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.