tax increases when election time comes around.

It isn’t easy for them, and I believe that if an outside group wants to come into Utah and campaign to raise taxes on Utahns, it shouldn’t be easy for that group, either.

As with nearly everything in public policy, this approach isn’t perfect. But I believe it is pro-taxpayer, pro-Utah families and businesses, and in the best interest of our state to ensure that all voices are heard and considered before more money can be taken from Utahns.

Did Billy change my mind?

Partly. Billy is right that citizen initiatives are usually funded by outside money. I’m surprised I missed that.

But Amendment B wouldn’t change how these citizen initiatives are funded. The difference is they’ll be much harder to pass.

And that’s the whole point. If you feel, as Billy does, that raising taxes deserves a different threshold than other legislation, then Amendment B makes perfect sense.

I’ll be voting “no” for the reasons I stated above, but I understand and respect Billy’s rationale, and I’ll sleep just fine if Utahns decide “yes.”

Can’t wait to see what Utah decides.

Your ballot is on its way, winding through the United States Postal Service toward your mailbox. Which means you and I are about to make some big decisions about Utah’s future by filling in some very small ovals. As with any test, studying is recommended, and this article is our best attempt at a nonpartisan study guide.

Before we walk through Amendment A, I want to invite anyone who hasn’t yet to take a look at our analysis of the more controversial Amendment B. We included a rebuttal from Billy Hesterman, the president of the Utah Taxpayers Association, and it’s a doozy.

DISCLAIMER: In this article I tell you where I land in the end. If you’d rather decide on your own first, stop reading at “My take.”

Reading time: about 9 minutes
Research & writing: about 7 human hours

What is Amendment A?

Here is the question as it appears on your ballot:

“Shall the Utah Constitution be amended to change how proposed constitutional amendments are published, requiring publication for 60 days immediately before the general election in a manner established by state law instead of in newspapers?”

Before Utahns can vote on a proposed change to the state constitution, the Legislature must publish the full text in advance. It’s a requirement that has been a part of Utah’s constitution since it was written in 1895: “in at least one newspaper in every county of the state, where a newspaper is published, for two months immediately preceding the next general election.”

Amendment A deletes the newspaper part. Instead, it requires that proposed amendments be published “in a manner provided by statute, for 60 calendar days immediately preceding the next general election.”

In plain English, the constitution would still require the Legislature to publish every proposed amendment for 60 days prior to ballot voting. However, where it gets published would be decided by ordinary state law, which the Legislature can change with a regular bill.

Lawmakers already wrote the law deciding where amendments need to be published. HB481 tells the lieutenant governor to publish the full text of every proposed amendment on the Utah Public Notice Website and on the lieutenant governor’s own website for 60 days before the election. Newspapers are no longer required.

If Amendment A passes, it takes effect Jan. 1, 2027.

Back up. Why is this on my ballot?

In 2023, the Legislature passed SB43, a bipartisan cleanup bill that changed the publication requirements for constitutional amendments, replacing newspaper notices with notices on government websites. But the constitution itself wasn’t changed. It still contained the two-month newspaper requirement.

In 2024, the Legislature put four amendments on the ballot, and Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson followed the new law and posted them online. Nobody bought newspaper space because they thought they didn’t have to anymore.

The League of Women Voters of Utah and Mormon Women for Ethical Government sued over Amendment D, the measure that would have let lawmakers rewrite citizen initiatives at will. They made two arguments: The ballot language was misleading, and the text was never published in newspapers as required by Utah’s constitution.

Once the lawsuit was filed, the Legislature bought ad space in 35 newspapers for the week of Sept. 16, 2024, but it was too late. The election was less than 60 days away.

Third District Judge Dianna Gibson voided Amendment D on Sept. 12, 2024, on both grounds. On Oct. 9, Third District Judge Laura Scott voided 2024’s Amendment A. Both amendments were already printed on the ballot, but the votes were never counted.

In its full opinion on the matter, the Utah Supreme Court wrote that one week of ads “fifty days before the election does not satisfy the requirement that the amendment be published ‘for two months.’” It also left the door open: “The Legislature may have a point that the newspaper publication requirement is outdated, but it cannot rewrite the constitution by statute. Nor can this court rewrite it by opinion.”

Amendment A is the Legislature’s answer.

Which lawmakers voted for Amendment A?

All of them. Rep. Anthony Loubet, R-Kearns, sponsored it, and Sen. Dan McCay, R-Riverton, carried it in the Senate. The House passed it 70-0 with every Democrat and Republican present voting yes. The Senate passed it 29-0. Nobody spoke against it in the House committee hearing. In the Senate committee, the only public comment came from Alliance for a Better Utah, which said it was neutral. And because no lawmaker voted against it, the state’s voter information pamphlet has no argument against Amendment A.

Why the lack of opposition?

Amendment A has its critics, but nothing like Amendment B. That’s likely because Amendment A won’t just make it easier for the Legislature to pass amendments. It will also make it easier for citizens to pass initiatives.

The Legislature passed SB73 last year. Starting in 2027, it requires the sponsors of statewide citizen initiatives to publish them “in the same manner required for a constitutional amendment.” Sponsors could end up spending $1.4 million or more to put their initiative in newspapers for two months, just like the Legislature has to do every time lawmakers want to pass a constitutional amendment.

If Amendment A passes, initiative sponsors could publish online for free, the same way the state does.

Today, we’ll share views from supporters and critics of Amendment A. Then, Editor-in-Chief Nick Huey’s take.

What supporters of Amendment A are saying

• Nobody reads legal notices in the back of the paper anymore. Put the full text where people actually get their information.

• The newspaper rule costs up to $1.4 million every election. The state can reach more people online for less.

• The constitution should set the principle, which is notice, and let the law set the method.

Rep. Anthony Loubet, the amendment’s sponsor, to the Deseret News, on why the rule made sense in 1895:

“Back in the day, that was a great way of communicating with people. People received their newspapers daily and that would be (a) good method of notification. Unfortunately nowadays that’s not true any longer.”

Rep. Anthony Loubet and Sen. Dan McCay, the sponsors, in their official argument in the state’s 2026 voter information pamphlet:

“The Utah Constitution currently requires public notices about constitutional amendments and statewide initiatives to be published in print newspapers in all 29 counties. While that made sense when newspapers were the primary source of information, most Utahns now rely on digital sources, mobile devices, and online platforms to stay informed.

“Amendment A updates Utah’s public notice requirements to reflect how people access information today while preserving transparency and public awareness. Utah taxpayers currently spend approximately $800,000 to publish these notices in newspapers statewide. Despite that expense, print notices are increasingly unlikely to reach the broad audience they once did. Amendment A allows Utah to use modern publication methods that can better connect voters with important election information while reducing unnecessary costs.

“Public notice is only effective if people can easily find and review it. Amendment A ensures information about proposed constitutional amendments remains widely available while allowing state law to use communication methods that reflect how Utahns receive information today. Amendment A does not eliminate public notice. It updates how public notice is delivered. By modernizing an outdated constitutional requirement, Utah can maintain transparency, improve accessibility, and save taxpayer dollars.”

The Legislature’s attorneys, in their 2024 brief to the Utah Supreme Court, as quoted in the Court’s opinion:

“The Utah Constitution enshrines principles, not application of those principles.”

What critics of Amendment A are saying

• The Legislature broke this rule in 2024 and is now asking voters to erase it.

• A future Legislature could change where and how the notice appears with a simple bill, no vote of the people required.

• A newspaper is an independent record somebody else keeps, and it still reaches people who aren’t online.

The Network of Utah Moderates, a group of Utahns who say many of their members come from traditionally conservative backgrounds, in a post urging a no vote on Oct. 12:

“While this change from newspaper to online seems acceptable right now, we’re nervous that if the way to advertise for amendments can be changed after the amendment passes, Utah’s legislative branch could theoretically impose relatively easy rules for itself and more difficult ones for citizen-led initiatives. We’ve seen double standards happen before (again, see Amendment B).”

Katharine Biele, president of the League of Women Voters of Utah, in an email to The Plum:

“Amendment A only addresses what they do not need to do to ensure citizen knowledge and participation and it does not address what needs to be done. It should not be changed until they have the bills in place for how they will increase knowledge and participation.”

The Utah Supreme Court, in its unanimous opinion, on why the rule exists:

“The drafters of our constitution and the people who ratified it determined that the appropriate way to ensure that voters understood a proposed amendment was continuous publication of its full text in at least one newspaper in each county for two months prior to the election. They also deemed it necessary to enshrine that precise method in the constitution.

“The submission and publication requirements are not mere boxes to be checked before votes can be tallied; they are constitutional safeguards designed to ensure that voters have the information and time necessary to cast an informed vote on a matter as weighty as a constitutional amendment.”

Rep. Merrill Nelson, R-Grantsville, on the House floor in 2019, the last time the House voted down a bill to pull legal notices out of newspapers:

“This is an unnecessary provision that appears to do more harm than good, especially to the small rural communities who are affected by and really live by their local newspapers.”

Nelson warned the 2019 bill looked like “a first step in an effort to remove all publication notices.” The House killed it, 35-39. Four years later, SB43 moved most of those notices online anyway.

My take

• The newspaper rule from 1895 is outdated. There are better ways to give notice to citizens now.

• This amendment saves Utah up to $1.4 million every election cycle.

• Future abuse by the Legislature is possible but unlikely to succeed.

A change in the newspaper rule is long overdue. The updated publication requirement saves Utah money, and fixes the biggest drawback of SB73, which was going to force citizen initiatives to pay $1.4 million or more just to be counted on the ballot.

The most persuasive argument against Amendment A is that it lets the Legislature write its own rules for where it must publish each amendment before an election. In the case of a cartoonishly corrupt Legislature (which I don’t believe we have), that technically means they could change the rules to publish the amendment as a PDF 10 clicks deep on a legislative subpage where no one could find it.

I don’t think we have to worry about that, for three reasons.

• “Published” still has to mean published. When the Legislature tried to swap “newspaper” for a website by statute in 2023, the Utah Supreme Court said “no way.” The Court would be just as unlikely to let the Legislature redefine “published” as a hidden PDF no one can read.

• If the Legislature wanted to move published amendments off the established public notice site, they would have to do so with a public bill, which would immediately trigger a lawsuit from organizations like the League of Women Voters.

• The constitution still requires 60 days’ notice and publishing the amendment itself, which the Court has read to mean the full text. So attempts to deceptively summarize text or shorten notice periods would run headlong into the constitution.

There are some valid reasons not to like this amendment. But in my mind, the theoretical downsides can be addressed if abuse ever occurs. They don’t justify forcing the Legislature and citizens to pay up to $1.4 million every election for newspaper notices almost nobody reads.

What would change my mind:

• If the Legislature starts trimming HB481 and the courts don’t stop them. My whole argument depends on the notice staying easy to find: the full text, on the state’s main public notice site, for all 60 days. If a future bill moves it somewhere obscure or swaps the full text for a summary, and the courts don’t stop lawmakers, I’d be plumb wrong.

• If Utahns actually read the legal notices. I’m assuming almost nobody finds the text of an amendment in the back of a newspaper. If there’s evidence that a real share of voters (say, 10%), especially in rural counties, do, then the newspaper rule is doing more than I’m giving it credit for.

At the Plum, we seek to be a source of news that Utahns can trust, no matter their political orientation. Last week when we asked your political affiliation, 182 of you answered: 47% unaffiliated or independent, 25% Republican, 24% Democrat, 2% another party, 3% preferred not to say. We’ll keep monitoring those numbers as we grow.

Next week we’ll be sending out a breakdown of Utah’s two ballot measures Amendments A & B.

Today’s Read – est. 16-minute reading time

In Idaho, the fight is heating up over Proposition 1, a November ballot measure that would replace the state’s near-total abortion ban with broader protections for abortion up until fetal viability, including elective abortions.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has weighed in, sending a letter to be read in congregations throughout Idaho.

What the Church’s letter said

In a letter dated Sept. 16, the Church’s U.S. Central Area Presidency stated the institution’s opposition to Proposition 1:

“An initiative called the Idaho Reproductive Freedom and Privacy Act will be on the November ballot seeking to amend Idaho state laws related to abortion. The Church opposes this initiative,” the letter said. “Our long-held stance on abortion remains clear and unchanged.”

Church leaders then went a step further, encouraging Idaho members to oppose the measure as well.

“We join with other like-minded individuals and organizations working against this initiative and encourage our members to voice their opposition to it in a respectful manner consistent with prophetic direction of always demonstrating Christlike love and civility in political discourse.”

A few days later, the Church sent a similar letter to congregations in Nevada where residents will be voting on a constitutional amendment protecting abortion rights.

The move is particularly significant in Idaho where 14% of Idahoans self-identify as Latter-day Saints, and the Church reports about 483,000 members. Some are predicting the Church’s message could matter at the margins if the vote is close.

The LDS Church has long opposed elective abortion, while recognizing limited exceptions for rape, incest, serious threats to a mother’s life or health, and certain fatal fetal conditions. That position is more progressive than Idaho’s current near-total abortion ban, but more conservative than Prop. 1’s broader abortion protections.

Idaho’s law leaves little room for medical exceptions

Idaho’s abortion ban is among the strictest in the country. The 2020 Defense of Life Act bans abortion in nearly all cases. The law does not punish the pregnant woman for obtaining an abortion. Rather, it places legal responsibility on any doctor who performs one outside the law’s exceptions.

Doctors may intervene when an abortion is necessary to save a mother’s life, and the law includes limited exceptions for rape or incest. However, if a pregnancy threatens severe or permanent damage to a woman’s health, her doctor cannot legally end the pregnancy. The same is true if a fetus has a condition that makes survival outside the womb impossible.

Republican lawmakers, who hold a supermajority in Idaho, have revised the law before. In 2023, they clarified that doctors would not be penalized for treating miscarriages or certain pregnancy complications involving accidental or unintended fetal death. The law also made clear that treating an ectopic or molar pregnancy is not considered an abortion.

Since then, however, further changes have stalled.

Why the Idaho legislature isn’t passing wider abortion exceptions

“I don’t think our law reflects the general consensus of Idahoans, and it’s just because of a small number of people, a very small number.”

— Sen. Jim Woodward, R-Sagle

Idaho is overwhelmingly Republican, but its GOP is divided between more traditional conservatives and a harder-right activist wing that has gained influence over local committees and the state organization. Local party groups regularly censure Republican lawmakers, and the state party has published platform ratings that count some votes as “violations” when they conflict with party positions.

Abortion has become one of the clearest tests of that divide. At the 2022 state GOP convention, delegates rejected a proposal to add a life-of-the-mother exception to the party platform by nearly 4 to 1. More moderate Republicans warned that the position went further than many Idaho voters — including many Republicans — were willing to go, but they lost that fight. The 2026 platform says personhood begins at fertilization, and the party’s priorities call for protecting unborn children “without exception,” including in cases of rape, incest, and serious fetal anomalies.

Republican leaders have repeatedly blocked efforts to broaden the law’s exceptions. In 2023, the Idaho GOP party chair helped derail a bill that would have loosened abortion restrictions by sending a statewide email urging Republicans to oppose it; the committee chair pulled it from the agenda the next morning. Two years later, Senate Republican leaders again limited debate, allowing an exception bill to be introduced but not given a full public hearing.

All these moves sit well to the right of much of the public. Boise State polling found that nearly two-thirds of Idahoans — including 41% of Republicans — supported broader exceptions. But inside Idaho’s GOP, departing from the party line or attempting compromise is politically costly.

The ban has coincided with a sharp contraction in maternity care: The state lost 35% of its practicing obstetricians between August 2022 and December 2024. Of those who remained, many are concentrated in just a handful of counties. The law has also complicated emergency care, with doctors describing treatment delays and out-of-state transfers, all against the backdrop of 14 Idaho counties classified as maternity-care deserts.

The creation of Prop. 1

As frustration over the 2020 ban continued to mount and fixes languished in the Legislature, some Idahoans decided to bypass the Legislature by gathering 110,000 signatures to put the question directly on the ballot. The initiative’s authors went beyond medical exceptions, though. Their stated goal was to restore Idaho abortion policy to something closer to the pre-Dobbs status quo.

In early 2025, before Prop. 1 was on the table, polling suggested that most Idahoans occupied the middle. They wanted abortion restricted, but not as rigidly as current law. By late 2025, about 6 in 10 said they would support Prop. 1.

What supporters of Prop. 1 say

• Repeated failures to even hear bills expanding maternal-health exceptions helped drive voters to pursue Prop. 1 themselves as a way to force the Legislature to act.

• Idaho’s current ban has caused hardship for women, families, and doctors, while lawmakers have repeatedly failed to advance broader medical exceptions.

Sen. Melissa Wintrow, D-Boise, told The Plum that lawmakers had repeatedly failed to get exception bills even a hearing in the statehouse.

“For years there has been great conflict and fighting about reasonable exceptions for the health of the mother, to the point that bills were drafted but couldn’t get a hearing in a committee. I think it’s because the religious organizations probably have such a hold on some of the legislators that they wouldn’t hear these bills. And therefore, as I indicated, the people took it into their own hands and said, ‘We are going to put it on the ballot, and we’re going to make the decision and guide the legislature.’ I would hope the legislature, if that ballot initiative passes, that they would respect it and not overturn it.”

Melanie Folwell, executive director of Idahoans United for Women & Families, the group behind the Idaho Reproductive Freedom and Privacy Act (Prop. 1), told The Plum that the current ban has already caused “incredible hardship.”

“We would welcome any and all relief for the women and families and healthcare providers in Idaho. Here’s the truth: For four years, four legislative sessions, our lawmakers have heard from those women and their families and doctors. They have heard about circumstances that would break anyone’s heart. They have heard about the harm caused by the ban. They have heard the ways that the ‘exceptions’ that do exist are completely unworkable. They have heard, and no one in the building, in a majority, has had the courage to actually make changes.

“There have been many bills behind the scenes that were drafted to add in health exceptions. Idaho is one of only five states with no exception for health of the mother, one of only 12 with no exceptions for fatal fetal diagnosis or doomed pregnancy, and it has caused incredible hardship. It is why we are seeing so many women leaving Idaho and going to Utah. The laws in Utah are just more compassionate and recognize that in a pregnancy there are hundreds if not thousands of things that can and do go wrong.”

What opponents of Prop. 1 say

• The medical exceptions in the current law are already sufficiently clear and should remain narrow.

• Idaho’s abortion restrictions are a higher medical standard that requires doctors to treat the unborn child as a second patient.

In a statement to The Plum, Blaine Conzatti, president of Idaho Family Policy Center said the law is sufficiently clear about medical exceptions.

“According to the Idaho Supreme Court, these abortion laws are clear, understandable, and legally sound. In the landmark case Planned Parenthood Great NW v. State (2023), the Idaho Supreme Court found that any physician — and even any ‘person of ordinary intelligence’ — should ‘unquestionably understand’ what care a physician can provide under our state abortion laws. …

“We don’t support abortion exceptions when a pregnant mother is struggling with mental health. Abortion is never a valid form of psychiatric care. Women struggling with mental health need treatment, not the enduring trauma that inevitably accompanies the unnecessary death of her preborn child. Likewise, while we support an exception for medically necessary abortions, we don’t support an exception for abortions in cases where a pregnant mother could receive other medically necessary care that would stabilize her and enable the pregnancy to continue. And even in cases where an abortion is necessary, doctors should still do everything possible to treat the preborn baby as a patient deserving of care and dignity.”

David Ripley, executive director and founder at Idaho Chooses Life, described the medical environment since passing DOLA (Defense of Life Act) as a period of transition to a higher standard of medicine.

“They (doctors) do not want to be held accountable to a higher standard of medicine, which is what DOLA imposes. It requires them to treat the baby as a second patient, regardless of their political agenda or their personal feelings in the matter. … In the OB/GY specialty, we have to always bear in mind that we are still in a cultural shift, a legal shift of huge proportions. Every single one of the people practicing in that specialty were trained under the Roe era. They were trained that abortion is part of the tools in the kit and was at best morally neutral, if not morally good. They were trained to look at the baby as ancillary to their primary mission, which is to take care of that woman. … That’s part of what the fight that we are having right now in Idaho is: We are trying to impose a higher standard of care, and there’s a lot of resistance to that because we have people in the profession who were trained under a different regime, and in fairness to them, that’s a difficult transition.”

What different Latter-day Saints say about the Church’s letter in opposition to Prop. 1

• Rep. Sonia Galaviz said the letter failed to acknowledge the circumstances that led to Prop. 1, including the gaps between Idaho law and Church guidance.

• Merrilee Boyack said the Church’s opposition provided welcome clarity for members who see Prop. 1 as a threat to the sanctity of life.

• Colin Nash said the Church could have opposed Prop. 1 while also pressing Idaho leaders to address the law’s medical gaps and the hardships facing women.

In speaking with The Plum, Rep. Sonia Galaviz, D-Boise, called the letter a heartbreak and said she felt like it omitted the most important part of the conversation.

“It was heartbreak because it felt like it was missing the largest part of the conversation about what brought us to this point. I know I’ve said that multiple times. Why did there have to be an initiative to push the conversation forward? What have the last four years been like for women in Idaho and for doctors? And if we had recognized what brought us to this point, even a mention in the letter that the Church does not support the existing Idaho statute, or even recognizes that Idaho statute needs to do better to accommodate health of a mother, and just bring it into alignment with the Church’s guidelines, or cite the Church’s guidelines as an example of how we can accommodate the health of the mother. Anything to recognize the complexity of what brought this moment forward.”

Merrilee Boyack, development director for Latter-day Saints for Life, a pro-life organization, said she welcomed clarity from Church leaders.

“I think it’s really important that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints issued the letter because I think it’s very clarifying for the saints that live in Idaho,” she said. “We have many members in Idaho who have been talking about it, and we’ve all just been waiting for this.

“The Church has been very clear that the sanctity of life is a fundamental doctrine of the Church, and this is very much threatened by this proposition.”

Boise City Council member and former Idaho legislator Colin Nash, a Latter-day Saint who plans to vote for Prop. 1, said he was disappointed the Church did not go further in addressing the concerns facing Idaho women.

“I don’t fault the Church for restating its long-held position on abortion. But I believe it missed a critical opportunity to do more for Idaho mothers. …

“I don’t expect the Church to support Proposition 1. I do expect it to speak to the painful realities Idaho women face. And I hope it will call on Idaho’s leaders, many of them fellow Latter-day Saints, to fix the broken law that gave rise to this citizen-led ballot measure.”

A quick note from Erica before her take

This issue is charged enough that I need to be up front about where I’m coming from.

I’ve lived in Utah for more than half my life, about 30 minutes from Idaho. I have family in Idaho. I visit often, and I care deeply about the state. Politically, I often vote conservative, but not automatically. I care more about whether someone has integrity than whether they agree with me on every issue. I believe good policy should be both compassionate and grounded in evidence and that elected officials have a duty to represent their constituents even when doing so requires setting aside their own preferences.

I’m also a Latter-day Saint. I believe Church leaders are inspired, but not infallible or immune from political pressure.

I have four children, and pregnancy was hard on me physically and mentally, even though I was never considered high-risk. Those experiences changed how I think about pregnancy, risk, and how much control the government should have over medical decisions.

I have long considered myself pro-life. Before Dobbs, I assumed that position still left room for doctors and families to make difficult decisions when a pregnancy became dangerous. I was wrong about how simple that would be.

So I come to this debate opposed to elective abortion, but far less comfortable with politicians trying to write one rule for every pregnancy, emergency, and family.

As a Utahn trying to make sense of what’s happening in our northern neighbor, here’s where I land.

My take

• Prop. 1 is voters’ response to years of GOP leaders choking off debate over abortion exceptions.

• This citizen initiative is a way for voters to take some of that power back.

• I’m still pro-life, but I now think Prop. 1 may be the pressure Idaho needs to get to a better law.

I thought this story was going to be about the Church’s letter. It isn’t — at least not entirely.

The deeper I looked, the more the letter became just one piece of a larger story about power inside Idaho’s Republican Party. Over and over, I heard that the Legislature had failed Idaho women. But the reality is more troubling. Most lawmakers have never even had the chance to meaningfully engage in the debate. A small number of powerful GOP leaders, some of them unelected party officials, have repeatedly controlled whether proposed changes advance at all. Bills to revise the abortion law have been stopped before reaching a full floor debate, leaving most legislators without the opportunity to argue the merits or cast a vote.

Prop. 1 is voters’ chance to force the issue, and its growing support appears to have rattled lawmakers who are used to operating in one of the country’s most reliably Republican states. Which seems to be why the Church was drawn in.

The disturbing dynamic in Idaho politics

Idaho’s Republican Party has too much power, and too often it is using that power to police elected officials instead of letting voters do the job. The situation is alarming. If I lived in Idaho, I would feel like my vote had been negated by people I never elected. Left unchecked, that concentration of power risks pulling Idaho toward a more authoritarian style of politics, where power increasingly flows downward from party leadership rather than upward from voters.

Representative government is supposed to mean citizens choose lawmakers to represent them. In Idaho, Republican legislators are also being asked to prove loyalty to a party platform that increasingly functions like a creed. Stray from it, and local committees can censure you, withdraw support, or try to strip away your standing as a Republican.

That is not healthy party discipline. It is a system that punishes lawmakers for responding to the people who actually sent them to Boise.

The same pressure hangs over Idaho’s abortion debate. A handful of powerful gatekeepers have frozen the Legislature on this issue.

“We have had four legislative sessions to solve this problem, and we couldn’t,” said Rep. Galaviz, D-Boise. “The bottom line is, we were unable to do the work that was necessary to protect our women, and so, in absence of our ability to be able to thread the needle with all the stakeholders, it became the citizens’ right to bring a ballot initiative forward. So we are now charged with answering that request from Idaho citizens.”

The way this has played out, I think it’s high time Idaho voters raise the stakes.

Prop. 1 creates a counterweight to the extraordinary amount of control party and legislative leaders have exercised over the abortion debate. Gatekeepers can keep a bill off the legislative calendar. They cannot keep a statewide citizen-led initiative from becoming a statewide conversation. Now the debate is happening on doorsteps, in coffee shops, at school pickup and in church parking lots. The issue is proving far less settled than party leadership has treated it.

If the initiative passes, GOP leaders have vowed to repeal it, but the harder-right among them would no longer hold all the cards. They could either live with a much broader abortion law or pull up a chair and negotiate something narrower with the other Republicans and Democrats in the Legislature.

More moderate lawmakers would have new leverage. Now they could block any amendments to Prop. 1 that they deemed too extreme and negotiate for a ban-with-exceptions plan that better reflects their constituents.

GOP leaders may have pressed the Church to weigh in

The Church’s letter seemed to drop into the middle of an already complicated debate. It was devoid of any nuance or understanding for the people of Idaho. Some members have since said they wished the Church had either stayed out of the fight or said more about what a better alternative to Prop. 1 might look like.

Why it chose this particular moment and this particular message is harder to know. The Church did not respond to The Plum’s request for comment, and anything beyond the letter itself requires some speculation.

Sen. Jim Woodward offered one possible explanation in a brief interview. He believes some of his Republican colleagues may have sought an explicit statement from the Church opposing Prop. 1. We have not been able to confirm this, and it is a significant claim. But if he is right, it would help explain the letter’s narrowness: It opposes Prop. 1 and reiterates that the Church’s abortion policy has not changed, without addressing Idaho’s years-long fight.

Even if no one did ask the Church to intervene, I can easily understand why Church leaders might have felt that weighing in was the proper moral choice. From outside Idaho, the request could easily have looked straightforward. The ballot initiative would substantially expand abortion rights, and the Church opposes elective abortion, full stop.

But as Idahoans know all too well, this fight is far more complicated than that.

I nearly made a similar mistake while writing this article. My first draft focused only on the abortion issue. Then, while I was talking it through with my husband, he made a simple observation: “Living in Utah, we tend to think Idaho is just like Utah. It’s not. Some of their Republicans are super extreme.”

That sent me back into the reporting, including a deep dive into Idaho politics. What I found was a far more complicated political story than I expected.

How would I vote on Prop. 1?

This debate has pushed me harder than I expected. It has forced me to confront how far lawmakers are willing to go to micromanage abortion access, even in situations involving serious medical risk. But it has also strengthened something I already believed. Abortion is not only about ending a pregnancy. In my view, it also ends the life of a child.

Supporters of Prop. 1 often argue that pregnancy decisions belong to a woman and her doctor, not the government. I understand the appeal of that argument. But privacy has limits when another life is at stake. We learned something similar in the long fight over domestic violence, when abuse was too often treated as a private family matter and government intervention was seen as an intrusion. That deference did little to protect women and children.

I cannot look at abortion as purely private for the same reason. Before Idaho’s ban took effect, roughly 1,500 abortions were reported each year. I cannot shrug at that number simply because those decisions happened behind closed doors.

At the same time, being pro-life cannot mean being indifferent to what happens to women. If we are going to insist that the unborn child matters, then the mother has to matter just as much. Idaho’s law should make room for serious threats to a woman’s health and for fatal fetal conditions, and then trust doctors to use their medical judgment in good faith.

I have made my peace with Prop. 1, not because I agree with everything in it, but because I now understand why it exists. I see it as a practical way to push back against the top-down control Idaho GOP leaders have exerted over the Legislature.

In particular, I appreciated this insight from Rep. Galaviz: “We need to be careful of creating an artificial dichotomy, that it’s either yes or no, and it’s as simple as that.”

Referring to Prop. 1, she continued, “We know it brings forward a conversation of every nuance, every specific example, every exception that could possibly come forward. So I want to recognize the complexity of the issue and that we live in a very conservative state, but we also care deeply about the health of our mothers. We’ve got to be able to do hard things together. I feel good about the proposition because people want a solution. They want us to be able to figure this out, and that is our charge as legislators and representatives of every district in Idaho.”

So I’ve ended up in a place I did not expect.

I am still fiercely pro-life. I still have real concerns about Prop. 1. But if I were voting in Idaho, I think I would vote yes.

Not because I think Prop. 1 is the law Idaho ultimately needs. I’d want a narrower, better law — one that protects unborn life while giving women and doctors more room to navigate serious medical complications.

I just no longer believe Idaho’s current political system will produce that compromise unless voters force the issue.

Quick question before you start. We’ll share the results in our next article.

Today’s Read – est. 20-minute reading time

Utah expects to need a lot more electricity. The harder question is where it will come from.

Gov. Spencer Cox’s answer is Operation Gigawatt, a plan announced in 2024 to double Utah’s power-generation capacity within 10 years by expanding nearly every available resource — natural gas, geothermal, storage, transmission and, increasingly, nuclear.

The nuclear piece is more than just one power plant. State leaders want to make Utah a nationwide hub for every part of the nuclear lifecycle, from mining and fuel production to energy generation, recycling, and waste management.

Cox has called the work of the past two years “only the beginning as we seek to become a central hub in the nuclear renaissance.”

Jeremy Pearson, director of the Utah Advanced Nuclear and Energy Institute, put the vision even more plainly: “A state that makes a bet on nuclear energy is a state that is making a bet on being an energy leader for the indefinite future.”

The demand behind Operation Gigawatt

Utah is planning for a power-hungry future. Population and business growth are pushing demand higher, electrification is adding new loads, and data centers can consume enormous amounts of electricity almost overnight.

A recent Utah legislative briefing estimated that planned data-center development could add roughly 2,600 megawatts of demand, a striking number in a state where average electricity demand was about 4,000 megawatts in 2025. At the same time, parts of the grid and generating fleet are aging, increasing the pressure to invest in new infrastructure even where existing plants may continue operating for years.

Gov. Cox sees the coming surge in electricity demand as both a problem to solve and an opportunity to seize. 

National power use is climbing after more than a decade of relative stagnation, driven increasingly by data centers, AI, and new manufacturing. The U.S. Energy Information Administration expects electricity sales to set records in both 2026 and 2027 and continue growing for decades.

Utah is bracing for the same pressures, while state leaders argue that getting ahead of them could do more than prevent shortages. Cox has framed abundant energy as a way to attract industry, support national security and AI development, and make Utah a bigger player in the next wave of U.S. energy growth.

Utah’s nuclear strategy

Nuclear appeals to state leaders because it promises large amounts of around-the-clock, carbon-free power.

But there’s more.

Much of the advanced nuclear industry barely exists at commercial scale yet. Utah leaders see an opportunity to get in early and build the jobs, manufacturing, and investment around an industry they believe is poised to grow exponentially.

For now, though, Utah is still in the research and exploration phase, inviting proposals from across the industry — from small modular reactors (SMRs) and microreactors while leaving the door open to the large conventional reactors most people picture when they think of nuclear power.

In Green River, developers are trying to revive the long-stalled Blue Castle nuclear project using Holtec’s smaller SMR-300 reactors instead of the large reactors originally proposed there. TerraPower, a nuclear company founded by Bill Gates, has an agreement with the state to look for possible Utah sites for its Natrium reactor, an advanced design that uses liquid sodium and energy storage. Near Delta, EnergySolutions and the Intermountain Power Agency are studying whether advanced nuclear could eventually replace or supplement generation at the existing Intermountain Power Project.

Then there is San Rafael Energy Lab in Emery County, which is becoming Utah’s nuclear testing ground. Valar Atomics has already built Ward250 there, a tiny experimental gas-cooled reactor that reached criticality (a self-sustaining chain reaction) in June. It is not producing commercial electricity, instead it’s being used to test reactor physics, fuels, and equipment.

Several other companies are also working with the Utah Office of Energy Development and the San Rafael Energy Lab on nuclear research and development.

At the same time, the state is considering proposals to build the expertise and manufacturing capacity needed to support those reactors. In Brigham City, Holtec and Utah-based Hi Tech Solutions are pursuing a manufacturing and training hub for Holtec’s SMR-300 technology. The idea is not necessarily to build reactors in Brigham City, but to manufacture components and train workers who could help build and maintain future nuclear plants across Utah and the Mountain West. Utah universities and Idaho National Laboratory are also part of the state’s broader research and workforce push.

State government is expanding to match. Lawmakers have created a Nuclear Energy Consortium to bring industry, government, and researchers together, along with a Nuclear Energy Regulatory Office to build state expertise. Utah has also added financing tools, signed federal permitting agreements, and launched a $1.8 million marketing and outreach campaign around nuclear energy.

Officials are also exploring parts of the nuclear fuel cycle — the steps that happen before and after a reactor uses its fuel. Curio Solutions is looking at Millard County’s salt dome as a site for storing and recycling spent nuclear fuel. And Tooele County is on a shortlist to become the home for a federal Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campus that could potentially bring several pieces together in one place, including uranium enrichment, fuel fabrication, advanced reactors, recycling or reprocessing, manufacturing, and long-term management of nuclear waste.

While this is an audacious push into nuclear energy, almost all of this is still exploratory.

For now, much of Utah’s nuclear push is still taking shape. Most agreements are nonbinding memorandums of understanding, site studies, or early development plans, and the state is keeping its options open as it evaluates different technologies, locations, and business models. No commercial reactor is under construction yet, and officials have not settled on a preferred design, a target share of future electricity from nuclear, or a single master plan tying the various efforts together.

Utah’s broad approach could leave the state well positioned if advanced nuclear takes off. Keeping multiple technologies and projects in play gives decision-makers room to learn, adapt, and back the options that prove most viable. Making that strategy work, though, will require disciplined choices about financing, permitting, infrastructure, workforce, and which projects are worth carrying forward.

What opponents are saying

• Utah is doing too much persuading and not enough listening.

• Nuclear may pay off if electricity demand surges; if it doesn’t, the economics get shaky.

• Utah could be managing high level nuclear waste — and its health consequences — for generations.

Dr. Danielle Endres, director of the Environmental Humanities Program at the University of Utah, says the state needs a clearer process for involving the public in its nuclear push.

“Initiating a PR campaign seems to have bypassed a public participation process about whether nuclear energy is what the people want in favor of a campaign to persuade them that it is right for the state. Although there is no one agreed upon definition, a key element of energy democracy is ensuring that citizens and energy users have a say in decision-making about energy extraction, production, use and waste management choices that affect them. As a representative democracy, the role of the government is not to spend tax dollars on a PR campaign, but to represent the views of its citizens. Furthermore, science communication research tells us that a deficit model of communication — one in which publics are viewed as empty vessels who merely need to be educated about the values of nuclear energy — rarely works.

“Instead, the state should create a robust process for Utahns to engage in a research-informed dialogue about our state’s energy future. A decision as significant as whether to move forward with nuclear energy deserves public input.”

Ted Goodell, the nuclear reactor facility director at the University of Utah is still on the fence about the viability of Utah’s all-out-push: 

“Companies want to be the first ones with their foot in the Intermountain West,” he said. “They are ready to support a burgeoning nuclear industry out here. But if this AI bubble pops and a bunch of these big tech companies start to walk back from their massive data center ambitions, I think that could really be a nail in the coffin for a new nuclear industry in Utah.

“If the projected electricity demands really pan out, though, and we really do need several gigawatts more of extra base load capacity then it could be a really big deal for the state and the region in general. But are you familiar with the other nuclear projects that have been attempted in our region?”

After Utah was named one of five states under consideration for a federal Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campus, Lexi Tuddenham, executive director of HEAL Utah (Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah), raised concerns about potential long-term health effects.

“I can’t in good conscience say that we won this bid because it really feels like losing,” Tuddenham said. “The Utah office that led this said that they wanted and were willing to take both temporary and permanent high-level waste storage. So that means that it will be shipped from around the country. It will be shipped and buried here in our land forever. . . . And those issues have not been dealt with, nor have they been truly rolled out in a way that involves people who will be dealing with those health effects potentially for generations.”

What proponents are saying

• The state will only move forward with projects that make sense for Utah.

• Utah’s nuclear buildout could bring long-term economic growth.

• Nuclear is a proven technology worth weighing seriously alongside other energy sources.

In an interview with The Utah Plum, Emy Lesofski, director of the Utah Office of Energy Development, said the state will only move forward with projects that make sense for Utah:

“If it’s not safe, we won’t do it, and if it’s not good for Utah, we won’t do it. Full stop. The nuclear industry has operated safely in the United States for decades. It has a really great security history, and if you look around the world, nuclear power is a safe, sustainable baseload power resource that has zero carbon emissions and is a fantastic energy resource. . .

“The reality of it is these things take time. They’re capital intensive. They’re permitting intensive, and they have a lot of things that have to happen in order to make them successful. So we’re really just at the beginning of the conversation, and it’s a really robust conversation. We’re excited about it because we think nuclear energy presents a ton of opportunities for Utah, for Utah families, for generational economic opportunity, for carbon-free power for the United States that’s baseload and sustainable. There’s a ton of opportunity, but this all takes a long time.”

Scott Cuthbertson founder and CEO of Alpen Associates and the former CEO of the Economic Development Corporation of Utah (EDCUtah), says the economic impact of Utah’s plan will transform the state.

“The economic impact is even more transformative. Building a small nuclear reactor industry in Utah would do far more than generate power — it would also drive lasting prosperity. A single reactor could bring billions in capital investment alone. Hi Tech Solutions’ broader plan to establish a full industry that includes workforce training and reactor manufacturing would create tens of thousands of high-paying, long-term jobs and attract tens of billions more in investment. In the process, it would strengthen the energy security that underpins Utah’s — and the Intermountain West’s — industrial and economic growth for generations to come.

“The nuclear conversation should no longer be defined by old fears or outdated narratives. Thanks to the governor’s leadership and bipartisan action, Utah is already laying the foundation for what comes next. With the right mix of innovation, experience and community partnership, we are transforming nuclear power from a point of debate into a defining driver of energy independence, industrial growth and shared prosperity for Utahns.”

Christopher Koopman, CEO of the Abundance Institute, respects Gov. Cox’s “clear respect for trade-offs rather than slogans.”

“Nuclear energy is not a speculative enterprise. It may have been 60 years ago, but it is now among the most established industrial technologies of the modern era. It has powered cities, industries and hospitals for decades, with a safety record that — measured over time and output — compares favorably to nearly every alternative. The countries that rely on it most heavily are not taking chances. They are making deliberate choices. . . Utah Gov. Spencer Cox has approached Utah’s energy future with an instinct that is increasingly uncommon: curiosity without alarm, ambition without theatrics and a clear respect for trade-offs rather than slogans. He has not treated nuclear energy as either a cure-all or a menace, but as one option among many that a serious state has an obligation to examine in a holistic energy conversation.”

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My take

• Nuclear could replace coal with reliable, clean power while preserving energy jobs in rural communities.

• Nuclear financing often requires public risk-sharing, and Utah has tools that could expose taxpayers and ratepayers if projects run into trouble.

• Utah should define those limits now — including how much consumers can absorb and what happens if multiple projects go over budget.

There is a lot about Utah’s nuclear push that I genuinely like.

We will eventually have to replace coal, and when we do, we need to think about more than megawatts. Communities in Carbon and Emery counties have built their economies around energy production for generations. Replacing those plants without replacing the jobs and economic base they support would be a failure. Nuclear offers the possibility of doing both: producing enormous amounts of reliable, clean electricity while keeping energy investment and high-paying jobs in communities that already know this industry.

And nuclear itself is exciting. It is one of the most reliable sources of electricity we have, capable of producing power around the clock without the air pollution and carbon emissions that come with fossil fuels.

I have also been struck by how consistently Utah energy officials talk about safety. Every official I have interviewed, heard speak, or received feedback from has emphasized that safety is nonnegotiable. That emphasis is beginning to show up in the state’s agreements and proposals, some of which call for upfront financial assurances to cover the consequences of accidents or other major failures. And despite some questionable choices in the state’s public-relations campaign — I still think comparing nuclear risk to bananas does the public a disservice — the Office of Energy Development appears genuinely interested in engaging with communities. Its town halls, in particular, are an encouraging start.

I want Utah to get this right. And that is precisely why the breadth of what the state is attempting makes me nervous.

Nuclear projects are notorious for long construction timelines and major cost overruns. Managing one is difficult enough. Utah has at least 13 nonbinding, nuclear-related memorandums of understanding (MOUs) in place, according to OED’s public partnership listings and separate announcements.

Those options span an extraordinary amount of the nuclear industry: power generation, fuel, manufacturing, research, workforce development, recycling, and waste infrastructure. If even a few of those efforts mature into major projects at the same time, each will bring its own financing, contracts, regulators, suppliers, and political pressure to keep going once money has been committed.

Recent history offers plenty of reasons to take that risk seriously.

In Georgia, the effort to build two new reactors at Plant Vogtle took roughly 15 years from the beginning of construction to the second reactor entering commercial operation and ended up costing $21 billion more than originally projected, with a substantial share of the costs ultimately borne by ratepayers.

South Carolina’s V.C. Summer expansion project never made it that far. Utilities abandoned two partially built reactors after spending billions, leaving customers paying costs associated with plants that never produced electricity. The collapse later led to criminal charges and prison sentences for executives accused of misleading regulators and investors about the project’s progress.

Patty Durand, founder of Georgians for Affordable Energy, argues that consumers in other states should take note.

“What does that have to do with the national push for nuclear energy underway now?” she writes in an op-ed for Utility Dive. “There is a strong belief among proponents that the next time will be different, that a learning curve exists from Georgia’s experience. Claims that Unit 4 (Vogtle’s second reactor) was cheaper to build, or that there was any meaningful learning curve, are not backed up by facts or documentation.”

Georgia Power, for its part, has said Unit 4 benefited from lessons learned during Unit 3, including faster completion of some testing. The larger point is that even after building two nearly identical reactors back to back, the project remained enormously expensive.

Utah does not have to look far for another cautionary example. Utah-based Associated Municipal Power Systems, or UAMPS, spent years pursuing NuScale’s proposed small modular reactor project in Idaho, only to see it canceled in 2023 after projected costs climbed dramatically and too few utilities committed to buy the power.

Federal taxpayers absorbed part of that failed experiment. The Department of Energy had committed substantial support, and its inspector general later concluded that critical risks were not adequately identified and managed before and throughout the project, contributing to escalating costs and putting federal money at greater risk.

This is not just a collection of unusually bad projects. The Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA), an international organization that studies nuclear energy policy and economics, identifies the underlying financing problem as one of the central challenges facing new nuclear construction.

Nuclear plants require enormous amounts of capital years before they begin generating revenue. Shifting some construction risk to governments or ratepayers can lower borrowing costs and make projects more affordable. In fact, the NEA argues that some nuclear construction risks are now too large for private investors to carry alone and that public-sector risk sharing will often be necessary.

But that creates another problem. The more developers and contractors are protected from losses, the weaker the pressure can become to control costs. Nuclear projects are further complicated by layers of companies and contractors making decisions with other people’s money.

A utility may hire a developer, which hires major contractors, which rely on dozens or hundreds of suppliers. If companies throughout that chain believe a project is too important to fail — and that government, utilities, or ratepayers will ultimately cover the difference when costs rise — overruns can become easier to tolerate. Economists call this a “soft budget constraint”: the expectation that a struggling project will be rescued rather than allowed to fail.

The NEA argues that cost control therefore has to be designed into the project from the beginning: clear milestones, carefully structured contracts, independent oversight, and meaningful consequences for poor performance. Without them, budget discipline can erode throughout the chain.

The frustrating part is that there is still no widely demonstrated modern formula for getting that balance right.

The NEA points to successful nuclear construction in the United Arab Emirates and earlier projects in Japan. But those examples come from very different models. Japan’s successful builds date back decades, while the UAE’s Barakah project began construction in 2012 under a highly centralized, state-backed system — far removed from the mix of private developers, utilities, and public support Utah is likely to rely on.

When it comes to more recent new construction in NEA member countries, the report is blunt. Investors are still waiting for an example of a new nuclear project completed both on time and on budget.

That context matters when considering Utah’s plans.

Utah says private developers should carry most of the financial risk for its nuclear buildout. That is a good principle. But private-sector risk only goes as deep as a company’s balance sheet, and not even the NEA believes it to be the most viable path.

Again, Vogtle and V.C. Summer are relevant case studies. Assigning risk to a private company is not the same as guaranteeing the public will never feel the consequences if the project fails.

Westinghouse, the reactor designer and lead contractor, had accepted substantial construction risk on both projects, including fixed-price commitments intended to protect utilities from rising costs. Then the losses overwhelmed the company. Westinghouse filed for bankruptcy in 2017, and the risk it was supposed to carry did not disappear. South Carolina abandoned V.C. Summer, and customers are still paying for it. Georgia kept Vogtle alive, but had to find ways to finance billions more.

Governments are already deeply involved in making nuclear projects financeable. At Vogtle, the federal government provided billions in loan guarantees, helping the owners borrow more cheaply. Washington is now pushing further, using federal loans, guarantees, and other support to reduce the cost of financing new reactors and absorb some of the risks private lenders are reluctant to take on.

Despite its stated preference for private-sector risk, Utah is also assembling its own toolbox for sharing some of it.

The state appears to be keeping multiple financing pathways open: one that leaves construction risk with private developers, and another that allows regulated utilities to recover qualifying nuclear investments via customer rates.

In 2024, lawmakers passed H.B. 241, folding nuclear power into a “clean energy” framework originally built for renewable resources. The change did more than reclassify nuclear. It opened a path for regulated utilities to recover qualifying nuclear development and construction costs from customers — including, with regulatory approval, some costs for projects that never make it into operation.

H.B. 241 also extended to nuclear an existing exemption for qualifying clean-energy projects of 300 megawatts or less. Those projects can bypass the standard advance-review process Utah uses for major utility investments. And if costs surge after construction is underway, projects below the threshold are exempt from the ordinary process that gives regulators a formal chance to reconsider whether the project still makes economic sense.

That is not a trivial distinction. Three hundred megawatts measures generating capacity, not financial exposure. A reactor below that threshold can still carry a multibillion-dollar price tag, especially if it is a first-of-a-kind design.

None of this guarantees that taxpayers or ratepayers will end up absorbing overruns.

However, the timing of H.B. 241 suggests lawmakers wanted customer-backed financing to be available as part of Utah’s nuclear toolkit. And it is worth noting that several of the private nuclear companies now pursuing projects in Utah are pitching reactors that fall within this 300-megawatt threshold. 

To Utah’s credit, the state has already identified many of the economic safeguards the NEA recommends for managing risk in nuclear projects. So far, though, they appear largely as guiding principles rather than binding commitments.

In its proposal for a federal Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campus, Utah says private capital should provide most of the money and construction risk should remain with project companies and their contractors. It proposes milestone-based incentives, clawbacks when companies fail to deliver promised outcomes, caps and sunsets on public support, insurance and financial-assurance requirements, and audit rights. At the same time, the proposal calls federal grants, cost-sharing, and debt support a “critical catalyst” for reducing private-sector risk.

Clearly, Utah policymakers are preparing for a balancing act.

The public sector may need to absorb enough risk to make nuclear projects financeable without absorbing so much that the companies actually building them lose the incentive to control costs. One multibillion-dollar nuclear project is difficult enough to structure that way. Utah could find itself managing several versions of the same financing challenge at once.

The question then becomes not simply whether Utah is willing to stop a troubled project, but what it is willing to trade to keep one going.

Vogtle shows why those tradeoffs are easier to define before construction begins than after billions have already been spent.

Georgia regulators eventually capped the construction costs recoverable from customers at roughly $7.6 billion, leaving Georgia Power to absorb $2.6 billion of its expected project costs. But that limit came near the end of construction, after ratepayers had already spent years helping finance the project and billions were already committed.

That is the kind of situation Utah should be planning for now.

If costs balloon after billions have already been spent, continuing may mean higher electricity rates, greater taxpayer exposure, or additional government-backed financing. Money and political attention committed to keeping one project alive may then be unavailable for other energy projects or public priorities. And if several nuclear projects run into trouble at once, those tradeoffs could compound.

Some of those choices may ultimately be worth making. An overrun is not automatically proof that finishing a project is the wrong decision. A project that costs more than expected could still provide decades of reliable power and jobs that support families and communities.

But Utahns should know what bargain they are being asked to make — preferably before the state reaches the point where every available choice is outrageously expensive.

How much additional cost is acceptable to preserve a project already underway? How much should ratepayers absorb to keep financing affordable? How much public money should be committed before the state asks whether another technology could provide the same power more cheaply? And if several projects need help at once, which ones get protected?

Those are not questions Utah wants to answer for the first time when a reactor is halfway built.

They need to be addressed now.

BONUS: A closing argument from Tracy Rees, deputy director at the Utah Office of Energy Development

In an effort to be more transparent and fair with our articles, we’re trying something new. Letting the side that the author critiqued respond with a defense of their position.

Tracy Rees, Deputy Director at the Utah Office of Energy Development, was kind enough to write this response. We gave her full, unredacted access to Erica’s article before publication, so that she could push back or correct if Erica had misunderstood the issue.

Tracy’s unedited response is below. We asked her to keep it to under 500 words. We invite readers to consider her arguments, and let us know if you would like this to become a standard part of The Plum’s information format.

Deputy Director Tracy Rees’ response

Powering Utah’s future requires a modernized grid capable of delivering electricity whenever and wherever it is needed. Through Operation Gigawatt, we’re building that future today because we know major energy projects require long lead times and must navigate complex regulatory and permitting hurdles.

As we plan for an energy future that is as sustainable and clean as it is energy-abundant, we remain committed to our any-of-the-above energy mix. Energy diversity is one of Utah’s greatest strengths. Integrating civil nuclear power will deliver reliable carbon-free baseload energy while creating high-paying stable jobs in our local communities.

Adding nuclear power to our portfolio is guided by social and environmental responsibility and fiscal sense. Our bottom line is that if it isn’t safe for Utah, we won’t do it. If it doesn’t make sense for Utah, we won’t do it. We have a duty to provide resources and information to our communities so they can make informed decisions about whether or not nuclear makes sense for them.

Our nuclear education and community outreach campaign is grassroots: We start by working with local leaders and nonprofits to develop outreach events that bring information and subject matter expertise to address questions, and we deliver the event in a way that makes sense for that individual community. We’re going to every county in the state and all our tribal nations to provide resources and access because informed decision-making is good decision-making.

We recognize that not every community would want, or even be eligible for, a nuclear project, but all our citizens deserve good information and the chance to ask questions.

We are equally committed to protecting taxpayers and ratepayers from financial risk. Our state is widely known for post-performance incentives, meaning financial benefits are awarded only after a project delivers on its promise. Nuclear is no exception. We’re protecting residents through clear measures:

• Expecting private capital to absorb significant financial risk.

• Passing legislation to ensure financial flexibility while safeguarding state resources and establishing necessary oversight mechanisms such as cost recovery.

• Enacting law to allow energy-intensive users to connect behind the meter with power generators, shielding ratepayers from increased costs.

• Making it clear that Utah will ensure there are clawback provisions, spending caps, and financial assurance frameworks for the Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campus.

• Taking the extra measure of requiring a financial assurance for Utah’s test reactor.

The steps outlined above clearly indicate that the state is continually making progress on placing financial responsibility where it belongs. Balancing risks and innovation is not new to Utah; we have a history of fiscal responsibility while also boasting one of the nation’s strongest economies. Nuclear technologies have become smaller, safer, and more water-friendly, and it’s those technologies Utah is specifically interested in adding to our energy mix.

The United States has safely harnessed civil nuclear power for decades. Utah is exploring next-generation nuclear technologies, which offer better cost controls through modular, scalable manufacturing and absolutely offer a zero-emission, water-wise, energy-dense foundation for Utah’s economic future.

Today’s Read – est. 15-minute reading time

If you want to know who is draining the Great Salt Lake, farmers are an easy place to look. But that answer gets complicated fast.

Agriculture accounts for roughly two-thirds of human-caused water depletion in the lake’s watershed, much of it tied to alfalfa and grass hay grown for livestock. That makes farmers an obvious target as Utah searches for ways to keep more water flowing downstream. But an obvious target is not necessarily an obvious culprit.

Farmers are operating inside a water system Utah spent generations building — one that incentivized use and made conservation surprisingly difficult. The real question is not whether agriculture has to change. It almost certainly does. But saving the Great Salt Lake will require the rest of Utah to carry some of that burden, too.

Background

At its 1986 peak, the Great Salt Lake covered a surface area larger than Rhode Island or Delaware. Today it’s smaller than either.

Having lost somewhere between 60-73% of its historic water volume, the lake has lost more than half its surface area since Mormon pioneers first settled Salt Lake Valley. This drastic decline has captured the attention of everyone from scientists to President Trump, who posted “MAKE ‘THE LAKE’ GREAT AGAIN!” earlier this year on Truth Social.

Unfortunately, the lake doesn’t respond to social media posts — even ones from presidential accounts.

As of mid-September, the Great Salt Lake sits barely a foot above its all-time low of 4,188 feet above sea level, a record set in November 2022, and about 10 feet below the 4,200-foot mark scientists believe to be the lake’s historical average. That may not sound like a lot, but this is a very shallow body of water. Every foot drained exposes roughly 70 square miles of lakebed.

We’re not just talking about a diminishing view. The health of Utahns is closely tied to the health of the Great Salt Lake.

Of the more than 800 square miles of Great Salt Lake playa now exposed, roughly 9% — 70 square miles — is actively emitting toxic dust laced with arsenic and other heavy metals into nearby communities. Recent analysis finds this share could soon rise to 187 square miles, or 24%, if protective crusts deteriorate or groundwater levels fall.

Aside from protection from pollutants, the lake provides more than $2.5 billion in economic value, increased snowfall and enhanced snow quality, migratory bird habitats, and a brine shrimp ecosystem.

Given all that’s at stake, how did we get here? And what do we do now? The good news, ironically, is that this is a man-made crisis.

Yes, Utah is the third driest state in the nation, behind only Nevada and Arizona. And four of the past six years have been notably dry. But lack of rainfall is only a small part of the problem.

The real culprit is direct human depletion.

BYU Professor Robert B. Sowby defines depletion as “water that doesn’t return because it evaporates or is transpired by plants and is no longer liquid.” As a saline lake, direct, unreturned withdrawals are limited. Just over 7% of human water depletion is withdrawn directly from the lake itself (for mineral extraction), while roughly 93% occurs upstream or before the water reaches the open lake.

Three primary tributaries feed the Great Salt Lake. The Bear, Jordan, and Weber rivers account for roughly 64%, 21%, and 17% of lake inflows, respectively. But anthropogenic consumption claims 62% of river water before it even reaches the lake.

And one industry is clearly responsible for more depletions than any other: agriculture.

Agricultural use represents 65% of human depletions, whereas municipal and industrial (M&I) usage represents only 26%, with mineral extraction a distant third at 6%. Nowhere is this disparity more pronounced than in the largest tributary, the Bear River, where agriculture claims roughly 95% of total river depletion.

About 80% of agricultural water goes to cattle-feed crops, specifically alfalfa and grass hay. Put in perspective, cattle-feed farming alone consumes 909,000 acre-feet of water each year. That’s more than the additional 800,000 acre-feet of annual inflow per year that experts estimate will give the lake a 47% chance of reaching its minimum healthy elevation of 4,198 feet by the 2034 Olympics.

These data have driven many to the conclusion that blame for the depletion of the lake lies with farmers, and that saving it is agriculture’s responsibility. But is that fair? Or are farmers being asked to play an outsized role in solving a problem Utah’s broader system created?

What critics of agricultural water use say

• Farming is clearly responsible for most of the Great Salt Lake’s water depletion

• Farmers are choosing to grow uniquely thirsty crops, such as alfalfa and grass hay

• Farmers may not always be employing the most efficient irrigation methods

Some researchers indicate that the lake simply cannot be saved without significantly reducing how much water is used by agriculture.

One study, published in the journal Environmental Challenges, is unambiguously titled “Reducing irrigation of livestock feed is essential to saving Great Salt Lake.” One of its authors clarified the import of reducing agricultural depletions.

“You can’t get the volume of water that you need to save the lake in any other way, other than substantially reducing how much water is going towards those cattle-feed crops,” said Brian Richter, president of Sustainable Waters and a lead author of the study.

According to Eric Ewert, chair of the Department of Geography, Environment & Sustainability at Weber State University, alfalfa and grass hay are simply not suited for Utah’s arid climate.

“There is one paradigm-shifting scenario that quickly and easily refills the lake and replenishes all the ecological and economic benefits it bestows upon us: Stop growing alfalfa. We could have all the water many times our current population could ever need by simply transitioning away from a non-native thirsty crop that never belonged in the desert in the first place. . .

“Protected by senior water rights, generous subsidies, loyal politicians, and the cultural iconography of a family farm, hay growers aren’t going to just give up their businesses. Instead of another posturing tax cut . . . let’s spend that money and more to transition hay and alfalfa farmers to some other livelihood. This would be millions cheaper than the costs and lost revenues of the environmental apocalypse a dead Great Salt Lake will bring.”

Matt Yost, a Utah State University irrigation specialist, has highlighted room for irrigation improvements.

“We’re finding that we can reduce consumption of water by probably 10-15% without affecting crop production. And most of that comes from reducing evaporation — that’s the major way we lose water that we can’t get back,” Yost said. “And if we do that across the board, we estimate we could send nearly 180,000 acre-feet of water [a year] to the lake without affecting crop production.”

What farmers and agricultural advocates say

• Farmers are actively doing more to reduce their usage than other industries and users

• Structural incentives are partially to blame for agricultural share of water usage

• There’s no certainty that water saved by farms will reach the lake

Clay Carter, Cache Valley farmer and irrigation-tech company owner, explained how farmers are already doing their part to conserve resources.

“Farmers are maybe some of the best conservationists in the country and they seldom get the credit for it.”

He described cutting his water use in half through automated irrigation tech and framed the lake’s decline as a slow-building, decades-long problem rather than one farmers alone created: “You’re talking twenty years of drought that have created this problem. It may take us twenty years of finding and deploying solutions to get to a viable and working solution.”

Though efforts to reduce water depletion are now well underway, farmers have historically been incentivized to “use it or lose it.”

Devin Stein, then research associate at Strata, a policy research center in Logan, and Randy T. Simmons, who directed the Institute of Political Economy at Utah State University’s Huntsman School of Business, highlighted this in an op-ed long before efforts to improve the system were implemented.

“Irrigation water, for example, makes up the vast majority of water used in the state, but agricultural water users have no incentive to conserve because of ‘use it or lose it’ provisions in the Utah Code that threaten to take their water rights if they do not use every last drop. Many farmers still use inefficient irrigation techniques because more efficient irrigation systems that use less water may force farmers to give up their unused water rights without being compensated.”

Since 2020, Utah has steadily rewritten its water laws so farmers can lease water temporarily without losing their rights, starting with a law that authorized water banks. Most recently, lawmakers created a state-funded program to pay farmers market rates to lease water to the lake.

However, there’s no way to ensure returned water ultimately reaches the lake.

Shawn Regan, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, explained why returning water to the lake can be so challenging.

“Much of the water in the Great Salt Lake basin moves through a network of canals maintained by irrigation companies — collective entities that deliver water to individual farmers and depend on sufficient flow to serve all their shareholders. If one user leases water out of the system, canal flows can drop enough to make delivery to downstream users unreliable or even impossible. In practice, that means that many leases require cooperation not just from individual farmers but from entire irrigation networks.”

And even Rep. Casey Snider, who sponsored much of Utah’s water legislation, confirmed there’s presently no way to guarantee water savings benefit the lake.

“There isn’t absolute assurance that the water that’s being saved is going to make it to the absolute end of the ditch, which is the Great Salt Lake.

“I believe that it is, but I can't tell you with perfect certainty that it is.”

My take

• Agriculture will need to do the heavy lifting to substantially reduce depletions — but it shouldn’t be solely responsible and can’t do it all

• Government is responsible for Utah’s water and will ultimately need to create a system that incentivizes and enables water savings

• A multipronged approach is required to save the Great Salt Lake

Farmers and conservation

The data is unambiguous: Two-thirds of human-caused depletion comes from agriculture, primarily to support alfalfa and grass-hay production. No one disputes that, including farmers. And no serious restoration strategy can succeed without doing something about this driver.

However, alfalfa’s reputation as uniquely thirsty lacks nuance. As a crop, alfalfa only requires more water per year than other common crops — such as corn or wheat — because it’s a perennial, giving it an extended growing season. That extended season is also what makes it flexible. According to Utah State University Extension, farmers can stop irrigating alfalfa “at almost any point in the season without causing long-term damage.” This resilience makes it an ideal crop for farmers leasing water — or looking to return water to the lake.

Nor is switching crops a simple swap. Moving from alfalfa to other specialty crops can require entirely new planting and harvesting equipment, storage infrastructure, and specialized labor — a steep cost for any operation.

“Solving” the agricultural depletion driver is more difficult than acknowledging it.

Even if compelled to do so, Utah farmers cannot simply stop irrigating these cattle-feed crops and walk away completely: If protective vegetation disappears, exposed fields can lose soil health, attract invasive weeds, and, ironically, become sources of windblown dust. To avoid this, an intensive and actively managed transition would be required, introducing new and potentially long-term land-management obligations.

And if farmers in Utah’s Great Salt Lake basin walk away from cattle-feed production, which basin does it relocate to? Would the already overallocated Colorado River Basin pick it up? Can Central California, where groundwater pumping has made parts of the land sink by more than 25 feet, ramp up production? Would Idaho, where groundwater pumping along the Snake River has been curtailed due to overuse, eagerly plant more crops? Or perhaps enterprising farmers might want to use water from the rapidly depleting Ogallala Aquifer.

Farmers grow crops because they’re in demand. And there simply aren’t any perfect options.

Of course, not all Utah farmers would need to cease operation or transition to something else. A previously referenced study found “that the most potent solutions would involve a 61% reduction in alfalfa production along with fallowing of 26-55% of grass hay production.” Nevertheless, this is still substantial and would require either significant government intervention or a complete market collapse.

As someone with years of experience working in and around Utah politics, I’d say the odds of the state paying farmers to shut down their cattle-feed operations entirely are roughly in line with the odds of the Jazz winning a championship next season. The more feasible path is to enhance conservation efforts and ensure efficiency gains actually make it to the lake.

Saving the lake is in farmers’ interest, too. Lakebed dust can threaten cropland, while a smaller lake could weaken lake-effect precipitation and snowpack. Mar Chiquita and Lake Urmia offer cautionary examples.

The data indicates Utah’s farmers have already been working to reduce water usage. Since 1989, agricultural water use has decreased in both absolute and relative terms. Meanwhile, alfalfa and hay yields have risen over the past 36 years, with alfalfa rising 16% and “other-hay” rising 47%. Greater yields combined with falling water use implies greater farm-level water efficiency.

Over the same period, water used for M&I purposes has risen. Overall, there has been nearly a 14% increase in total depletions. Agriculture can only do so much on its own.

That certainly doesn’t mean farmers don’t have room to improve. Thirty-two percent of irrigation in the Great Salt Lake watershed is wheel-line irrigation, a system that releases water 5-to-6 feet off the ground, making it vulnerable to evaporation.

Certain modern pivot technologies can improve irrigation application efficiency by 10-30% compared with conventional mid-elevation spray systems. Unfortunately, that doesn’t substantially help the lake. Efficiency gains don’t translate one-for-one into additional water for the lake. Some of that water stays in the watershed.

Utah’s latest analysis estimates that converting to more efficient systems reduces depletion by only 1-4% on affected fields — and even that conserved water must be legally protected and shepherded downstream to reach the lake.

This highlights the problem many farmers have already raised: Even if farmers maximize their conservation efforts, will it actually help?

Systems and government

The Great Salt Lake Strike Team notes three things that must be implemented to ensure farmers’ efforts don’t go to waste.

1. Officials must actively measure how much water is saved since only provable savings can be rerouted to the lake instead of just being reallocated elsewhere.

2. Farmers need a way to sell or lease water without losing their rights permanently.

3. And third, returned water needs to actually make the trip downstream to the lake without being used up elsewhere along the way.

Without all three of these components in place, farmers’ efforts will have limited impact. Ultimately, responsibility for the systems and infrastructure to save the lake rests with the state.

Frankly, it always has.

Water in Utah belongs to the public, but individual water rights do not. The state administers our precious public resource, meaning it regulates, appropriates, and distributes the use of water. Decisions regarding rights, infrastructure, and pricing — made over multiple decades, by our state government — ultimately led us to where we are now.

Farmers — like residents, municipalities, and everyone else — are simply responding to the incentives and resources made available to them. The state historically encouraged farmers and other users to develop and consume water by granting valuable rights based on beneficial use, threatening unused rights with possible forfeiture, and subsidizing dams, canals, and other infrastructure through tax exemptions and low-cost financing.

In other words, the state had built a machine whose product was water usage. Now, according to Emily Lewis, University of Utah’s S.J. Quinney School of Law professor, the Utah Legislature has passed dozens of bills that have “totally modernized its water law.” Agricultural efficiency grants, water meters, tiered municipal rates, turf-removal rebates, and water leasing are all components in the state’s revised suite of tools.

Not only has water law been modernized, the state is now putting meaningful money behind conservation efforts. In 2022, lawmakers put $40 million into the Great Salt Lake Watershed Enhancement Trust to facilitate water leases for the lake. This year, they created the Great Salt Lake Preservation Program and set aside $2.75 million to lease water from farmers. Farmers can now lease for part of the season or, on a rotating basis, a full season, and get paid to leave some fields unwatered while still retaining water rights.

The legislature has also empowered the State Engineer to order leased water past diversion and impoundment structures, legally prohibiting its diversion and requiring managers to treat it “as if the water was naturally flowing.”

It remains to be seen whether the machine has been sufficiently retrofitted, but the revised end product should be a healthier Great Salt Lake.

A team effort

For the average Utahn, it’s tempting to think that Great Salt Lake restoration efforts are someone else’s problem. How much of an impact can one household have?

Individually, not much. But in aggregate, a lot. Although data hasn’t been published since 2015, Utah previously had the second highest residential water-usage rate in the nation, behind only Idaho. Most residential water usage occurs outdoors, keeping lawns and landscaping alive.

Outdoor usage is particularly wasteful because, while indoor water enters sewer systems and returns to watersheds as treated effluent, outdoor deliveries evaporate. Almost 97% of M&I depletions were driven by outdoor watering.

As Utah’s population grows, more parks and beautification efforts are required. New developments, city landscaping, universities, and other large institutional developments all maintain significant areas of urban or suburban turf. That’s likely why these depletions increased a whopping 60% between 2000 and 2024.

Are your sprinklers set to go off in the middle of a summer day? Do you think maintaining your lawn is crucial but wonder why farmers continue producing alfalfa given its relatively small contribution to our state’s GDP? If so, consider you may be part of the reason overall depletions continue to rise even as agricultural depletion falls.

Former Great Salt Lake Commissioner Brian Steed pointed out that every water user has a role to play in watershed conservation. “Humans do have an impact on this lake, and yes, our choices do matter.” The choices you and I make are just as necessary in determining the long-term trajectory of the lake as any farmer.

Conclusion

The debate over the depleting lake can easily become a search for the right person or industry to blame. That tendency is hardly unique to water policy. The digital age we live in is long on debate but short on substantive solutions. It demands individuals “stand on the right side of history,” but taking a side isn’t the same as taking action.

This isn’t a time for name and blame. It’s time for action.

The lake won’t be saved by identifying the proper villain. It will be saved by every Utahn deciding what they can do now, within their sphere of influence, to reduce depletion — and then doing it.

The Great Salt Lake’s levels have been retreating, but Utahns can’t afford to. This problem sits downstream from countless decisions, made by countless people over countless generations. Reversing that trajectory will require the same of us — countless decisions, made by countless people, starting yesterday.

A note from the editor

If you're wondering how you can actually make a difference within your “sphere of influence” when it comes to saving the Great Salt Lake, I was too. So I did some research and found two fairly impactful ways to get involved besides watering your lawn less.

1. Help pay for water that goes to the lake. The Great Salt Lake Watershed Enhancement Trust leases water from farmers and other water users and sends it downstream to the lake. It takes gifts of any size through the Community Foundation of Utah.

2. Ask your city to join in. When you water your lawn less, the water you save doesn't automatically end up in the lake. It usually stays with your water provider. This spring, Salt Lake City and Sandy became the first cities to change that. They committed 2,500 acre-feet of conserved water a year to the lake for up to a decade.

   If your city hasn't done something like this yet, a friendly note to your city council or water district is a great place to start. Most of them have never been asked.

During his monthly PBS Utah news conference on Aug. 20, Cox called the approval process for the Stratos data center “not good and the MIDA process especially.” He said MIDA–the Military Installation Development Authority–had experienced “a little mission creep” and now needed “major reform.”

That same day, at a MIDA board meeting, Sen. Jerry Stevenson warned that data centers were “probably as hot a topic as we have on the Hill right now.” He anticipated “quite a bit of legislation” during the 2027 session and suggested keeping their heads down until the session ended, “if possible.”

MIDA operated in relative quiet until it joined forces with Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary to create Project Stratos, a hyperscale data center in Box Elder County. The backlash got so loud that it followed Adams into his Republican primary, where the Utah Senate president (and MIDA board chair) lost his reelection bid. Suddenly, everyone from the state auditor to the governor was paying attention.

What exactly is MIDA?

In 1993, Hill Air Force Base was in danger of being closed. According to Utah economic-development official Rick Mayfield, “Hill Air Force was the largest employer in the state. It was really the economy of Davis and Weber County.” Faced with the possibility of losing Hill, a grassroots lobbying group of local Utahns sprang into action. Their campaign helped keep Hill Air Force Base open and save an estimated 23,000 jobs.

But surviving one round of closures did not necessarily make Hill safe. Officials realized Hill’s best defense against another BRAC round was to increase its military value, since that is the primary factor the Pentagon considers when deciding which bases to close.

One way to increase that value was to put Hill’s underused land to work. Through a federal program, the Air Force could lease the federal land at Hill to private developers in exchange for money or new infrastructure. Hill found about 500 acres to develop, but the land crossed two counties and four cities, each with different rules, making development highly complicated. So, Utah created MIDA in 2007—one authority that could coordinate land use, taxes, and infrastructure on designated land, regardless of local policy. MIDA’s first project, Falcon Hill, helped turn underused land around Hill into a huge aerospace development and generated new infrastructure for the base.

After the first project’s success, lawmakers passed several laws that broadened what MIDA could do. In 2009, the legislature passed a law allowing MIDA to include private land in its project areas. A 2010 law, SB 124, sponsored by Sen. Jerry Stevenson (the same Sen. Stevenson on the MIDA board), gave MIDA the power to impose a resort communities tax. Then, a 2018 law, SB 240, with Sen. Jerry Stevenson as the chief sponsor, gave MIDA the power to impose an accommodations tax of up to 15% on lodging on government- or MIDA-owned property. In 2020, the same Sen. Jerry Stevenson sponsored SB 192, which let MIDA collect tax increment for up to 40 years instead of 25. Meaning as much as 75 cents of every new property-tax dollar can fund the MIDA project instead of going to the county or school district for four decades. In 2024, SB 169, also sponsored by Sen. Stevenson, authorized an additional resort sales tax and expanded where the 2018 accommodations tax of 15% could apply.

MIDA today operates much like its own city authority. MIDA’s board is appointed, and of its eight members, seven can vote: the governor chooses five, while the Senate president and House speaker each choose one. The eighth, nonvoting member comes from the Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity. For the past eight years, Stuart Adams has served as both MIDA’s board chair and president of the Utah Senate.

MIDA’s first big controversy. Grand Hyatt Deer Valley.

In the late 1990s, Hill Air Force Base ran a seven-room recreation lodge near Snowbasin where military families could ski without paying resort prices. When Snowbasin prepared to host the 2002 Olympics, the Air Force closed the lodge and handed it to the resort. To make up for it, Congress gave the Air Force a 26-acre parcel in Park City in 2001 to build a new lodge or trade for a better site. But Congress never funded construction, and after years of local opposition, the Air Force gave up on Park City and asked MIDA to find somewhere else.

In 2012, MIDA combined two unconnected properties into a single 66.5-acre project area: the Air Force’s Park City parcel and a privately owned 40-acre parcel near Jordanelle. Neither was meant to become the hotel. The Park City land was there to be traded for a replacement site. Development on the Jordanelle land would generate tax revenue to help pay for the future hotel, and, of course, a ski lift.

Then New York developer Extell arrived. It bought the Jordanelle parcel, acquired more land nearby, and agreed to donate a site inside its Mayflower development for the military hotel. According to Wasatch County Manager Mike Davis, Extell wanted MIDA to handle development approvals because it found the county’s process too slow. Once the county had signed off on the initial project, Davis said the state “somewhat forced our hand” into letting MIDA oversee land use west of the highway. By 2019, roughly 5,000 acres west of U.S. 40 were under MIDA’s authority.

Extell and MIDA then planned an entire resort across that area, with $3.2 billion in development expected in the first five years. MIDA supplied the financing: up to $260 million in bonds in 2021, and up to $390 million more in 2024 through its Mountain Village Public Infrastructure District.

The seven-room lodge became Grand Hyatt Deer Valley: 381 rooms, five restaurants and bars, a heated outdoor pool, three hot tubs, and a spa. MIDA set aside 100 rooms at discounted rates for eligible military guests, and the hotel includes a secure room for classified military discussions. As of June 2026, MIDA reported 3,900 discounted room nights booked for the year at an average of $149. After a two-decade wait, military families are getting their ski vacation. And this time, it has a hot tub.

The Stratos Data Center Controversy

The Stratos Data Center also falls under MIDA’s land-use authority. And by now, the story might sound familiar: an outside developer came in with a massive project and partnered with MIDA. Some people weren’t too happy about it. You can read our full breakdown from July here.

Below are the arguments from MIDA’s critics and supporters, followed by my take.

What critics of MIDA are saying

• MIDA has overstepped its original military mission.

• MIDA’s unelected board is exercising powers the Constitution never gave them.

• MIDA has too little oversight from elected officials.

Republican Rep. Jason Thompson, who is drafting legislation that would generally keep MIDA projects within five miles of a military installation and require a direct military purpose, argued that Stratos stretched MIDA’s mission too far:

“When we start using MIDA more as an economic development tool than its original tie to military-specific projects and supporting our military bases, then we have to start to ask some serious questions,” Thompson said. “I believe that MIDA simply said, ‘Hey, listen, data center, military contracts, national defense. OK, it checks the military box. Boom, let’s go with it.’… For MIDA to reach, it’s a stretch.”

David Irvine, the attorney representing Alliance for a Better Utah and five Box Elder County residents in their constitutional challenge to the MIDA Act, argued that powers normally exercised by elected local governments have instead been placed in the hands of an unelected authority:

“Do Utah residents have the right to be governed by elected officials who are accountable to them? MIDA is an unelected body exercising powers the Utah Constitution never authorized. Furthermore, Senators Adams and Stevenson’s presence on the MIDA board as active legislators appears to violate the prohibition on holding more than one office of public trust simultaneously and should render the Stratos approval null and void. Backroom deals and pay-to-play have no place in Utah government, and Box Elder County residents deserve a voice in what happens to their community.”

Gov. Spencer Cox (R) argued that MIDA’s expanding mission requires greater oversight from the elected officials whom voters ultimately hold responsible:

“We have a lot of independent entities in this state, and they’re great. They play a very important role. But we’ve also delegated a lot of authority there, and the people are going to hold us accountable for what those entities do. We need to make sure that we have insight and some say in what it is they’re doing, what projects they’re taking on. And are they the right projects for our state? We, the elected officials of the state, should be able to have a little bit more of a say in what happens there.”

What defenders of MIDA are saying

• MIDA cuts through government red tape, and Falcon Hill shows the model can work.

• Deer Valley gives military families a real benefit: 100 deeply discounted rooms.

• MIDA can’t go where it isn’t invited; local elected officials must consent first.

Rep. Blake Moore, who represents northern Utah in Congress, pointed to Falcon Hill as evidence that MIDA can coordinate complicated development, strengthen the region surrounding Hill Air Force Base, and create economic opportunities:

“Who thinks Falcon Hill has been a bad idea? Falcon Hill has been an exceptional plan, a streamlined way to get good solid growth and job opportunities here. MIDA has a good track record….There’s a strong track record of good, solid growth that’s been responsible with MIDA.”

Gary Barnett, the founder of Extell Development, which is developing Deer Valley’s East Village, rejected the idea that its military hotel is a pretext for private development. He pointed to the portion of the Grand Hyatt reserved for eligible military guests at subsidized rates:

“And what we’re doing in this hotel is we’re giving more than 25% of the rooms to use for the military. And that’s active military, retired military, some family. And they have the ability to come here at a very, very reduced and subsidized rate for what is an absolutely beautiful hotel. I mean, it is a first-rate hotel with great conference facilities, beautiful rooms, beautiful design, and great food and beverage.”

Stuart Adams, outgoing president of the Utah Senate and chair of MIDA’s board, argued that MIDA can only act after receiving approval from the affected local government:

“MIDA has no authority to go to Box Elder County. It’s only if the local authority in the county acts—that’s why we act. Every city has input on everything it [MIDA] does. So [MIDA] is really an extension of that local government, but they’re able to do more.”

My take

• MIDA has strayed from its original purpose.

• The required military connection to MIDA projects needs to be defined more clearly.

• MIDA needs to eliminate the conflicts of interest from its board.

I admit, I felt a swell of Utah pride reading about MIDA’s origins. Utah citizens banding together, fighting to protect Hill and defend Utah’s economic and military future against all odds. How can you not be inspired?

And in some cases, like Falcon Hill, MIDA makes sense! So my real question isn’t really whether I’m mad at MIDA. It’s this: how far can MIDA stretch the word “military” before it stops meaning much of anything? And who gets to say “okay, that’s far enough”?

Deer Valley falls somewhere in the middle. The military benefit at Deer Valley is real. One hundred rooms are set aside at discounted rates for eligible military guests. But the cost is real too. Up to 40 years of new property taxes diverted from the county and schools, enough to back roughly $650 million in MIDA and district bonds, plus land-use authority over 5,000 acres.

And the Grand Hyatt is the only hotel in the development that sets aside rooms for the military. The Deer Valley project now calls for eight hotels, 250,000 square feet of shops, 68,000 square feet of recreation space, 3,700 acres of ski terrain and 16 new lifts. None of that revenue goes to Hill. We are wayyy past “replacement ski lodge” territory. And that’s without even mentioning Stratos.

Stratos is where the word “military” gets even fuzzier for me. At Deer Valley, I can point to 100 discounted rooms. At Stratos, the military benefit is still described in the language of possibility. MIDA’s own project area plan promises “the federal government and related defense industry users as clients,” a project that will “strengthen energy resilience in support of national defense interests,” and “ongoing revenue that will be used by MIDA to support new improvements and missions on the Associated Military Land.” For a project this massive, and with this much public backlash, why are the military benefits still so vague? The plan doesn’t name any committed military clients, say how much revenue would actually go to military projects, or explain what happens if neither ever shows up.

If future customers or hypothetical military revenue is enough, where is the line? By that logic, heck, MIDA could build Disneyland, promise Hill a cut of the ticket sales, and call Space Mountain military infrastructure. Obviously, a data center has more to do with national defense than Space Mountain. But “it might help the military somewhere down the road” can’t be the whole sales pitch.

That brings me to the second half of my question: Who gets to say no?

Does Box Elder County get to say no? After all, MIDA didn’t steal the land for the Stratos. Box Elder’s elected commissioners voted to let MIDA take control. But according to Commissioner Lee Perry, that vote was not much of a choice. He says they were the last to know, the process was rushed, and he believed the data center would be built on that private, unzoned land whether the county partnered with MIDA or not. Voting yes, he said, was the only way to give the county “a seat at the table.”

What about residents? Can they say no? Well, residents tried to put the data center decision on the ballot, but the county attorney rejected their referendum applications and said the county’s consent to MIDA could not be challenged by referendum. 100% of Box Elder residents could have signed, and it wouldn’t have mattered.

Then voters tried to vote Stuart Adams out of office. They succeeded, but Adams still chairs MIDA’s board. Voters could vote him out of the Senate, but they couldn’t vote him off MIDA. Why? Because Adams used his power as Senate president to appoint himself to MIDA’s board. Under state law, only the Senate president can remove him, so that decision will fall to whoever succeeds him.

What about the Legislature? Can they say no? They could. And maybe they even would. If the sitting chair and vice chair weren’t both prominent members of the Utah Senate. In fact, Senator Jerry Stevenson—MIDA’s vice chair—originally sponsored four of the five laws that expanded MIDA’s authority.

Once MIDA decides it wants to do a project, it seems very difficult to stop it, which is probably why private developers are so fond of teaming up.

So, where do we go from here? I have three suggestions.

1. Better-defined parameters for MIDA projects.
   Before MIDA can create a project area, the plan should state exactly what the military receives, in rooms, dollars, or square feet, and it should be written into the agreement. Rep. Jason Thompson’s draft bill starts down this road by requiring a direct military purpose within five miles of a base. Geographical proximity is one option. But it’s not the only one.

2. Make county consent to MIDA a legislative act, not an administrative one.
   When Box Elder County residents tried to revoke MIDA’s recently granted land-use authority, they were told they couldn’t, because only legislative acts are subject to referendum. So make MIDA designations a legislative act.

3. Remove conflicts of interest from MIDA’s board.
   The Legislature is supposed to oversee MIDA. But when sitting lawmakers like Adams and Stevenson also serve on MIDA’s board, they are on both sides of that relationship. They already have power over MIDA in the Legislature; they don’t need another seat at the table.

MIDA doesn’t need to disappear. But it does need to remember what it was built to do—and what it wasn’t. Utahns banded together once to protect Hill Air Force Base. I hope we do it again, this time by pushing for clearer limits, more local say, and no sitting lawmakers on MIDA’s board. MIDA shouldn’t get to act like a city without any elections.

What Happened

On August 24, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority seemingly handed President Trump a legal win, clearing the way for his administration to pursue new federal requirements for mail-in ballots ahead of the 2026 election.

Supporters called it a win. Critics called it judicial overreach.

The ruling hinged on timing. A district judge had blocked Executive Order 14399. Issued on March 31, the order directs the Postal Service to create new tracking and verification requirements for federal-election ballots, including a system intended to ensure ballots are sent only to eligible United States citizens. The most contested piece was that USPS could refuse to carry ballot mail that doesn’t meet the new requirements, potentially delaying or blocking ballots without voters knowing why.

But in response to an emergency appeal by the Trump administration, the Supreme Court overturned the original block. The unsigned decision explained that the states and other organizations challenging the executive order had sued before the Postal Service had caused them any harm. It hadn’t issued a final rule or created the system it would use to fulfill the president’s order.

Three days after the Court’s ruling, USPS having finalized its rule, the same district court judge blocked it. That block then became a nationwide preliminary injunction on Sept. 4. On Sept. 10, a federal appeals court refused to lift that injunction, finding the rule likely violates the Constitution and would “likely result in the disenfranchisement of millions of voters.” The administration went back to the Supreme Court the same day with a third emergency request to let the rule take effect.

Since then, the fight has only intensified. A USPS whistleblower has raised concerns about the readiness and reliability of the online portal being built to implement the requirements, and the Postal Service’s inspector general says it plans an independent review of the allegations. States, election officials, and other groups have filed briefs urging the Supreme Court to keep the rule blocked, while the Trump administration continues to push for a nationwide rollout. Ballots have already been mailed in some states.

The Supreme Court could weigh in at any moment.

So how did a district court judge block a policy just days after the Supreme Court cleared an earlier hurdle? And with voting already underway, what could the legal whiplash mean for Utah voters this fall?

Background

Some of the confusion comes from the rush to treat every Supreme Court ruling as a clear win or loss. In this case, the justices ruled on a technicality and left room for the challengers to revise their argument.

The legal fight makes more sense when viewed in two stages.

Stage 1: After Trump signed the executive order, the response was immediate. Advocacy groups, 23 states, and Washington, D.C., sued. They argued the president was reaching into an area of election administration constitutionally delegated to states and Congress. In June, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani of Massachusetts blocked the policy from taking effect, concluding the challengers were likely to succeed.

Then, on Aug. 24, the Supreme Court lifted that block. But the justices did not decide whether Trump’s policy was legal. The ruling explicitly said it should not be read as endorsing or rejecting the president’s authority. Instead, the Court said the states had moved too soon by challenging the executive order before USPS had finalized the rule for carrying it out. In other words, they needed to challenge an actual rule, not what USPS might eventually do.

Stage 2: By then, USPS had finalized its rule, creating a new federal clearance process before mail ballots could go out. According to the new rule, state and local election officials would have to enroll mail voters in a federal portal, and both outgoing and return envelopes would be required to have unique barcodes tied to each voter and mailing address. USPS also reaffirmed that noncompliant ballot batches could be sent back to election officials for correction.

The states and advocacy groups quickly filed a new lawsuit targeting the now-finalized regulations, rather than the executive order. Judge Talwani issued a temporary restraining order on Aug. 27 and converted it into a nationwide preliminary injunction on Sept. 4.

Aside from the cases before Judge Talwani in the First Circuit, challenges brought by the Democratic Party, the League of United Latin American Citizens, and the NAACP have been consolidated into one case moving through the D.C. Circuit. The NAACP is also pursuing a separate challenge involving the Postal Service.

As for Utah, it has stayed out of the litigation, but it is currently under the umbrella of the injunction obtained by the states that did sue. If that nationwide protection disappears, Utah has no separate court order shielding its mail-ballot system.

The Trump administration appears intent on putting the new requirements in place before November. The legal fight is still moving quickly, and it is now up to the Supreme Court. The First Circuit rejected the administration‘s appeal on Sept. 10, and the administration filed a new emergency request with the justices the same day. A ruling could come at any time.

Will Utah voters be able to vote by mail this fall?

Utah has relied on vote-by-mail for more than a decade, and in 2019, it became the default statewide. The state now sends ballots to roughly 1.8 million active voters through the U.S. Postal Service. This year, the first ballots are scheduled to go out Sept. 18 to military and overseas voters, followed by the broader statewide mailing on Oct. 13.

The courts are unlikely to settle the broader legal question in the next few weeks, especially with several overlapping lawsuits challenging different pieces of the administration’s mail-voting push. But the USPS rule could still be allowed to take effect temporarily while those cases continue.

If that happens before November, what would it mean for Utah’s vote-by-mail system?

Scenario 1: Nothing is decided before the election

The USPS rule remains tied up in court through November, and Utah proceeds under its existing vote-by-mail system. Ballots go out on schedule while the larger constitutional fight continues after Election Day.

For Utah voters, November would look largely familiar — but not exactly the same.

Active registered voters would still automatically receive ballots and could return them by mail, drop box, or in person. But HB 300, passed by the Utah Legislature in 2025, has already changed some of the state’s rules for mail-in voting. Ballots must now arrive by 8 p.m. on Election Day. A postmark is no longer enough. Voters also must provide the last four digits of a Utah driver license, state ID number, or social security number on the return envelope.

Beginning in 2029, HB 300 will end automatic ballot mailing and move Utah to an opt-in system.

Scenario 2: The rule survives, but not for this election

The Court could conclude that some or all of the USPS rule is lawful but still decide it is too late to impose it for the 2026 election. Supreme Court precedent generally disfavors last-minute changes to election procedures when voting is already underway or close to beginning.

In that case, Utah would still use its current system this fall, but election officials could be required to adopt the new federal requirements for a future election. Voters likely would not notice any change in November — aside from changes Utah already made under HB 300 — despite the Trump administration having won an important legal victory.

Scenario 3: The rule takes effect before Utah’s ballots go out

If the USPS rule takes effect, Utah and county election officials would have a matter of weeks to comply with the new requirements before mailing ballots.

Some of that infrastructure is already in place. Utah uses ballot tracking, unique identifiers, and standardized election-mail envelopes. The new piece would be the federal layer, including enrolling Utah’s 1.8 million mail voters in a USPS portal and clearing outgoing ballot batches through the agency’s system.

That is where the practical concerns become more significant. Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson warned in August that if the courts allow the USPS to implement the rule this year, it would be “an unmitigated disaster.”

USPS is not simply asking states to adjust an existing process or sign onto an established platform. It is rolling out a new nationwide system that would serve as a gatekeeper for roughly a third of the country’s voters.

Under the rule, access to the mail itself depends on the system working.

And as of early September, USPS was still finalizing the portal, saying only that it expected to make it available sometime during the week of Sept. 7. Even if the system comes online by that deadline, election officials would have only weeks to learn it, test it, and work it into ballot-mailing procedures already underway. Jurisdictions that fail to complete those steps could see USPS refuse to accept their ballot mail.

The Postal Service says it expects rejection rates to be low and that states will have flexibility in how they comply. But a whistleblower’s account raises questions about how smoothly that flexibility would work in practice, particularly when technical errors inevitably occur in a new system.

According to a disclosure sent to Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., USPS adopted what the whistleblower described as a “zero percent failure rate” for ballot batches. If even one ballot in a batch of 10,000 can’t be verified — because a barcode fails to scan or the information doesn’t match USPS records — the whistleblower says the entire batch could be rejected and returned to election officials to resolve the problem.

In Utah, even relatively short delays could have consequences. The state’s new Election Day receipt deadline means time lost getting ballots into voters’ hands is also time lost for voters to fill them out and get them back. USPS itself recommends that voters mail completed ballots at least a week before their state’s deadline.

The worst-case scenario? Hundreds — possibly thousands — of voters do everything right, but their ballots still return too late to count because the delay happened before the ballot ever reached them.

Scenario 4: The rule takes effect after voting has begun

Scenario 3 assumes Utah gets at least a short window to adapt before ballots go out. Scenario 4 is what happens if that window disappears. It is by far the messiest scenario.

If the courts allow USPS to enforce the rule after some ballots are already in circulation, election officials could be forced to change procedures in the middle of the election. Ballots mailed before the change could move under the old system, while later batches might have to clear the new federal portal and verification requirements.

This could create two tracks for the same election. Some voters might receive ballots on schedule while others face delays tied to the new system. Election officials would also have to determine how the new requirements apply to replacement ballots, ballots for newly registered voters, and other mailings sent after the rule takes effect.

The legal questions would not necessarily end there.

Voters in the same election could end up playing by different rules depending on when their ballots entered the mail. If the race is close enough that those affected ballots could change the outcome, the fight could become a post-election battle over which ballots count.

Below are the arguments from critics and supporters of the new USPS mail-in ballot rules, followed by senior writer & editor Erica Royer’s take.

What opponents of the USPS rule are saying

• The Supreme Court’s ruling could create confusion and uncertainty as the midterms approach.

• Utah’s existing election process should be protected while the legal fight continues.

• The new USPS ballot-mail system may not be ready or reliable enough to implement before the election.

In response to the Aug. 24 Supreme Court ruling, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented sharply, warning that the Court’s decision would create confusion for states and voters as the midterm elections approach.

“This ruling violates well-established precedents concerning this Court’s equitable discretion and needlessly injects chaos and uncertainty into the upcoming midterm elections. It also lets another shoe drop in the Kafkaesque nightmare that our precedents have been steadily creating for certain plaintiffs who seek to bring election-related challenges. The Court has held for a while now that even valid election-related legal claims can come too late. Today’s revelation is that such claims can also come too early — never mind that an election is looming and related harms are presently occurring. Never mind, too, that the Government (which controls the timing of proposed and final rules) can easily game the system. . . .

“States administering elections and the voting public that relies on them to do so deserve clarity, not caginess or confusion. . . .

“The President does not have any legal authority to require that elections be conducted in accordance with his preferences, or to withhold delivery of mail-in ballots that are not formatted consistent with the President’s wishes.”

In addition to her warning of an “unmitigated disaster if the injunction is lifted,” Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, Utah’s top election official, has promised to protect Utah voters and Utah’s election system.

Following the Supreme Court’s Aug. 24 decision: “Today’s SCOTUS decision has no effect on Utah. A nationwide injunction against the USPS mail ballot rule stemming from a different lawsuit remains in place for now. We expect an updated ruling in that lawsuit on Wednesday (Aug. 26).

“In the meantime, Attorney General Brown and I are in close communication as his office works through all our legal options. I assure all Utah voters that they will be defended. We will run a secure election in accordance with state and federal law.”

After the temporary restraining order was issued, Henderson told the Deseret News that she believes the USPS ballot rule is unconstitutional and again emphasized that Utah officials intend to protect the state’s existing election process:

“This temporary restraining order gives our state and county election officials the ability to move forward with the 2026 midterm elections as planned. We will continue to closely watch the legal developments and work with Attorney General Derek Brown to ensure that Utah’s election will be administered according to state and federal law.”

In a letter to Postmaster General David Steiner, Sen. Richard Blumenthal detailed the USPS whistleblower’s allegations and raised questions about whether the new portal would be ready and reliable enough for states to use.

“The whistleblower’s allegations make clear that USPS lacks the technical or operational capability needed to effectively implement the EO’s provisions in a way that safeguards every citizen’s right to vote in the upcoming midterm elections. Despite this, the Trump Administration appears intent on USPS moving forward with its flawed plans, no matter the chaos they may create. . . .

“Each of these problems: rushed development; a zero percent failure rate; and poor management are cause for concern on their own. Taken together they present a clear picture of a fatally flawed process that cannot and will not protect American voters. Put plainly: This process will likely lead to chaos, confusion, and the inability of many Americans to have their vote counted.”

What supporters of the USPS rule are saying

• Tightening election regulation is necessary to make voting secure and harder to manipulate.

• States cannot secure federal elections on their own because vulnerabilities in one state can affect voters nationwide.

• The new USPS requirements are commonsense safeguards for mail ballots and voter eligibility.

Utah Sen. Mike Lee has broadly supported efforts to tighten election rules, from Utah’s HB 300 and the SAVE Act to the Trump administration’s new USPS mail-ballot requirements.

On July 20, while promoting the SAVE Act on the Senate floor, Lee argued that requiring identification is justified precisely because voting is a fundamental right.

“The mere fact that we have a lot of people who are allowed to vote doesn’t diminish the seriousness of not requiring people to prove that they are in fact who they claim to be when they show up to exercise that important right. Some people, when denying that there’s any need for us to act here, will throw out things and say, well that’s fine for the bank or for theater tickets or for the pharmacy, but this is an important constitutional right. It is a fundamental right. My response to that is, Yes! Exactly! And that’s exactly why we need it. The fact that it involves an important fundamental constitutional right is a reason why we need to make it easy to vote and hard to cheat.”

Lee has made a similar argument closer to home. In 2025, he endorsed Utah’s HB 300 as an opportunity for the state to set an example on election security.

“Utah is one of the reddest states in the nation. We should be a leader in election security,” Lee posted on X. “I wholeheartedly support Utah House Speaker (Mike) Schultz in his effort to ensure that every vote is valid and that (our) ballots are secure.”

That same emphasis on election security has shaped Lee’s response to the current fight over the Trump administration’s executive order.

“The Supreme Court has delivered a national victory for election integrity,” Lee said in a statement after the Court’s Aug. 24 decision. “They recognize that President Trump can fight to ensure accountability for mail-in voting, and that American elections should be determined only by American citizens.”

After Judge Indira Talwani later blocked the Postal Service’s final rule, Lee’s response was much shorter.

“Impeach Judge Talwani.”

In a July 6 letter to USPS, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, writing on behalf of 13 states, argued that preventing voter fraud requires more than a state-by-state approach.

“States are the leaders in regulating elections, and yet despite our best efforts to enact policies to deter and detect fraud, voter fraud continues to be a problem. We appreciate the federal government lending a helping hand to shore up our elections and help states provide Americans with confidence in our system,” Marshall wrote. “Let’s be clear, we run our elections well in Alabama, but this is still happening right here in our state, with multiple documented cases of absentee ballot fraud just in the past year. And while we in Alabama can do all we can to secure our elections, Alabamians deserve to know that national elections held in other states are also secure since they affect us as well.”

White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis called the Aug. 24 Supreme Court ruling a “major win” for election security.

“The Supreme Court ruling was a major win for the security of American elections. Radical Democrats continue to oppose commonsense measures that protect the security of mail-in ballots and ensure only Americans are electing American leaders. The Trump administration will continue to lawfully enact the agenda President Trump was elected on, which includes the safety and security of our elections.”

My take

• The Supreme Court is unlikely to let the USPS rule take effect this election cycle.

• The administration faces an uphill battle proving the rule is constitutional.

• If the Court applies its recent limits on executive power consistently, the challengers are likely to prevail.

I love voting by mail in Utah. I honestly can’t remember the last time I voted in person. There is something wonderfully practical about sitting at my kitchen table with my ballot, looking up candidates and issues as I go, and making decisions with the information in front of me instead of trying to remember everything once I’m standing in a voting booth.

For all the legal drama surrounding the new USPS rule, though, I doubt it will meaningfully change how Utahns vote this November.

North Carolina began sending absentee ballots on Sept. 4, meaning the federal election is already underway. Utah’s first ballots go out next week. Changing election requirements after voting begins risks confusion. Justice Jackson has said so. States have said so. And the administration is still asking the Supreme Court to change them anyway.

It has repeatedly described the new USPS requirements as “modest” and argued that concerns about disruption are overblown. In fact, in its Supreme Court filing, the administration says the injunction itself risks “sowing confusion and chaos” by making preparations voluntary and leaving states unsure whether they ultimately will have to comply.

I have a hard time reconciling that with the scale and timing of what the Postal Service is actually trying to do. The agency is standing up a new national system on a compressed timeline, while ballots are already going out and a whistleblower has raised questions about whether the portal was adequately tested.

Maybe it will work exactly as intended. But asking every state to rely on it this late in the process is still a serious operational gamble, and calling the changes modest does not make that risk disappear.

That is also why I do not expect the Supreme Court to let the rule take effect in this election cycle. The Court has repeatedly warned against changing election procedures close to an election, particularly when the change would be complicated or disruptive to implement.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh put it plainly in Merrill v. Milligan (2022): “When an election is close at hand, the rules of the road must be clear and settled.” Here, ballots are already going out, states are warning of major operational problems, and the administration is asking the Court to introduce a new nationwide system while the underlying legal authority remains seriously contested.

In my view, that is too much practical risk for an emergency order, especially when I also think the administration faces a difficult path to ultimately proving the rule is lawful.

On the constitutional question, the administration is on much shakier ground. The Court’s conservative majority is why I expect the challengers to ultimately prevail.

Despite the Aug. 24 ruling that seemed to favor the Trump administration, the Court’s conservative justices have spent years insisting that constitutional text matters. Again and again, they have said that power stays where the Constitution puts it and that agencies cannot turn broad statutory language into authority Congress never clearly gave them.

The administration’s answer is that the Postal Service is not regulating elections at all. It says the rule simply regulates the use of the federal mail: envelope design, address information, and other preparation requirements for ballots sent through USPS. States, it argues, still decide who is eligible to vote, when ballots are due, and how votes are counted.

Congress did give USPS broad authority over the collection, handling, transportation, delivery, return, and holding of mail, along with the power to issue regulations necessary to carry out its statutory functions and responsibility for maintaining an efficient nationwide mail system. The administration argues that the new ballot requirements fit comfortably within those powers.

That framing matters because it sets up the real constitutional fight. If this is simply a postal rule that happens to apply to ballots, the administration has a much stronger case. If it effectively dictates how states must administer federal elections in order for their ballots to move through the mail, then the Elections Clause and the Court’s recent limits on agency power become much harder to avoid.

In West Virginia v. EPA (2022), the Court rejected the EPA’s attempt to use a relatively obscure provision of the Clean Air Act to reshape how electricity was generated across the country. The majority said agencies need “clear congressional authorization” before claiming powers of major economic and political significance. The problem was not simply that EPA had adopted an ambitious policy. It was that the agency was using broad statutory language to claim a kind of authority Congress had never clearly handed it.

The Court applied much the same reasoning in Biden v. Nebraska (2023), striking down the administration’s student-loan forgiveness program. Again, the majority focused on the gap between the statute Congress actually passed and the enormous power the executive branch claimed it allowed. The Court concluded that a program with such broad economic and political consequences required clear congressional authorization, and that the HEROES Act did not provide it.

Then came Loper Bright v. Raimondo (2024), where the Court went further and ended Chevron deference. Instead of deferring to an agency when a statute is ambiguous, courts must now exercise their own independent judgment about what Congress actually authorized. That decision matters here because USPS cannot simply point to broad authority over the mail and ask courts to defer to its interpretation of how far that authority reaches. The judiciary itself must decide whether Congress actually gave USPS the power it is claiming.

At the same time, this Court has upheld executive action when it was tied more closely to authority Congress had clearly delegated or to powers the Constitution gives the president directly. In Trump v. United States (2024), for example, the Court recognized broad presidential immunity for official acts, reasoning that the president’s constitutional role requires protection from criminal prosecution for core official conduct. In Biden v. Missouri (2022), the Court allowed a vaccine requirement for healthcare workers because Congress had given the relevant agency authority over facilities participating in Medicare and Medicaid, and the rule was closely connected to patient safety. And in Trump v. Hawaii (2018), the Court upheld the travel proclamation because Congress had granted the president broad authority over the entry of noncitizens and the proclamation fell within that delegated power.

Those cases are different from the USPS dispute in important ways. They involved either presidential authority the Constitution itself recognizes or statutory authority Congress had granted in fairly direct terms. Here, the administration is making a more unusual argument: That general authority to operate the mail allows the executive branch to impose detailed requirements on how states administer federal elections.

It stretches the statute far beyond what Congress clearly authorized.

And unlike the healthcare and immigration cases, this claim runs directly into another part of the Constitution. The Elections Clause gives states the primary responsibility for regulating the time, place, and manner of federal elections and gives Congress the power to alter those rules. It does not give the president an independent election power.

The Court took that allocation seriously in Moore v. Harper (2023). Although that case dealt with the limits on state legislatures rather than presidential power, the majority emphasized that the Elections Clause expressly vests election-regulating authority in state legislatures and that courts must respect the constitutional boundaries surrounding that power.

USPS unquestionably has broad authority to run the mail. But telling states how ballot envelopes must be designed, what voter information they must submit, and under what circumstances ballot mail can be rejected starts to look a lot less like postal administration and a lot more like election regulation. The constitutional question is whether Congress actually authorized USPS to cross that line.

That is why the Court’s recent cases cut both ways for the administration. This majority has been willing to uphold robust executive power when the Constitution or Congress clearly supplies it. But it has also been unusually skeptical when an agency takes broadly worded authority and turns it into something much larger.

The USPS case asks the justices to decide which category this belongs in.

If they apply the same separation-of-powers and statutory-authority principles they have emphasized in these other cases, the challengers have a substantial argument that regulating the mail is one thing — regulating the election through the mail is another.

What Happened

In mid-August, Millcreek took down a Flock Safety license plate camera mounted near Millcreek Common after the city realized nobody had authorized it. Flock hasn’t said who installed it.

On August 13, a group called Utah Civic Compact revealed that Weber County’s 10 license plate cameras have been included in more than 5 million searches since early 2022, mostly by law enforcement agencies outside Utah running nationwide searches. That same day, Flock itself announced a round of platform changes meant to answer a year of misuse stories.

Meanwhile, volunteers with the crowdsourced camera-mapping project DeFlock have found over 850 LPR (License Plate Reader) cameras across Utah. And the cameras themselves are being vandalized, sometimes within days of going up.

Back up. What exactly is a Flock camera?

Flock Safety is an Atlanta company that has become the country’s largest seller of automatic license plate readers, or ALPRs. The pole-mounted, solar-powered cameras photograph every vehicle that passes, logging the plate along with the make, model, color, and identifying details like roof racks and bumper stickers. That data goes into a searchable database, and agencies can opt in to sharing networks that let police in one state search cameras in another. Flock says it operates in more than 5,000 communities, and the company told KUTV it has partnered with 50 law enforcement agencies in Utah.

Ogden is Utah’s biggest Flock spender, paying the company $123,000 in 2025 to run 41 cameras, followed by Wayne County at $95,100, and Provo at $75,406, according to KUER’s review of state vendor data. But not every plate reader is a Flock. Salt Lake City uses a competing Motorola system, which the police department has used in more than 6,400 investigations since 2021, mostly stolen vehicle cases.

Why everyone is suddenly concerned

Last year, 404 Media reported that a sheriff’s deputy in Texas searched more than 83,000 cameras nationwide for a woman whose family said she had self-administered an abortion. The search log’s stated reason: “had an abortion, search for female.” The sheriff and Flock said it was a welfare check, although court records showed deputies discussed potential criminal charges with prosecutors.

Then this month the Washington Post found at least 50 law enforcement officers charged with or accused of misusing Flock and other plate reader systems. Many of them allegedly used the cameras to track exes or family members. DeFlock counts more than 50 jurisdictions that have canceled, suspended, rejected, or deactivated Flock deployments this year. Vandalism videos are a whole genre now, even in Utah.

Flock has responded with new rules. By Jan. 1, all law enforcement customers must use an auditing tool that flags abnormal search behavior and locks the user out pending review. Default data retention drops from 30 days to seven, longer holds require a case number, and every search must be tied to a records system code. CEO Garrett Langley called the changes a “continuation of our commitment to both safety and privacy.” Critics note that most of these guardrails rely on the agencies policing themselves.

Below are the arguments from critics and supporters of Flock cameras, followed by Executive Editor Nick Huey’s take.

What critics of ALPR cameras are saying

• The potential costs of this tracking network outweigh potential benefits.

• The misuse isn’t hypothetical. Immigration lookups, officers tracking exes, and an abortion search have all happened.

• This violates Americans’ constitutional right to privacy.

Clark Dice, communications director for Utah Civic Compact, emphasized the urgency of regulating this technology now.

“This is how it starts, a mechanism for public safety, a couple cameras just to catch criminals, the bad guys. What it ends with is huge amounts of data tracking people’s movements, their behaviors, and their whereabouts.

The time is now for us to set these regulations and set these guidelines in place so that this technology is not abused by outside governmental agencies outside of the state of Utah, and so that the people inside of the state of Utah can know that their privacy and their data are protected.”

Rep. Mike Kennedy, R-Utah, argues that this violates Americans’ constitutional right to privacy:

“Flock cameras have no business tracking law-abiding citizens, and I stand in clear opposition to their spread across our country.

“We must oppose even the slightest erosion of the constitutional protections that built this Republic, and we cannot allow quiet government overreach to become the norm.

“All our constitutional rights deserve to be defended with unwavering integrity, and American citizens’ right to personal privacy is among our most fundamental.”

Connor Boyack, president of the Libertas Institute in Lehi, argues that the risks of a nationwide surveillance network are too great, even if perfect safety is the benefit:

“Perfect safety has never been on the menu of human life, and the societies that chased it hardest made themselves miserable without ever catching it. What is on the menu is a choice older than the republic: whether we will live as free people who accept the risks freedom carries, or as monitored people who traded their birthright for a promise neither Flock nor their friends in law enforcement can keep.

“Our ancestors made that choice under far graver dangers than ours, and they left us a clear answer, one best articulated by Franklin: ‘Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.’ The least we can do is decline to auction off our liberty, one pole-mounted camera at a time.”

What supporters of the cameras are saying

• They solve crimes that would otherwise never be solved.

• Misuse is rare, it gets punished, and Flock is now engineering against it.

• We can minimize privacy risks without abandoning this helpful tool.

Ogden Police Chief Jake Sube, who runs the state’s largest Flock deployment, told his city council the cameras changed what’s possible:

“I’d love to add more. Hundred percent. I would love to have more ALPRs across all neighborhoods, all in and outs, accesses of the city … It is solving crimes we never would have even had any opportunity to investigate … ALPRs were instrumental and critical in apprehending that suspect and recovering the child safely. Literally, the ALPR hit was within half a block of where the suspect vehicle was located at a hotel in Colorado.”

Flock points to their safety measures working:

“Oftentimes in reported cases, the officer was identified because Flock systems create tamper-proof audit logs that record who searched what, when, and why. Those logs helped investigators uncover misconduct, support prosecutions, and hold officers accountable…

Every search is tied to a user. Every search is logged. Agencies can review usage histories. Searches require a standardized offense type. Audit records cannot simply be erased when someone makes a bad decision.”

Writing for The Atlantic, Charles Fain Lehman, asserts that ALPRs may be responsible for a reduction in crime:

“The case for Flock is simple. Cameras help police catch criminals. That reduces crime through two channels: incapacitating offenders who are caught and convicted, and increasing the certainty of apprehension, which theoretically should deter criminals from offending in the first place. But is it true in practice? Although the research base is still developing, the answer is ‘probably.’… A 2017 study found ALPRs were correlated with a reduction in violent crime; a 2019 paper found suggestive but not conclusive evidence of a reduction in auto theft and robbery.”

“The Fourth Amendment’s protections exist exactly because of the very real potential for abuse of police officers’ extraordinary powers. The question, though, is whether we need to forgo the crime-reducing benefits of ALPRs in order to minimize the risks to our privacy. Such absolutism is unwarranted. Intelligently regulated, ALPRs can be one among many tools in the toolbox of smarter — and therefore less severe — police forces. Dumping the cameras would just be foolish.”

My take

• In the right hands, Flock cameras solve serious crimes.

• In the wrong hands, they are a powerful and pervasive surveillance network.

• Utah is actually one of the better states when it comes to ALPR laws. But there are three big changes that need to happen.

Let’s get the easy part out of the way.

License plate readers do solve crimes. A kidnapped 13-year-old from Ogden was recovered because a camera in Colorado pinged. A homicide suspect fled Salt Lake City and was caught in Wyoming. Salt Lake City alone has used its cameras in over 6,400 investigations. If my kid were in the back of a suspect’s car, I would not be philosophical about the camera that found her.

So the question isn’t whether these cameras catch criminals. They do. The question is whether we are OK risking bad actors having access to personal data in order to make the world a little (or a lot) safer.

We curtail privacy in the name of justice all the time. Police can search your house. They can read your mail, tap your phone, swab your cheek, freeze your bank records. Each of those is a bigger intrusion than photographing your bumper on 600 South.

But these cameras are different.

Look at how every one of those other surveillance tools work. Suspicion comes first. A gatekeeper comes second. A judge who doesn’t work for the police signs a warrant naming a specific person and place.

A networked license plate reader system inverts the entire sequence. Surveillance comes first, of everyone, automatically. The only thing stopping abuse is a text box where a deputy types his own justification. That’s how a Texas deputy could sit down one morning and query 83,000 cameras across the country, almost as easily as a Google search.

It turns out that for most of American history, our strongest privacy protection wasn’t a law. It was cost. Tailing one car took teams of officers working in shifts, so the government only did it when it really mattered. Today, perfect and cheap surveillance is an actual possibility, and it’s forcing us to rethink the rules.

In Carpenter v. United States, the Supreme Court faced a similar legal question. Timothy Carpenter helped rob a string of phone stores around Detroit, and the FBI caught him by using months of his phone’s location records obtained without a warrant. The Supreme Court ruled the search unconstitutional. I could see a similar argument winning here.

So here’s where I’ve landed. We should tolerate safety tools that are aimed, gatekept, and temporary. Pointed at a suspect, approved by someone outside the chain of command, and gone when the case closes. We should refuse tools that are universal, self-serve, and permanent, no matter how many crimes they solve.

Those are some concrete criteria. Let’s grade Utah.

Aimed? B+ Utah actually regulates these cameras more than most states. Under state law, police can only access captured plate data for four reasons: an active criminal investigation, an outstanding warrant, a missing or endangered person, or a stolen vehicle.

Gatekept? D. Utah’s ALPR laws are pretty good, but they’re too self-enforced for me to take them seriously. The law does not include regular public accounting of how the systems are used, independent audits, or rules enforcement for out-of-state agencies that search Utah Flock data. When someone can enter ‘hehehe’ as their search reason and get approved, there’s something wrong with your gatekeeping mechanism.

Temporary? C. ALPR data can be kept a maximum of nine months, can’t be sold, and agencies must publicly post their use policies. That’s all well and good, but Flock’s new default is seven days before automatic deletion. That’s a pretty wide gap.

So overall, pretty middling grade for our dear old Utah. Below are three changes that I think would get us to a solid B+ across the board.

Change #1: Establish independent audits.
Right now agencies audit themselves. Independent audits are a pain. But it should be painful to surveil 3.5 million Utahns. The ability to hold bad actors accountable is pretty non-negotiable with technology this powerful.

Change #2: Any searches past 7 days require a warrant.
90% of Flock searches without a full plate occur within the first seven days. If we really need the data beyond that timeframe, it should require a judge’s stamp of approval.

Change #3: We need to delete the data sooner.
We can create the perfect set of rules to aim and gatekeep ALPR data. But those rules can be broken by bad actors — or worse, a bad government. A bad cop can be fired. A bad government inherits the database. Every record of which cars parked at which churches, which clinics, which gun shows, which political meetings.

Automatic rapid deletion of data protects you from everyone.

That law will have a price. Somewhere down the line, a detective will open a case a few months old and find the footage already gone. A guilty man will walk because of it.

We’ve made that trade before. When the Founding Fathers banned general warrants, they gave up an incredibly useful policing tool to preserve the privacy and freedom of everyday Americans.

That was in 1791.

I hope we repeat that decision in 2027.

Reporting and research by Sydney Jezik

On July 13, President Trump cut Utah’s two biggest national monuments by 90%. Bears Ears National Monument went from 1.36 million acres to 121,096. Grand Staircase-Escalante went from 1.87 million acres to 181,541.

Utah’s leading Republicans were present for the signing in the Oval Office. Sen. Mike Lee had been working with local stakeholders and the Interior Department for a year and a half to get these cuts made.

The Bears Ears proclamation also revokes the co-management framework which five tribal nations (the Hopi Tribe, Navajo Nation, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, Pueblo of Zuni, and Ute Indian Tribe) took ten years to achieve, and the Grand Staircase order ends a similar tribal co-stewardship arrangement there.

Back up. How’d we get here?

The Antiquities Act of 1906 lets presidents unilaterally protect “objects of historic or scientific interest” on federal land by proclamation, with one caveat: the reserved land must be the “smallest area compatible with the proper care and management of the objects to be protected.”

President Clinton designated the Grand Staircase-Escalante monument in 1996, and President Obama designated Bears Ears monument in 2016. Bears Ears is the first national monument ever established at the request of tribal nations, after five tribes petitioned for years to protect a landscape holding an estimated 100,000 archaeological and cultural sites, including cliff dwellings, kivas, granaries, burial grounds, and rock art.

Obama’s 2016 designation of Bears Ears National Monument kicked off 10 years of political ping pong.

In 2017, a year after Bears Ears was designated, President Trump cut the monument by roughly 85% and Grand Staircase by about half.

Tribes, conservation groups, and outdoor businesses then sued, arguing the Act lets presidents create monuments but not shrink or dismantle them.

But in 2021, President Biden restored both monuments, putting the lawsuits on pause.

Then the State of Utah sued Biden, arguing multimillion-acre monuments violate the “smallest area” clause in the Antiquities Act.

But on July 13, 2026, President Trump re-shrunk both monuments by about 90%. And on September 11th this year, the land opens up for mining claims.

Important note: On June 23, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Utah can sue the executive branch for illegal monument designations, but declined to rule whether President Biden’s designation was indeed illegal. The case is headed back to district court, where we will likely get a ruling on the legality of the larger monument boundaries. But that ruling cuts both ways. It makes Trump’s new reductions just as reviewable as Biden’s original designations.

What can be mined now?

The BLM has previously found the two monuments have very little oil and gas potential. Grand Staircase’s Kaiparowits Plateau holds a large coal deposit, but mining it is likely unprofitable.

Uranium is the most economically viable prospect. Uranium has quadrupled in price since 2017, and the original Bears Ears boundary took in hundreds of uranium and vanadium claims. Trump’s new proclamation cites other resources in the Bears Ears region, including copper, silver, lead, and zinc, although there is little evidence of large deposits of these materials.

Can the land be sold?

No. Removing monument status does not make it easier to sell this land. All of it remains public land under BLM management.

One point of clarification

During the signing, Trump claimed people can't hunt or fish in the monuments, and Deputy Interior Secretary Kate MacGregor affirmed him. This is inaccurate. Both monuments' rules explicitly allow hunting and fishing.

What supporters of the cuts are saying

• These monuments were originally created despite Utah’s strong objections.

• The original boundaries were much larger than the “smallest area compatible” that the Antiquities Act requires.

• Smaller means better protected. A few rangers can’t monitor 3 million acres.

• Utahns should be able to access and profit from their own lands.

Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) is the main proponent of the reductions. He has focused his arguments on the legal element of the case as it has faced challenge after challenge in court.

“For too long, presidents have weaponized monument designations to lock up millions of acres, close roads, restrict grazing, and cut rural communities off from lands their families have lived on and worked for generations,” he said. “I thank the President for correcting this abuse and keeping his promise to the people of Utah.”

Cox, who has pushed this position for years, framed Monday as targeted protection rather than abandonment.

“It’s very clear that these monument designations are supposed to be the smallest area possible to protect the antiquities and these multimillion-acre monuments that are bigger than the state of Delaware certainly do not fit that designation,” Cox said. “We definitely care about protecting these antiquities, and will continue to do so. The problem is with these giant monument designations. There are no resources that come with those.”

Ben Burr, the executive director of BlueRibbon Coalition, an advocacy group for motorized recreation, has positioned the reduction as a great thing for hobbyists.

“The previous plans… restricted huge areas… to motorized recreation and other forms of recreation that still require motorized access of some kind. We think this will result in a much better position for the Utah recreation economy to be able to let the recreation users go in and access these lands.”

“Right-sizing these monuments to what the statute actually allows isn’t an attack on public lands; it’s how we keep them open for all Americans to enjoy. We plan to continue fighting in the courts and in the Congress to ensure that abuse of the Antiquities Act becomes a thing of the past.”

What critics of the cuts are saying

• The Antiquities Act authorizes presidents creating monuments, not revoking them.

• The Trump administration broke their written commitment to consult the inter-tribal coalition.

• If the goal was better management, why dismantle the free co-stewardship support?

Heidi McIntosh, the managing attorney for Earthjustice, pointed to the legality of the monument reduction.

“President Trump’s attack on Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments is just as illegal today as it was in 2017. The Antiquities Act authorizes presidents to designate national monuments, not to destroy them. Today’s proclamations are a slap to the face of public lands visitors across the country, as well as the local communities and Tribes that have worked for years to protect these special places. Earthjustice and our partners are prepared to vigorously defend the monuments once again.”

Autumn Gillard, coordinator of the Grand Staircase-Escalante Inter-Tribal Coalition and a Southern Paiute woman, went straight at the process.

“Our Tribes were not informed of or asked about this decision, and that’s unacceptable. The federal government must honor its Trust and Treaty obligations to our Tribes — it is not optional. Today’s action is a direct strike against the federal government’s duty to consult with Tribes. It also profoundly disrespects our intergenerational Traditional Knowledge by destroying a framework for Tribal co-stewardship over our ancestral lands in which we invested years of effort. Today’s action cannot stand.”

Erik Stanfield, an anthropologist with the Navajo Nation Historic Preservation Department, made the practical case against the whiplash.

“Every time the Monument is cut apart and put back together, proper land management gets delayed, public resources are wasted, and Tribes are asked to start over after years of consultation. We need stewardship and consistency, not reactionary politics.”

My take

• The inter-tribal coalition deserved a heads up, at a minimum. A seat at the table would have been even better.

• Utah’s management argument makes practical sense, but the proclamation’s own energy language undercuts the claim that this is only about stewardship.

• If we’re going to preserve the beauty and history of Southern Utah, it needs to be through hard-fought compromise. Not running to the Oval Office.

I feel for the five rival tribes.

They received a written promise from the Department of the Interior that they’d be consulted about any reductions to Bears Ears, and then found out the President had not only cut the monument, but also unilaterally disbanded their hard-fought co-management agreement.

Yeesh.

Interior’s justification is that the Antiquities Act doesn’t require them to consult with the tribes. Legally, they’re right. But “you can’t sue us for this” is a pretty galling response to someone asking about the promise you just broke.

The Department of Interior could have made the reduction with their honor intact. They just needed to have a tough conversation with the tribes first. And they apparently didn’t.

Which brings us to the bigger question. Were these reductions justified?

I tend to agree with Utah officials that the monument sizes were not “compatible with the proper care and management...” Asking a few rangers to manage over 3 million acres of land is like asking the security guards at the Louvre to manage the entire city of Paris.

But critics also have a point that the Antiquities Act does not explicitly give presidents the power to reduce national monuments. That’s a legitimate argument that could win in court.

Both of these arguments are valid legal arguments. But I think what’s really going on here is much simpler.

Tribes want permanent federal protection of their ancestral lands.

And Utah’s leaders want control over as much of Utah’s land as possible.

This is a tale as old as the Antiquities Act itself. States don’t happily cede control of their lands to the federal government.

• Grand Teton National Park was a 40 year battle between the feds and Wyoming.

• Alaskans burned effigies of Carter and organized mass trespasses over Carter’s 1978 monument proclamations.

• Olympic monument went through several size cuts before it was made a national park in 1938, despite protests from the timber industry.

Utah’s leaders are doing their fiduciary duty in pushing back against federal control of local land, just like those states were. And the federal government is doing their fiduciary duty by trying to protect lands of national value that are in danger of irreversible damage or exploitation. That tension is good and necessary.

The problem is that both critics and supporters are resorting to temporary unilateral wins, and then acting outraged when those wins turn into losses in four years.

Unilateral moves are designed to fail in America. And this move by Trump and Utah’s leaders is no different. Even if the courts rule that the monuments are too large, the next administration will likely find a way to tip the scales back in their favor through the privileges of the executive branch.

On balance, I want a significant portion of these lands protected. The heritage is real. The beauty is real. And the loss is real when these natural or manmade structures are defaced or looted.

But the real answer is not to go running to daddy’s Resolute Desk as soon as your favorite parent gets elected. It has to be solved through Congressional legislation that’s filled with hard bargains and compromises that neither side wants to make.

Then we’ll have a beautiful National Park or Preserve. One that’s smaller than the tribes want, and bigger than Utah’s leaders want. But one that lasts a lot longer than the next presidential cycle.

What would change my mind

For this article, I’m trying out a new section aimed at accountability for my take. If you like it and think we should include it across all articles, let me know.

On the ‘dishonor’ of the Department of Interior: If it turns out Interior did contact the Bears Ears Commission before July 13, the honor critique at the top of this take collapses, and I’ll say so. Same if Interior negotiates a new co-management agreement for the remaining 121,000 acres in the next year.

On Congress being the real solution: My take assumes the courts can’t end this fight. Only compromise through Congressional action can fix this long-term. If the Supreme Court hands down a ruling so decisive that the ping-pong actually stops, and the next administration doesn’t find a workaround, then the courts will have solved what I claimed only Congress could.

On June 23, Utah voters did something that hadn’t happened in modern state history: they fired a sitting Senate president in a primary. Stuart Adams lost to attorney Stephanie Hollist, an outcome that nearly everyone who studies Utah politics attributes to one thing: a hyperscale data center located in Box Elder County called the Stratos Project.

Now that the political dust has settled, I want to know, was the project itself actually a bad idea? What was actually being proposed? And was Box Elder County getting the raw end of the deal?

Below is the background, both sides’ most persuasive arguments, and then I’ll share where I landed after more research than I care to relive.

Some background

Sometime in 2025, Jason Chaffetz helped to introduce some Utah developers to his friend Kevin O’Leary, with a big, bold idea. Create a hyperscale datacenter in the middle of Box Elder County, powered by a $3.5 billion natural gas pipeline that was already sitting there.

Mr. Wonderful liked it.

So in January 2026, Kevin O’Leary met with Gov. Cox to pitch a hyperscale data center campus in Hansel Valley, a remote stretch of ranchland near the northern tip of the Great Salt Lake. The project, developed by O’Leary Digital and West GenCo, would span about 40,000 acres (although the datacenter itself would be less than 10,000 acres), and eventually draw up to 9 gigawatts of power from on-site natural gas plants. Utah’s entire statewide demand is roughly 4 gigawatts. O’Leary has said the buildout could eventually exceed $100 billion, with a first tranche of about $15 billion.

The approval ran through the Military Installation Development Authority, or MIDA, a state entity created to support defense-related development around Hill Air Force Base. Adams chaired MIDA’s board. Because MIDA has its own land-use authority, its involvement let the project bypass ordinary county zoning and public review. MIDA’s board authorized the project area with 100% property tax relief, and the applicable energy tax was cut from the standard 6% to 0.5%.

State law still required the county’s consent, and that’s where the public first got a real look at the proposal. On May 4, about 1,100 people packed the Box Elder County Fairgrounds; the three commissioners unanimously approved the two required resolutions while the crowd booed, chanted “people over profit,” and, at one point, was told by Commissioner Boyd Bingham, “For hell’s sake, grow up.” The commissioners left the room and broadcast their vote to the audience on a screen.

After that, quite a bit happened. In rough order:

• The water fight. An application to convert 1,900 acre-feet of ranch water to industrial use for the project drew nearly 4,000 formal protests, and was withdrawn. A second, smaller application drew about 700 protests and was withdrawn too. Developers say they’ll re-file with better hydrology, and that the campus will run closed-loop cooling using roughly 13,000 acre-feet of rights already attached to the land, of which they expect to consume 500 to 2,185 acre-feet a year.

• The referendum fight. A group of residents organized as the Box Elder Accountability Referendum (BEAR) filed to put the county’s consent on the November ballot. County Attorney Stephen Hadfield rejected the applications, ruling the resolutions were administrative acts under the MIDA Act and therefore not referable to voters. BEAR sued in 1st District Court to overturn that ruling; a separate nonprofit suit challenges MIDA’s code itself. Both cases are pending.

• The state’s course correction. Cox signed Executive Order 2026-03 on May 29, directing state agencies evaluating data centers to prioritize the Great Salt Lake, water, air quality, ratepayers, and public transparency. Days later, Adams publicly demanded a 75% cut to the project area, and O’Leary agreed to shrink it, first to about 20,000 acres and then, per O’Leary Digital, to a 10,000-acre campus.

• The June Primaries. Voters didn’t seem to feel that this reduction was enough. A Deseret News/Hinckley Institute poll found opposition to the project rose from 53% of Utah voters in May to 60% in June, with Republicans swinging from net-positive to net-negative on it, and only 24% saying the downsizing made them more supportive. On June 23, Adams took 34% in a three-way race against Hollist’s 43%. Commissioners Bingham and Lee Perry from Box Elder County lost their primaries too.

• O’Leary’s Chinese interference accusations. O’Leary went on national TV and claimed opposition groups were being funded by China — a claim he repeated across roughly ten media appearances. In June, he admitted he had no evidence for it. In July, the accused groups sued him and Fox News for defamation in Utah federal court. That lawsuit is still pending.

• The project lives on. The MIDA designation was unaffected by the election, and developers say they hope to break ground on phase one within a year, pending water and construction permits.

What critics of the Stratos Project are saying

• The physics of dumping this much heat and carbon into one desert valley are genuinely alarming.

• MIDA let a private developer bypass zoning, taxes, and the voters. That’s a governance problem.

• The State forced the project onto county leadership, leaving them with no good options to respond.

Robert Davies, a physics professor at Utah State University, told Grow the Flow that proponents' closed-loop and air cooling plans—meant to "reject the heat into the air—doesn’t eliminate the environmental issue.

“The thermal load from the proposed Stratos project is extreme. There is no way around the physics. This is the energy output of two-and-half New York Cities poured into a single confined desert basin, in a watershed that’s already in crisis. Of course it has effects. One of those effects is this: This facility imposes substantial drying on a watershed and ecosystem already in active collapse.”

In his preliminary analysis, Davies explained that “[In the daytime], elevated temperatures of 2-5 degrees Fahrenheit [occur] throughout Hansel Valley. This is nevertheless a significant increase. Nighttime is a different story [with] elevated temperatures of 8-12 degrees Fahrenheit. This is a very large impact.…. A permanent rise in nighttime temperatures of this magnitude... will essentially shut down this cycle. Condensation will not occur. This is the lifeblood of the ecosystem. The ecological impact resulting from the combination of elevated temperatures and suppressed nighttime condensation is likely extreme.”

In The Guardian, David Irvine, the attorney representing Alliance for a Better Utah and five Box Elder County residents in their lawsuit against MIDA, warned that the project could remove major decisions from local voter control.

“Under the Stratos plan, it would hold permanent, irrevocable control over public health, safety, taxation and land use across tens of thousands of acres of Box Elder County, with no voter recourse.”

Utah Clean Energy estimates the all-gas project could raise the state’s carbon emissions by 55% to 75%, depending on the system used.

Stephanie Hollist, the attorney who beat President Adams in the primary, argued the problem isn’t one project, but an agency with no voter accountability.

“What we’re seeing is an entity that has grown so big and has so many tentacles to unravel it will be challenging… We’re also seeing that MIDA is able to override land-use decisions and give developers benefits that a normal entity isn’t given…. There’s an energy tax benefit that is usually 6%. That was reduced to 0.5% for this project. Who is it that gets to make that call?”

House Speaker Mike Schultz placed a lot of blame on Kevin O’Leary.

“Kevin O’Leary spent his time lecturing Utahns instead of answering their questions. And it is a completely wrong approach. And I do blame Kevin O’Leary for this mess that’s out there, in large part.”

County Commissioner Lee Perry says the state backed the county into a corner where they made the only decision they could.

“Do I think that the data center vote cost me the election? Yes I do. Would I do anything different? … I wouldn’t vote differently, but I would push back against the state and make them come out publicly and tell everybody why they’re forcing it down our throat.”

What supporters of the Stratos Project are saying

• It’s a generational economic win for a rural county.

• America needs AI compute for defense and competitiveness, and this is the right place to build it.

• The scary claims don’t survive contact with the actual plan, and phased construction proves it.

The Box Elder County Commission FAQ page points to local jobs, better services, and the possible offsetting of property taxes (Box Elder County just had a 37% property tax increase last year).

“In Phase One, the county expects to receive $30 million in annual tax revenue. When fully built out, it could generate up to $108 million every year.

Revenues will first cover all county municipal services (like roads, police and fire). The remaining funds will be used at the county’s full discretion, and a portion of the taxes will go to local taxing entities, including the school district.

There will be thousands of temporary construction jobs. Once built, it will create 1,000 to 2,000 permanent jobs for IT workers, engineers, and administrative staff. These jobs will not just be at the data center, but will be needed for the power generation, manufacturing and other businesses and projects included in the project area.”

Gov. Spencer Cox, in an article with KSL, framed the project as part of a broader technology race with China and as central to our national security.

“We have an obligation, I think every state has an obligation when it comes to this space, to allow for these types of data centers to be built in their states. We have to do this. We can’t just say no and shut the doors and go home and let China win this technology race.”

On the environmental alarms, O'Leary says come look.

“Why not build it so people come and see it, like phase it in? And so you don’t build the whole thing. Remember, we’re permitted for seven and a half gigawatts. Okay, let’s scale that back. Let’s build a smaller amount and let people look at it, and let’s see if they like the jobs and they like what it looks like, and how much water it’s using, how much noise it makes, and how much heat it generates as opposed to building the whole thing,”

The Governor’s FAQ sheet says this water would actually result in more water flowing to the Great Salt Lake.

“The systems use only existing water rights attached to private property, which means the project will have lower net consumption than current agricultural or ranching use. This reduction in water use will create a net benefit to the Great Salt Lake watershed. Additionally, the advanced closed-loop system will result in less net consumption compared to traditional data center operations… ongoing water demand at the campus is projected to be similar to that of a large office complex, with most water use limited to everyday needs such as restrooms, sinks, and employee facilities.”

My take

• Winning the AI race against China is important, and this site is uniquely positioned to help.

• The datacenter is a genuinely exciting opportunity for Box Elder County, with some big “ifs”.

• Most of the environmental concerns will be reviewed before building. But the timing of the reviews is what caused backlash.

• I feel for the Box Elder Commissioners. I think that most of us would have made the same decision in their shoes.

If you don’t believe that AI is the future, China sure does. And they’re gaining on us.

They’re building datacenters across the country (without holding a single townhall if you can believe it), and they’re achieving AI computing results nearly as good as ours for a fraction of the cost, with lesser chips. Oh, and they’re banning our chips in their shiny new state-funded datacenters because, I must emphasize, they believe this could be an existential race.

And the U.S. is in real danger of losing. We need to build some shiny new datacenters too. But to do that, we need land, water, and an insane amount of readily available energy.

And surprisingly, Box Elder County might check all of those boxes.

Land ✅ Water ✅

Governor Cox claims that buying perpetual water rights for a closed-loop system might actually save water for the Great Salt Lake. And that argument might actually hold some water (har har). Once you’ve got enough water for the closed-loop cooling, you don’t really need much more. This looks like a possible win-win-win scenario where farmers gladly sell their rights above market prices, the land continues to be leased for grazing, and the excess water goes to the Great Salt Lake. Could this datacenter be a water conservation project in disguise? That’s the kind of deep-state back-door dealing I can get behind.

Energy ✅

This is where the match starts to get soul-matey. Box Elder County happens to have a 683-mile, 42” diameter steel pipeline running beneath it that’s absolutely packed with underutilized natural gas. So O’Leary Digital plans to build its own private natural gas power plant(s) on top of the line, which will then power the datacenter. Utahns’ electric bills stay the same, and America gets more supercomputing.

Pretty cool. And we haven’t even gotten into the county benefits.

Bonus County Benefits ✅

Box Elder County currently operates on a budget of $76 million per year. In phase one of the Stratos project, the county is projected to receive ~$30 million per year, raising their annual budget by ~39%. Then in phase two, they hope to reach $108 million per year. This would balloon the county budget to ~$184 million/year, while the county itself stays roughly the same size.

You’re essentially handing this rural county some resort town taxes. And if you’ve ever been to a resort town, you know those out-of-state tax payments are transformational. Better services. Better roads. Better schools. Better better better.

So come on, Box Elder residents would be certified dummies not to accept this deal, right? Right??

Maybe.

We actually have no idea. Because while all of this sounds perfect, and at least moderately plausible, we don’t have any studies to confirm it.

We don’t know what the closed-loop datacenter system looks like, or how much water will actually fill that closed-loop.

We don’t know how much of the purchased water rights were previously used for irrigation, skinnydipping, or just going unused.

We don’t know whether the valley will actually go up 8-12 degrees at night once the datacenter is complete (and by the way, if it does, there’s nothing we can do about it. There’s no “you’re allowed to heat up the valley by X degrees” permitting process.)

We don’t even know that the tax revenue numbers are accurate. Only $5.4 million is guaranteed.

And Utahns seem to have a problem with that.

I was struck by this sign a resident held up at the May 4 Box Elder County hearing. “Where’s the research?” Just a simple question. But I think it pretty accurately summed up where the resentment and anger of citizens is coming from.

The process here has been:

1. Grant irrevocable control of 40,000 acres to MIDA.

2. Persuade citizens it was a good idea.

3. Then do the research that proves it was a good idea.

It’s a bit like me persuading my wife that the new minivan I bought an hour ago was the right decision because it was a really good deal and she’s gonna love it and also we can’t return it because I already drove it off the parking lot and signed the paperwork.

Maybe she’d be ecstatic, love the color, and think it’s romantic.

Maybe she’d think I was just trying to sell her on a car that I really wanted.

I think that’s kind of how Box Elder residents felt.

Now, to be fair to the supporters, this was not a minivan. This was an opportunity to secure $108 million per year to the county. Utah’s leaders saw an incredible opportunity that they felt was time sensitive, and jumped on it.

Cox probably believed he was helping secure transformative revenue that would change the county for generations.

The County Commission believed they had been backed into a corner, and approval was the surest way to keep the project in check for their constituents.

And citizens believed that they were being written out of the decision process.

All three groups are probably right.

If I could change one thing about this whole fiasco, it would simply be to slow it down, and reverse the order of operations. Research, persuade, implement. If Box Elder county really is a uniquely perfect fit, then O’Leary Digital probably would have been willing to wait a few extra months to bring citizens along. It’s not like counties are lining up for datacenters these days.

But then again, that’s easy for me to say from my armchair in July. Our leaders were staring at a live offer. And if they’d missed it, Box Elder would be out a $100B minivan.

I mean hyperscale datacenter.

A Little Background

On March 11, the Department of Homeland Security finalized a deal to pay $145.4 million for an 833,000 square foot warehouse at 6020 W. 300 South, a property sized at approximately 24.9 acres about a ten minute drive from Salt Lake City International Airport. County records identify the seller as RREEF CPIF 6020 W 300 S, a Delaware limited liability company managed by DWS Group, the Frankfurt-based asset manager that was once part of Deutsche Bank and whose stock the bank still largely owns.

The price drew immediate attention. Salt Lake County’s assessor had the building and land valued at roughly $97.4 million, meaning the federal government paid tens of millions above that figure. It wasn’t an isolated case. A CoStar market analysis found federal purchases of ICE facilities to be 11 to 13 percent above the individual properties market value as an average across all purchases, with some properties being purchased more than 30 percent above comparable sales.

The Salt Lake City purchase was one piece of a much larger federal push. DHS’s plan called for eight large scale detention hubs around the country, each meant to hold 7,000 to 10,000 people, backed by sixteen smaller regional processing sites, at an estimated cost of $38.3 billion. Congress had separately approved about $45 billion for detention expansion nationwide.

Neither Mayor Erin Mendenhall’s office nor Governor Spencer Cox’s office was aware of the purchase before it closed. Cox himself was not entirely opposed to the concept. He had previously expressed interest in hosting an ICE facility in Utah, arguing it would relieve logistical issues at the detention center in Las Vegas that regularly runs over capacity. Days after the sale closed, Mendenhall sent a letter to a top ICE official requesting an urgent meeting. Salt Lake County Mayor Jenny Wilson said she was “deeply disturbed“ to learn of the purchase.

At the federal level, in late March, Markwayne Mullin took over as DHS secretary from Kristi Noem and inherited the warehouse program she had put into effect. Testifying before Congress in June, Mullin was candid about the results of his review. “There’s some [warehouses] that just, quite frankly, probably won’t work,” were his comments on the situation, adding that some due diligence steps may not have been completed before the purchases went through. Around the same time, the DHS Office of Inspector General opened an audit examining whether the agency had bought the buildings in a cost effective manner.

The legal dispute began on June 8, when Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County filed a federal lawsuit against DHS and ICE, naming Mullin along with ICE and its acting director as defendants. The complaint accuses the agencies of going around the environmental review processes required before converting a warehouse of that size. Among the specifics, ICE reportedly wrote “TBD” on a city utility application asking how much water and sewer capacity the site would need. Mendenhall’s take on this was that the facility “has no place in Salt Lake City,” citing the city’s limited water supply and the strain a facility of that size would put on public infrastructure.

By early summer, NBC News reported that officials were pausing further warehouse purchases while deciding what to do with the ones already acquired, and later reporting indicated the department was weighing selling or transferring at least seven of the eleven properties to other federal agencies, with Salt Lake City’s warehouse reportedly among them. DHS has not confirmed a final decision publicly. A department spokesperson told reporters the agency is focused on removing dangerous criminals quickly rather than housing people in detention for long periods “at the taxpayer’s expense,” and as of the most recent reporting, city officials said they had received no formal notice of a sale or transfer.

What critics of the detention center are saying

• The process may have violated federal law by not completing environmental review or consulting local government.

• The proposed scale could overwhelm local systems. City officials cite water, sewer, public-safety, traffic, health and air-quality concerns.

• The inflated purchase price and fuzzy paperwork raise questions about due diligence.

Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall, whose administration would be responsible for many local services affected by the project, said:

“This kind of facility has no place in Salt Lake City, not only due to its inhumane nature but also because of our limited water supply, the increased strain on public utilities systems, and the potentially drastic public health and safety impacts it would have on our residents. Salt Lakers are legally entitled to public review and reasoned decision making on major actions by the federal government, and it is my responsibility as Mayor to defend these rights.”

Salt Lake County Mayor Jenny Wilson joined the lawsuit on behalf of the county.

“The proposed facility is a dire threat to the very essence of our community values. It would overwhelm the infrastructure in the region, harm area businesses, and strain public safety and public health resources. The Federal Government did not notify nor consult with local officials, including myself.”

Sen. John Curtis, a Utah Republican and former Provo mayor, criticized the process even though his party supports stronger immigration enforcement.

“The decision to move forward with this facility via back-door negotiations – bypassing input from local leaders – is shortsighted and likely counterproductive to supporting the strategic growth and long-term infrastructure plans of Salt Lake City's west side.”

Brent Ward, an attorney for Uproar Utah, argues that the objection is broader than neighborhood resistance.

“We're not claiming that we just don't want this in our backyard. This is insane. Period. No matter what.” His group's position is that warehouse-scale detention is an inappropriate way to hold people, regardless of where the building is located.”

What supporters of the detention facility are saying

• This helps solve Utah’s regional detention-capacity problem.

• Dedicated space could reduce transfers and relieve pressure on local jails.

• Federal ownership could create jobs and long-term capacity.

Gov. Spencer Cox has supported the idea of federal detention capacity in Utah, though he’s expressed concern with the way this situation has been handled.

“When this sale went through, we were not given any notice. No members of our congressional delegation were given any notice. No locals were given any notice. That’s, I think, a little frustrating for everyone. We have millions of people here that should not be here. And that means we have to figure out a way to get them back, which means there has to be a detention facility. Now, there’s a right way to do that and a wrong way to do that.”

Rep. Matt MacPherson, a Republican whose West Valley City district borders the site, has argued that additional federal space could ease pressure on county jails.

"I see it as a jail issue. Our jails are overcrowded, and if we have a facility where people who are being held on immigration violations can be housed instead of taking up county jail beds, that helps local law enforcement and public safety."

ICE argues that a network of government-controlled regional hubs could move people through immigration proceedings and removal more efficiently than a patchwork of contracts and long-distance transfers.

“The facility would fully comply with regular detention standards… its construction and operation would create nearly 10,000 jobs, contribute $1.1 billion to the gross domestic product and generate over $238.7 million in tax revenue.”

Utah Sheriffs Association President Tracy Glover shows why the disagreement is not simply pro-enforcement versus anti-enforcement.

“The goal of the sheriffs is just to achieve an efficiency with law enforcement in general – public safety, community safety in general, and so, to the extent we can be partners with ICE, I think we're willing to do that on a limited basis.”

My take

• The need for this facility appears legitimate. But the way this purchase was handled raises serious concerns.

• Concerns about local infrastructure and water use are fair, particularly during an ongoing regional drought.

• The federal government could have made meaningful progress on detention capacity had it worked collaboratively and in good faith with local leaders.

• Even if DHS ultimately sells the property, taxpayers could still be left absorbing millions of dollars in losses.

When I first started looking into this, it felt like a circus. But the more I dug into the story, the more I came to the conclusion that this facility is not necessarily a bad idea. In fact, I’d argue that additional detention capacity is absolutely necessary if the federal government intends to enforce immigration law and deport people humanely. Right now, detention facilities across the West are overcrowded, forcing detainees to be transported long distances to find available bed space. That’s not good for law enforcement, local communities, or the people being detained.

A detention facility in Utah may solve a lot of these problems. Which is exactly why it’s so frustrating to see how DHS handled this entire project.

The Department of Homeland Security wanted to increase a warehouse’s water use from 5,600 gallons per day to potentially 1 to 2 million gallons per day, without meaningfully involving local leaders before purchasing the property. Instead of bringing state and local officials into the planning process from the beginning, DHS appears to have assumed it could sort those details out afterward. That approach has left everyone further away from solving the detention capacity problem while potentially costing taxpayers tens of millions of dollars.

Of those local leaders, Gov. Cox was portrayed as a supporter of the detention center. I initially thought he’d embraced this specific, badly executed plan out of party loyalty. Reading his actual statements, I think that’s not quite right. He’s consistently argued that forcing Utah, Idaho, and Montana to funnel detainees to an already overwhelmed facility in Las Vegas is a logistical nightmare. His frustration about being left completely in the dark reads less like political posturing and more like someone blindsided by a federal agency that failed to coordinate with the people who know their communities best.

And it wasn’t just local officials raising concerns. DHS itself now appears to be reaching many of the same conclusions. There are widespread reports that the agency is looking to sell or transfer least seven of these warehouse purchases, including ours.

That may sound comforting to detention center critics, but it’s important to note that nothing has actually been confirmed. The city and county’s lawsuit remains completely active, the federal government still holds the deed to the full 47-acre property, and local advocates like Uproar Utah are rightly celebrating “with caution” until something is put in writing.

DHS refuses to comment publicly on the site, speaking only in bureaucratic riddles about “moving swiftly to utilize existing detention space” with local partners. Even if the agency ultimately pulls the plug, walking this decision back won’t be simple. Before the property can ever reach the open market, it must work its way through mandatory federal disposal procedures, including required screening under the McKinney-Vento homeless assistance process. Real estate analysts also expect the eventual sale to come at a significant loss after DHS paid an estimated 49% above the property’s assessed value. If DHS ultimately walks away from this project, taxpayers will likely absorb the multi-million-dollar loss.

The frustrating part is that this outcome was completely avoidable. Building additional detention capacity is a worthwhile goal. But when the federal government works around, instead of with, the local leaders who know and understand their districts best, expensive mistakes are made.

And this was one of them.

Those of us living in Utah - or even just consuming media related to our state - have consistently heard state leaders promulgate the idea that Utah is special. And US News & World Report provides some substantiation to the claim, ranking Utah the best state in the nation for three years running.

Meanwhile, CNBC recently named Utah as one of the ten worst states to live in for 2026. The report highlights some of Utah’s weak points, including healthcare, childcare, air quality, and worker protections. Though the methodology employed to determine this dubious distinction can be disputed, it’s clear that Utah’s ‘special’ status is not a foregone conclusion.

Regardless of how residents or onlookers view our state and its component parts, it’s common to acknowledge it reflects some degree of singularity. Some hold it up as a shining city on a hill, an aspirational model of what a state and community should be. Others see our state’s idiosyncrasies as problems, tainting a geographically beautiful state

So, which is it? Is there a secret sauce that makes Utah special? Or is it truly one of the worst places to live in the nation?

What Makes a Place Special Anyway?

If you’re like me, you likely assume a place is special because it has exceptional features: the most notable architecture, the most exciting events, memorable geographic features, famous landmarks, or the best dining. In other words, a special place is one you’d take a vacation to because it’s a must-see value proposition.

However, at the end of the day, no one finds meaning in their lives just because they live somewhere deemed cool by culture.

Instead, studies indicate a place becomes special through repeated positive experiences within a place, driving attachment to it. Interestingly, people are attached less to a physical landscape and more to the experiences and relationships that occur there. Place attachment significantly improves well being. And social capital, the intangible value derived from interpersonal connection, is a primary driver of both place attachment and well-being. There is even tangible wealth to be found in and generated through social capital. Places tend to feel like home - to feel special - when they have high rates of volunteerism, trustworthy neighborhoods, stable populations, active civic participation, and frequent informal connection (via parks, churches, shops, and events).

Additionally, nature is a critical part of what makes a place special as it contributes to well-being by enhancing place attachment and social relationships. A 2019 study found that the longer hikers spend somewhere, the stronger their place identity and social bonding becomes. Notably, surveys show that Utahns avail themselves of the outdoors at exceptionally high rates, with almost all walking or biking around their neighborhood, 82% visiting city parks, 78% walking local trails, and 67% recreating on public lands.

The “Utah is Awesome” Arguments

• Utahns are consistently among the happiest in the nation, indicating some formula for success is at play here

• Utah’s demographics and social structures drive social connectedness

• Utah’s scenic geography lends itself to greater time outdoors, increasing place attachment

Happiness

Happiness is a difficult phenomenon to measure and quantify, let alone define, but WalletHub’s “Happiest States in America” ranking has consistently placed Utah amongst the happiest states in the nation over the past 10 years. In fact, the average rank during that time is 3.2, second only to Hawaii. The methodology has changed over time but this ranking typically evaluates economic, health, and social metrics to derive a figure.

Of course, while happiness is generally a byproduct of several key elements - meaning, purpose, and others - it’s not so simple that it can be universally indexed across a large population given a few socio-economic inputs. Having said that, WalletHub’s top-ranked states are in-line with historical rankings related to happiness and well-being published elsewhere. For example, Gallup’s well-being rankings from 2009 positioned Utah first, followed closely by Hawaii. This data was derived from interviews with residents of the respective states.

While Utah’s current ranking has slid to its lowest level in a decade (6th), the relative consistency of our state in these rankings indicates there’s a formula at play that’s built into the state’s very fabric. To much of the Western world, happiness is a sisyphean pursuit, but for many Utahns it seems to be part of a steady state.

Youth and Family

In addition to happiness, Utah’s people exhibit a vitality that’s difficult to ignore nor dispute. Part of this is youth. Our state’s median age is the lowest in the nation and a full 7 years younger than the national median. Utah’s birth rate, while falling and certainly nowhere near the historic levels used to caricature Utah’s families, is still among the highest in the nation. That young population, combined with a relatively high fertility rate, makes Utah’s birth-to-death ratio the highest in the nation. And our average household size is largest, with a greater share of married couples than any other state.

Fertility can reflect, in part, a belief that the future is stable and worth investing in. And children build social capital by increasing connectivity points in a community. Children can be social bridges who connect adults through school, sports, playgrounds, and general play. And adults who grew up with one or more siblings have significantly higher social capital than those without, showing that Utah’s current fertility rate and household size can perpetuate benefits for years to come.

Economic Dynamism

Beyond vitality, Utah exhibits dynamism on par with states that generate far more attention. It led the nation in real GDP growth for the last full year measured (2024). This is certainly driven by a number of factors, but there are plenty of states with pro-growth policies and educated workforces that fall short of Utah’s numbers. Looking deeper at what stands out from an economic perspective, it becomes apparent that our state’s entrepreneurship scene punches well above its weight.

Utah ranks 4th among states in VC dollars per resident at about $323 per person, behind California, Massachusetts, and New York and slightly ahead of Washington. Given the unique and historical advantages of these other states, it’s no small feat to be in such company. Most Utah entrepreneurs begin building their business by choice, not out of necessity, according to Kauffman data. And the average Utah startup creates just over 6 jobs within the first year, a rate higher than all but 3 other states.

Job creation matters because it increases opportunity while reducing stress. Social capital decreases when members of the community feel they’re participating in a zero sum game. And many of us know just how difficult it is to focus on higher-order social connection when you’re not sure if you can pay your bills or provide for your family.

Religiosity

While Utah’s relative entrepreneurial success may surprise some, its religiosity does not. If there’s anything that Utah is known for, it’s an association with Mormon Christianity. 76% of Utahns identify with a religious affiliation, the highest of any state. Percentages vary by study and methodology, but a large percentage of the state’s residents are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And while the state has become more secular in recent years, religiosity is still the norm.

It’s certainly in vogue to criticize organized religion and its adherents, but active participation in religious communities is associated with higher levels of social capital. Those who regularly attend religious services are more likely to volunteer in the community - and much of that volunteering occurs outside of a religious organization. Religious participation increases friendship, civic engagement, and trust.

Natural Resources

Finally, no examination of Utah’s notable characteristics is complete without highlighting its natural beauty. Utah has 5 national parks, tied for third most among US states. Collectively, these attract 11-12 million visitors per year, only exceeded by California. Zion National Park alone attracts more visitors than most US states. But it’s not just Utah’s national parks down south attracting visitors, it’s also world-class snow up north. Utah consistently ranks second among US states, behind only Colorado, and has arguably the best resorts in the country. No wonder our state is poised to host a second Winter Olympics in just the first half of this century.

Beyond beauty, our state is a rich source of the natural resources that facilitate modern life. As the nation’s number 2 producer of copper and only producer of beryllium and magnesium metal, it holds a crucial place in mineral supply chains. Throughout US history, Utah is the 3rd-largest metal-producing state by cumulative production value.

The “Utah Stinks” Arguments

• The prevalence of mental health issues undermines the narrative that Utahns are happy, or at least indicates that some are left feeling isolated

• Not everyone is equally valued here, with gender equality among the worst in the nation and many groups feeling unheard and powerless

• Persistent air-quality issues literally overshadow an otherwise beautiful state

Mental Health

Although Utah consistently ranks among the happiest states in the country, it’s also one of the states with the highest prevalence of mental health problems. In fact, Utah has the second highest rate of adult mental health illnesses in the country - behind only Oregon. Yet, access to mental health care in our state is among the worst in the country.

It should be noted that individuals can report strong life satisfaction, community support, and optimism while still experiencing depression, anxiety, or other mental health conditions. Additionally, the drivers of this are myriad and difficult to attribute to any one cause. But, clearly, this is a widespread issue to be cognizant of. And a lack of resources could leave some individuals feeling isolated.

Social Spending and Resources

Utah consistently ranks among the healthiest states, but this is because of active lifestyles, low obesity, and low smoking rates. However, care remains a problem as primary care and mental health provider shortages persist, leading to long wait times.

Additionally, limited childcare availability, rising costs, and shortage of workers makes childcare difficult, particularly for dual income or single-parent families. Utah also has no paid family leave requirement and no paid sick leave requirement, potentially exacerbating childcare problems for working parents.

These may impact social capital indirectly as they reduce opportunities for connection and increase feelings of isolation. Additionally, a lack of resources can foster distrust and resentment, neither of which are desirable ingredients when building community.

Gender Equality

One of the most discussed issues among others in the state is gender equality. Utah’s women are among the healthiest in the nation, with excellent maternal and physical health outcomes, low smoking rates, relatively low obesity, and favorable health metrics. Additionally, women in Utah have relatively strong educational and employment outcomes. However, Utah has ranked last in gender equality for nearly a decade due to large gender gaps in earnings, executive leadership, and political representation. Some women feel these rankings are downstream from broader cultural norms.

It should come as no surprise that gender inequality - or even perceived inequality - can harm the trust and cohesion that are necessary to build social capital. Simply put, none of us enjoy being devalued. And individuals and groups who feel they have been are less likely to participate in the communities and organizations that foster that feeling.

Air Quality

Those of us who live along the Wasatch Front are all too familiar with regional haze and low visibility due to pollution. Utah’s unique geography, combined with western fires, extreme summer heat, ozone, and particulate matter make our state’s average air quality one of the worst in the nation. As alluded to, the drivers of this are myriad, and only certain portions of the state are subjected to poor air quality, but it’s a serious and unsightly issue nonetheless that threatens to undermine the benefits of healthy living and overshadow the state’s natural beauty.

In-groups and Out-groups

It’s genuinely difficult to quantify this, but anecdotal evidence and persistent talking points indicate many groups feel ostracized, unwelcome, or powerless. This phenomenon is certainly not unique to Utah, but decades of dominant religious and political groups have surely had an impact on minority groups. And feelings of alienation are likely to carry over into civic life. This may explain trends in political partisanship within the state. More specifically, Utah Democrats and unaffiliated voters tend to be more consistently liberal than their national counterparts, whereas Republicans appear to have a similar ideology to their national counterparts.

In 2016, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mike Weinholtz held a fundraiser at a performance many members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints found offensive. The play, titled “Saturday’s Voyeur”, parodied Church beliefs, policies, and its founder Joseph Smith. When confronted, Weinholtz dismissed criticisms, saying those offended “aren’t going to vote for me anyway[.]” More recently, Democratic congressional candidate Nate Blouin called members of the same faith “a bunch of bigoted assholes”.

Presumably, these candidates are outliers. But their mentality reflects a desperation that no longer seeks to build bridges, but rather “stick it” to those in power whom they feel have ignored or actively thwarted them. Resentment breeds an unstable and destructive brand of political engagement. Our leaders would do well to ensure all Utahns feel heard.

My take

• Utah undoubtedly has its shortcomings, but they are largely superficial

• Overall, Utah is special because of its tight-knit communities and kind people

So, is Utah special? Yes.

I’m a 7th generation Californian and have lived in 9 different states. I don’t have any childhood memories or visceral ties to Utah. But I remain here of my own volition.

There are plenty of things I’d like to change or improve in this state. For one, housing prices are now patently absurd. I’m entirely unmotivated to pay $800,000 for a fixer upper in Sandy (no offense to Sandy). That, to me, is not the American dream. Any American having that dream on a recurring basis should seek professional help.

I’ve also seen a lot of gatekeeping in professional circles. Larger cities have a wealth of top-tier, high-paying jobs. But they are still relatively hard to come by here, and those who occupy them are frequently threatened by any competition. I don’t have any data to back this up, and I’m not sure such data exists, but I’ve observed the goodwill normally extended to strangers suddenly ends when it comes to giving a hand up in certain industries.

Having lived much of my adult life in DC and New York, I’d love more sit down restaurant experiences and fewer fast casual chains. I also wish there were more walkable shopping districts, more distinctive communities, and less crowded canyons. Although, having said that last part, I’d also love to see nimbyism banished to the depths of hell. Wise stewardship of public lands is one thing; prohibiting newcomers from enjoying the same access you do is entirely another.

But these are all relatively benign. And none are universal. Furthermore, many of them are improving daily. New shops, restaurants, and communities continue to be built, enhancing the diversity and quality of experiences available to us. Better jobs and wages are coming. And Utah is building more homes than any other state in the nation, with a goal to build 35,000 new homes by 2028.

Social capital has recently fallen in absolute terms, as measured by Utah Foundation’s Social Capital Index. This is driven by a lower religious participation, less time with friends and neighbors, and more time alone. While this is a worrying trend, it can be reversed. And Utah still ranked #1 overall in relative terms last year - particularly with regards to community life.

Utah’s outdoor opportunities are unparalleled. States like California may have more diverse terrain and national parks, but it’s exceptionally rare to find those offerings right in your backyard. And how fortunate are we to be surrounded by incredible mountains as we’re cut off by a lifted truck with a Monster sticker on I-15? Here, there’s always a silver lining.

Ingroups and outgroups are undesirable and we should all work to cultivate and exhibit greater empathy and love. But conflict between such groups is primarily at the macro level, not at the micro. It’s easy to “otherize” an impersonal group or a label, but most Utahns are quite amiable and giving in their personal interactions.

At our best, Utahns celebrate success and the successes of others. This state is filled with people who are ambitious and hungry. And Utahns have a reputation for being hard-working and industrious. Perhaps these are reasons economic and social mobility in Utah are among the highest in the nation.

What makes our state special is not just one thing, but a collection of strengths born of Utahn’s fundamental desire to be and do good. I have personally been welcomed into hundreds of Utah homes and treated with kindness and generosity. Utahns are quick to give. They get involved. Many communities are filled with families who know and care for their neighbors. They are safe havens where households trust each other. Ultimately, people and connections have always been what makes Utah special.

Last month, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals revived a First Amendment case between staffers at the Utah Legislature and Bryan Schott, editor-in-chief and sole owner of Utah Political Watch (UPW). The largely overlooked case could shape whether independent journalists — like bloggers, podcasters, and freelancers — are treated the same as traditional media when government officials decide who gets access to press spaces and events.

Schott sued four legislative staffers after they denied him a press pass, a privilege he had enjoyed since the Legislature started issuing them in 2013. Officially, the staff said it was because he was no longer tied to a major news outlet. Schott says the real motive was more nefarious: They didn’t like his reporting.

Either way, the bigger question is whether either rationale was legitimate grounds for denying him the same access given to other journalists.

Some background

Schott has covered Utah politics since 1999, working for established news outlets including UtahPolicy.com, KUER, KSL NewsRadio, and The Salt Lake Tribune. He held a legislative press credential every year after the Legislature began issuing them in 2013. But in 2024, he left the Tribune and launched Utah Political Watch, a subscription news site where he serves as owner, publisher, editor, and sole reporter.

That’s when his credentialing problems began.

What does a credential actually get you? It gets you access to the press room, designated workspaces in the House and Senate galleries, media parking, and in-person access to press conferences and “media availabilities” with elected officials, where you can ask questions.

After Schott first inquired about getting a press pass for the 2025 session, the Legislature revised its credentialing policy. An earlier version allowed bloggers and independent outlets to receive credentials in “limited, rare circumstances.” The new policy flatly excluded “blogs, independent media, or other freelance media” and reserved credentials for journalists working for an “established reputable news organization.”

The dispute escalated in December after Schott published a story about an ethics complaint involving Senate President Stuart Adams. The same day, Adams called Schott out on X. The senator referred to him as a “former media member” and described his work as “part of a troubling pattern of neglectful journalism that undermines the profession’s integrity.” His post was reposted on the Utah Senate’s Facebook and Twitter pages before being removed.

When Schott later reached out to Senate Deputy Chief of Staff Aundrea Peterson for comment, Peterson echoed Adams’ criticism in a text exchange, quoting parts of Adams’ post word-for-word. She referred to Schott’s news outlet as a blog five times and used phrases like, “someone who claims to be a journalist,” “failing to follow basic journalistic standards,” and “lack of journalistic integrity.” Schott asked whether she would deny his credential application because of the Adams story. Peterson replied that she would follow the credentialing policy.

Schott applied for a press credential December 17 and was denied under the new blogs-and-independents exclusion. His appeal to House Chief of Staff Abby Osborne and Senate Chief of Staff Mark Thomas failed on December 26. According to the letter from Osborne and Thomas, leaving The Salt Lake Tribune meant Schott was no longer a member of the professional media.

On January 22, 2025, Schott and Utah Political Watch, represented by the Institute for Free Speech, sued Peterson, Osborne, Thomas, and House Communications Director Alexa Musselman. They asked the court to order the Legislature to give Schott a press pass and award him $17.91 in damages (a nod to 1791, the year the First Amendment was ratified).

Legislative staffers say the denial had nothing to do with Schott’s reporting. Their position is that press passes aren’t protected by the First Amendment. The passes offer special access to limited Capitol spaces and events, so the Legislature may reserve them for reporters who work for established organizations with editors and institutional oversight.

Schott says that explanation is a pretext. In his view, staffers changed and applied the policy to shut him out because they disliked his viewpoints and combative reporting style. He also argues that the rules give officials too much power to decide which journalists count as legitimate. And he says they weren’t applied evenly. According to his complaint, the Legislature credentialed reporters from Utah News Dispatch when it was only a month old, Building Salt Lake despite its inclusion on a list of urban planning blogs, and solo editor-operators at the Davis Journal and Utah Policy, all while excluding Utah Political Watch.

Growing tension with the Legislature

Even before he left the Tribune, Schott’s reporting had drawn some heated responses from staff and legislators.

In addition to the clash over the Stuart Adams article, court documents cite several examples from the 2024 legislative session in which Schott criticized the Utah Legislature and its leaders. One article accused House Speaker Mike Schultz of dodging questions. Schultz later messaged Schott, accused him of bias, and told him, “You used to be the best reporter in the Legislature. It’s sad how far you’ve fallen.”

In a separate incident, Schott posted on social media about legislative staff struggling to set up a backdrop, and House Chief of Staff Abby Osborne publicly criticized him on X: “Bryan, you are a d***! As a reporter, I can’t believe you think it’s okay to blast staff for doing their job. You could have got up and helped, but you chose just to tweet about it.”

Staffers maintain that these clashes had nothing to do with Schott’s denial. In their letter rejecting his appeal, Osborne and Thomas wrote, “Any claim that recent updates to the policy were intended to prevent targeted individuals from obtaining credentials is inaccurate and completely unfounded.”

Where things stand

A federal judge threw out Schott’s lawsuit on Sept. 29, 2025, agreeing with legislative staffers that a Capitol press pass gives reporters special access, not a constitutional right, and that Schott could still cover the Legislature through public meetings and records.

However, on June 30, 2026, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously revived part of the case. The judges said Schott had alleged enough to continue pursuing his claim that officials denied him credentials because of his reporting. They did not decide whether he was actually targeted or whether the policy was unconstitutional. Instead, they found that the timing, staff criticism, and alleged exceptions for other independent outlets raised factual questions worth examining more closely.

In a 47-page opinion, Circuit Judge Timothy Tymkovich explained that the Legislature’s argument that Schott could still access the same basic information did not automatically end the First Amendment question. By creating a credentialing system for reporters who want access to Capitol media spaces and events, the Legislature created a limited public forum or a nonpublic forum. Both are government-controlled spaces where access can be limited. But those limits still have rules. Under past court decisions, the Legislature may decide who gets into that forum, but its criteria must be reasonable and cannot discriminate based on viewpoint.

Tymkovich also raised questions about how “neutral” the credentialing policy really is. He noted that phrases such as “reputable news organization” and “professional member of the media” are subjective, giving legislative staff broad discretion to decide who qualifies for a pass and who does not.

What Schott’s supporters are saying

• Freelance journalists are journalists. The new policy is outdated and out of step with modern journalism.

• When the government opens its doors to the press, it cannot admit only the reporters it likes. Which is what happened here.

• Our nation’s founders foresaw this tension, and legislated to protect journalists’ press access.

In the Salt Lake Tribune, Caitlin Vogus, senior advisor for Advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, said the policy excluding all independent journalism hurts Utahns:

“Lesson number one: Freelance journalists are journalists.

“It’s a principle that dates back to our country’s earliest days. The founders recognized that freedom of the press included not just newspapers and books, but also the pamphlets published by individuals that fueled the American independence movement. . . .

“Maybe lawmakers don’t believe freelancers who publish online are journalists. But the Supreme Court disagrees. So does Utah Sen. Mike Lee, who last Congress co-sponsored a federal shield law that would have protected freelance and independent journalists from being forced to reveal their sources. Utah’s own reporter-source shield law also covers independent reporters.

“More importantly, excluding independent journalists reduces Utahns’ access to information. These days, people across the political spectrum get their news through social media, podcasts, newsletters and even blogs. But Utah’s new policy would bar everyone from Joe Rogan to Paul Krugman from receiving a press credential.”

Charles Miller, senior attorney for the Institute for Free Speech and lead counsel for Schott, said the Tenth Circuit ruling was a win for independent journalism:

“Today’s ruling makes clear that, when the government opens its doors to the press, it cannot then pick and choose who gets to walk through those doors based on whether officials like what a journalist writes. Utah’s Legislature revised its credentialing policy to exclude independent journalists right after a veteran reporter who covered the Capitol for decades and was known for asking tough questions started his own news site. Schott was the only journalist denied credentials.”

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) argued that this situation was similar to Representative Aedanus Burke trying to expel newspapers from the House floor in 1789.

“The House rejected Burke’s proposals based on what members of the First Congress believed the First Amendment required. . . . This episode demonstrates that members of the First Congress, who were uniquely well positioned to understand the original meaning of the First Amendment, understood the Speech and Press Clauses to preclude the government from denying journalists access to legislative spaces based on (or in retaliation for) the content and viewpoints expressed in their reporting.”

What critics of Schott are saying

• A press pass provides access, not a separate speech right.

• Schott could still cover public proceedings without one.

• Staffers’ legal team says the appeals court created a new constitutional right.

In a response to the original complaint, Tyler Green of Consovoy McCarthy, lead counsel for the staffers, asserted that a press pass is access, not speech.

“The crux of [Schott’s] argument is that because [he] is a reporter, he has a right of access ‘equal to the rights of other credentialed media representatives.’ That reasoning would invalidate any attempt to credential some media but not others. Courts have rejected [this]’ theory as unworkable, and for good reason: Every self-proclaimed journalist or reporter — from blog-site owners to TikTokers — would have the same right of access as established, reputable news organizations. That is not the law.

“A government’s distinctions among members of the press in a limited or nonpublic forum are constitutional so long as they are reasonable and viewpoint neutral. The Legislature’s policy clears those thresholds. It ensures that established media maintain sufficient access while maintaining substantial alternative channels for news gathering.”

U.S. District Judge Robert Shelby initially ruled against Schott, reasoning that reporters can still cover the Legislature without a press credential.

“Any reporter has access to the legislative session and is not restricted in the content of any potential publication,” Shelby wrote. “A media credential permits access to the press room, workspaces in the Senate and House galleries, designated parking and press events with elected officials. However, members of the public have access to the chambers’ galleries and may observe committee meetings and legislative floor debates. Additionally, legislative agenda items and other materials are posted on the Legislature’s website, and all official legislative action is livestreamed and archived on the Legislature’s website.”

After the appellate court ruling, staffers’ legal team argued the three-judge panel invented a new constitutional right.

“The panel crafted a new, freestanding “constitutional right” of “viewpoint-neutral access to a government-created forum” — irrespective of whether the First Amendment protects [Schott’s] intended activities. . . .

“But credentialed media have no greater access to government information than the public. ‘[T]he Capitol is open to all’ to ‘attend committee meetings and floor time.’ Committee meetings, legislative floor debates, agenda items and materials are readily accessible on the legislative website.”

My take

• Schott may be combative and abrasive, but the First Amendment matters most when the government is dealing with critics it would rather avoid.

• The timing, uneven enforcement, and vague standards make the Legislature’s policy look less like neutral credentialing and more like an attempt to solve the Bryan Schott problem.

• The rise of independent media is a return to the decentralized press culture the First Amendment was designed to protect.

There is something wonderfully American about this whole dispute: the government made a decision, a citizen cried foul, and now everyone has to meet in court and argue about the First Amendment. Whatever we think of Schott, the fact that he can challenge the Legislature and force it to defend its decision to exclude him is worth celebrating.

This is not a failure of the system. This is the system.

Before the Constitution and Bill of Rights, British and colonial officials were largely free to prosecute (or persecute) anyone they believed guilty of “seditious libel.”

Which is why the Founders wrote the First Amendment without much room for equivocation:

“Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press. . .”

Does Bryan Schott have a track record for antagonizing people in authority? Absolutely. Has that made him enemies? Almost certainly. Have public officials complained about his tone, methods, and coverage? Repeatedly. Has his approach sometimes veered into the inappropriate? Many would say yes.

So what?

If the First Amendment protects only reporters that public officials enjoy dealing with, what exactly is it protecting?

About the staffers in question. I can understand the desire to be free of Schott. A quick look at his news site and Instagram, and I’m glad he’s never had a reason to post about me. It’s not hard to imagine some staffers quietly celebrating when he left The Salt Lake Tribune, only to find out that their less-than-favorite reporter would in fact still be at the Capitol, this time with his own outlet and no Tribune-imposed guardrails to rein him in.

I suspect staffers saw the credentialing policy as a quiet way to solve what they viewed as the Bryan Schott problem. The timing is just too convenient not to be deliberate.

Schott had been credentialed for years while reporting for established news organizations. Then, on Nov. 5, 2024, he told legislative staff that he would be covering the 2025 session for Utah Political Watch and asked about obtaining credentials. Less than three weeks later, the media team created a revised policy categorically excluding “blogs, independent media outlets or freelance media.” The document’s metadata dates its creation to Nov. 24.

There is also the question of whether the Legislature applied its new policy evenly. The rules exclude blogs, yet Schott’s legal team points to Building Salt Lake, which received credentials and appears to fit that description rather comfortably.

Charles Miller, Schott’s lead attorney, noted that the site’s About page once described it as a “Top 100 Urban Planning Blog.” By the time of this writing, “blog” had been replaced with “source.” The link, however, still leads to a list of urban planning blogs — an awkward detail for anyone arguing that the distinction is perfectly clear.

If staffers expected Schott to accept the new policy and move on, they badly miscalculated. What may have looked like a quiet way to avoid dealing with him has instead produced a federal lawsuit, mounting legal costs, and far more scrutiny than the original credential request ever would have attracted.

That is the fundamental mistake. The staffers appear to have been using the policy as a shield. Instead, its vague language left them exposed. Standards based on reputation, ethics, and professionalism may sound reasonable on the surface, but they leave ample room for personal judgment (and personal grievances) to creep in.

A stronger policy would rely on concrete, measurable criteria: how often an outlet publishes, the size of its readership, whether it produces original reporting, and whether it provides bylines, public contact information, and a corrections policy. Had the Legislature adopted standards like these from the beginning, this lawsuit might never have happened.

Clarifying the policy now would not only make room for legitimate independent journalists. It would also protect legislative staff from being dragged into the next avoidable legal battle.

But the larger issue is not just Schott. The Legislature had already been tightening access for independent journalists before he applied. Until the November 2024 revision, blogs and freelancers could still receive credentials, but only as exceptions to a rule that otherwise excluded them.

Attorneys for the staffers said the change reflected concern about a growing number of independent journalists seeking access. Even if that is true, a point Vogus strongly disputes in her op-ed, restriction is the wrong response.

“The Legislature should be celebrating the enhanced coverage that independent journalists bring to the statehouse and finding ways to accommodate them,” she wrote in The Salt Lake Tribune. “If the Legislature actually received thousands of credential requests — an unlikely prospect for a statehouse — that would be a win for transparency.”

The revised credentialing policy seems to reflect a broader discomfort with the changing media landscape. Newsletters, podcasts, small investigative outlets, and independent commentators have blurred the old lines between reporting, opinion, and advocacy. The traditional model was easier to define. It was also easier to manage.

Schott’s case tests how far the Legislature can go in drawing those lines. It had credentialed him every year since 2013. What changed was not his experience covering Utah politics, but his employer. He no longer worked for a large, traditional news organization.

Rather than defending journalism standards, the revised policy seems designed to preserve the old media model.

But independent journalism is not a departure from the First Amendment’s roots. It is much closer to them. When the Bill of Rights was ratified, “the press” did not mean a professional class of reporters working for large institutions. Anyone with access to a printing press could weigh in on the government’s choices, whether the message was supportive, hostile, or somewhere in between.

Early American journalism was partisan, opinionated, and messy. What mattered was not whether officials approved of a publisher’s tone or credentials, but whether people were free to circulate ideas and challenge those in power.

The rise of independent media looks less like the collapse of traditional journalism and more like a return to the decentralized press culture the First Amendment was designed to protect.

I agree with Vogus, Miller, and the Institute for Free Speech. Independent journalism deserves clearer, more objective credentialing standards — and more room at the Capitol.