Special Session with Bryan Schott

>> Bryan Schott: Foreign.

This is special session. I'm your host, Bryan Schott.

You know, we may be in the midst of a global

economic meltdown, but news about

Utah politics just does not stop.

So I'm glad to have you on board. You do

realize that we're living out the plot

of the Star wars film the Phantom Menace in

real time, right? Just go look at the opening crawl

of the movie. It says, turmoil has engulfed

the Galactic Republic. The taxation of trade

routes to outlying star systems is in

dispute. Hoping to resolve the matter with a

blockade of deadly battleships, the greedy

trade federation has stopped all shipping to the

small planet of Naboo. While the Congress of

the Republic endlessly debates this alarming

chain of events, the Supreme Chancellor has

secretly dispatched two Jedi Knights, the

guardians of peace and justice in the galaxy, to

settle the conflict. That sounds a h*** of a lot like what's going

on right now. The only thing I don't know is who those

Jedi Knights who were secretly dispatched to

resolve the conflict would be. Maybe that hasn't happened yet.

Now, I have been spending way too much time thinking about this,

and I believe that there's an argument to be made

that in this real life version of the Phantom

Menace, Jar Jar Binks is Utah

Senator Mike Lee. Hear me out. Jar Jar

was an outcast from the Gungan society. He was

clumsy, he was annoying, nobody liked him. But he was able

to return to favor after he helped to

create an alliance between the Gungans and

Queen Amidala's people. Lee was on the

fringes of the Senate GOP tried to stop

Donald Trump from becoming the party's nominee

for president, but. But then switched

his tune, has become one of Trump's biggest

cheerleaders, and has returned to favor

in the national gop. Here's where this analogy

really fits, and you have to go forward into later

movies. If you remember, in episode three, Emperor

Palpatine was. He manipulated Jar

Jar to propose that he be given

emergency executive powers, and

that led to the dissolution of the Republic

and the rise of the Empire. He used these

emergency powers to give himself total

power. And if you haven't put it together yet, Donald Trump would be

Emperor Palpatine in this scenario. But he used these

emergency powers to give himself total

power and dissolve the Republic. In the lead

up to January 6, Lee worked

overtime to try to find a way to make Trump's attempt to

overthrow an election fit with the

Constitution. That sounds kind of the same

thing. And he's currently attacking

judges who dare to oppose Trump

and Palpatine. I think the analogy fits, but I won't

belabor the point anymore. Anyway, let's get to the top news from the

last week.

We're still on hold waiting to hear whether or

not the Republican controlled legislature is going to try to

override any of Governor Spencer Cox's vetoes

from the 2025 legislature. One of the vetoes that might

get overridden is HB306 that was sponsored

by Representative Ken Ivory. And what that does is

it allows the state or it authorizes the

state to hire a company

to set up a system that would enable the state

to pay vendors using gold if

that's how those vendors wanted to be paid. Right now

Utah already holds about $60 million in

gold purchased over the last year

because of another bill sponsored by

Representative Ken Ivory. Governor Spencer

Cox, when he vetoed the bill, said that hiring a vendor

to come up with a system that would be able to integrate with the

state's accounting system was a

really complicated propos and that's why he vetoed

it. House leadership has already polled members on which bills they

want to override and I'm told that they have enough votes to

override the veto on this bill. We won't know

about the Senate. Senate President Stuart Adams has been

traveling apparently and will poll his

membership next week. And if they can get 2/3 in the

Senate, well then they'll probably try to override this

bill. There is a big push from right wing groups like the

Utah Eagle Forum, the Utah Citizens for the

Constitution. They really want this veto

overridden. Also, when he vetoed the, Cox

said he was worried about how much it was going to cost

to set up this system. The legislature did not

fund this bill, but Ivory

has said that there's a private donor

who's offered to cover the

$147,000 to hire this

vendor to come up with a system. That private vendor is a

guy named Kevin Freeman and he hosts

a podcast called Economic War Room. And here's

what you need to know about him. Freeman is a right

wing personality. He's really gone in on this

who using gold as legal tender. And

in fact he wrote a book about it and the book is called

Pirate Discovering the Founders

Hidden Plan for Economic justice and

Defeating the Great Reset. In his book, Freeman

claims that the Founding Fathers hid a clause in the

Constitution that allows states to use

pirate money, which would be gold bullion

as currency. That theory might sound a little bit

out there, but considering the time that the Constitution was

written, it makes sense. I mean h***, we even Got

Sen. Mike Lee talking about

authorizing piracy through marks of

reprisal to fight the cartel. So, you

know, in context, it makes sense. But

when you look at the title of Freeman's book a little bit

closer, there's something that jumped out at me, and it's the word Great

Reset. And if you don't know what the Great Reset is,

it is a conspiracy theory that global

elites used the Coronavirus

pandemic. They manufactured the pandemic, and they're

using it to dismantle the US Economy

so that they can redistribute wealth to bring

about radical social change.

And Freeman and his followers want

to get back to the gold standard, and their

end game is replacing the Federal Reserve

completely because we're going back to the gold standard.

All of our money is backed by gold. Freeman is

going around the country lobbying state

legislatures to make this move.

He's pushed it in Texas. He tried it in

Louisiana. Louisiana lawmakers rejected

what he was trying to do because they

didn't buy into the conspiracy theory that is at

the heart of this book. The book is not about the

Constitution saying you can use gold

as currency. The book is about this

conspiracy theory, the Great Reset, that there's

some overarching plans, that there is some secret

cabal of global elites, and they are plotting

they manufactured the Coronavirus pandemic,

or they saw an opportunity with the COVID

pandemic to crash the global

economy, redistribute wealth, and then they're gonna rule over

everything. That's what is at the center of this

book. And you've got Utah lawmakers buying into

it hook, line, and sinker. He was the inspiration

for Ivory's bill last year that allowed the state to

invest in gold. It's a hedge against inflation and

economic uncertainty. Well, maybe it's also

fueled by this absolutely bonkers

conspiracy theory that Klaus Schwab and

his minions are trying to take over the

world. So you have to understand where this

bill came from. The House has enough votes

to override the veto. I suspect the Senate will

get there, too. There's a lot of lobbying going on right now.

Freeman sent a video address to

the Utah Eagle Forum's 2024 convention

right before they initially passed the bill allowing

the state to invest in gold. So, on

the surface, this kind of sounds good.

Freeman and his supporters, like Ken

Ivory, say that we want to use it as

a hedge against infl. And it's a hedge against

economic uncertainty. But they want to get the US

Back on the gold standard. The United States

abandoned the gold standard after the

Great Depression because

there can be some volatility in the markets. I mean,

gold went above $3,100

this week in response to President

Trump's tariffs. And it also severely

restrains what governments are able to do

because they only have a fixed amount of

money to spend. You can only spend what you have,

your gold reserve, rather than what

we do now, which is the government can print its own

currency. So you have to understand where this stuff

is coming from. It's based on a conspiracy

theory, and I'm guessing that the legislature

is going to override this veto.

Boy, it was a fun week for the Utah Board of Education.

They discussed and ultimately

rejected a resolution to remove

DEI from schools, claiming that it was,

quote, attempting to achieve the Soviet

communist goal of actual equality.

The resolution failed in a vote of 10 to

4 after a lot of pushback from

the public. Now, it's a resolution, it's not a rule. It

doesn't carry the same legal authority, but this is the kind of

thing that Republicans love to

do. If you ever have the opportunity to

sit through a Republican state central

committee meeting, and I don't recommend that you do, but if

you ever want to, there's a lot of fighting about

resolutions. They propose resolutions for pretty

much anything and everything. After the

legislature changed the state flag, the Republican Party

passed a resolution opposing the move. A lot

of times the people who support these resolutions, who

vote in favor of them, think that it should be

treated like the word of God, like the

resolution should be the same as

a. A law. Well, they passed a resolution, so we

shouldn't do that or we should do this. And that's just not the way it works.

The resolution is just a position statement. It's how this

organization feels on something, and you

can take it or you can leave it. The legislature passes

resolutions all the time, and most of them

really don't do anything. Occasionally, they'll put stuff on the

ballot, but for the most part, they don't really do anything.

It's just a statement of how they're feeling, vibes,

if you will. So this resolution eliminated all

DEI from public education in the state

because it was aligned with communist Russia,

which is not true. And you gotta love the fact that the people

who are in charge of our public education

can't be bothered to Google something. I

suspect that if you asked them to define dei,

they wouldn't be able to tell you what it is. The draft of the

resolution said that DEI came from Soviet

Russia as part of a communist effort. To

achieve equality. But that's just not true.

And at the end of the day, the state Board of Education wasted a

bunch of time debating this. The other thing that they

did this week, the board also rejected

a proposal to send a letter

to President Donald Trump, patting him on the back,

saying attaboy for dismantling the US

Department of Education. That proposal was also

shot down on a 10 to 4 vote. There was one

line in the letter that said, we intend to

pursue a revenue plan free of

federal funding and ask that you join us in championing these

endeavors within our state and beyond.

That is a dream of some hardcore conservatives in Utah to just

completely disconnect the state from any sort of

federal funding. And they take great pride

in the fact that Utah is one of the few Republican

states that actually gives more to the federal

government than it takes in in federal funds.

And there are benefits to that. You're not at the

whims of the federal government. But. But a lot of board

members in this discussion were worried that the

state would never replace the federal funding for

education if that were to happen. Utah gets about 11%

of its budget for education from the federal government.

Most of that goes towards special education and

for student meals. At the end of the day, they voted that

proposal down as well and wasted more time on

the proposal. Your government in action, folks.

There was a report that came out this week about

some of the activities of Representative

Celeste Malloy before she was elected to Congress

that raised some eyebrows and some of this we knew before,

but it's still very interesting to put

it all into context. As you know,

Malloy rocketed out of nowhere in

2023. She was a staffer for

Representative Chris Stewart and came out of

nowhere after he announced his surprise

retirement. She was able to win special

election to replace him and then was elected to a full term

last year. Before she was in Congress, Malloy was an

attorney in Washington County. She worked on public

lands issues, and she was also on

the board of directors for a group called the foundation

for Integrated resource management, or

firm. And she joined in

2018. In the two years prior to that,

2016 and 2017, the Utah

legislature gave firm

$400,000 and the money was to fund

lawsuits challenging federal control of

public lands. FIRM never filed a

lawsuit. We don't know what happened with that

money. There was actually an ethics

complaint filed by the Campaign for Accountability

with the Internal Revenue Service and the Utah Division of

Consumer Protection that really went nowhere. But

it's $400,000 that just vanished.

And Malloy Was on the board of directors for this

group. Malloy joined the board of directors for firm in

2018. Those were the years after the legislature gave

them money. So she wasn't there when they got the money,

but she was there when they failed to

file lawsuits with it. But also in

2018, she helped firm start

another organization called the rural policy

and public lands Institute, or rppl.

And that organization was part of

then Dixie state University, which is now Utah

Tech University, and that's where it was going to be housed.

And she lobbied the Utah legislature in

2019 for $300,000

to help fund this organization. They were

supposed to conduct research related to public

lands. According to some business records filed with the

state of Utah that I dug up, Malloy was one of the founders

when they started in 2018 and

2019. Updated business filings show that

she became the president of the organization. Now,

in 2019, Malloy successfully

lobbied Utah lawmakers to give this organization

3. And that money was supposed to,

quote, conduct high quality research on

issues relevant to rural policy and public

lands research, and was also supposed to

train the next generation of rural policy experts

through an active program of student development and

training. There's really not a lot of evidence of

what RPPL did with that money either.

After getting that $300,000, it took some

digging, but I discovered that in

2019, RPPL helped

a coalition of local governments, mostly in

Colorado, secure a $200,000

matching federal grant that was used

to diversify the coal industry in

northwestern Colorado and eastern

Utah. And that grant led to the

publication of something called the coal innovation

playbook, which came out in

2022. You can't really find that

document anywhere online anymore, but. But

archived copies are available on the

wayback machine online. And so we

don't really know what happened with that money. I

mean, if you break it down,

firm, this organization that she joined in

2018, they got

$400,000 from the Utah

legislature to file lawsuits against the

federal government. They never did a d*** thing or

gave back any of the money. Malloy joined them in

2018. Then they helped

her, a separate organization in 2019

to do research. I'm assuming it's for the

parent organization, firm. The legislature

gave her new entity $300,000, and the

only result is a matching grant for

$200,000. And then

that new organization, RPPL, it was dissolved when

she decided to run for office. What happened to that money?

We don't know. Just like we don't know what happened with the $400,000

that lawmakers gave the parent organization

Firmed Malloy. Ever since she's been in office,

there's been like a history of weird stuff about

her background or in the way that she's

operated. When she ran for office, her

registration as a member of the Republican Party in

Utah was inactive because she did not live here.

Her address was in Virginia because she was working in

Congress. She only reactivated her voter

registration as a Republican after the

lieutenant governor's office warned her. And that was after

filing was closed. There were lawsuits about this.

Nothing ever came of it. But that was one of the first strange

things. And she's also the first cousin of

Ammon Bundy, you know, the guy who helped take

over the wildlife refuge in Oregon, and

his father had a standoff with federal

agents at his ranch in Nevada.

Her mother is sisters with Cliven Bundy's

second wife. So Ammon Bundy is her cousin. That's a

fact that she really didn't publicize until I was

one of the reporters who helped to first report

that. And then there's this story where she was part of an organization

that took $400,000 from the legislature and

apparently didn't do a d*** thing with it and then

formed a second organization, got $300,000 from the

legislature. And we don't know what happened with that money

either. Guess we gotta do some digging to find out.

On Monday, Health and Human Services Secretary

RFK Jr will be in Utah

to praise the state for adopting a

SL bills that are part of his Make America healthy again

or MAHA movement. If you'll remember, the legislature

passed HB 81, which banned

fluoride in public drinking water systems.

They also passed

HB402. Public schools can no longer

serve food with certain food dyes in them and other

additives. And HB403,

which restricts Utahns from using SNAP

benefits to purchase candy and

soda. And those initiatives are all part of

Kennedy's Make America Healthy Again movement. We'll also have

Lee Zeldin, administrator of the U.S. environmental Protection

Agency, as part of this press conference. We all

know about the fluoride issue I talked about in last week's podcast about

how most Utahns are opposed to removing

fluoride from the drinking water. But the other two bills

that they're going to highlight came from

Representative Christian Chevrier. And if you don't

know who she is, you probably should. Chevrea

is an anti vaccine activist. She

started gaining some prominence during the COVID

pandemic. She had an organization called Vaccine

Free Utah. That really was sort of a fringe group

until the COVID pandemic hit in Utah. And

then her public profile started to

grow significantly, as you can

imagine. And a lot of her beliefs are founded in

conspiracy theories, anti vaccine conspiracy theories.

So of course she's going to align a lot

with what Kennedy is doing now. These bills to

remove certain food dyes in them from public school

food and restricting Utahs from using

SNAP to purchase candy and soda, those are probably good

ideas and they're probably some of the more

normal things that she has advocated for

in the past. But she is solidly

on the far right of Utah's political

spectrum. How did she get in office? Well, she

won a special election to replace

Representative Brady Brammer, who won a special

election to replace Senator Mike Kennedy in

the Senate. And so she only had to convince a

handful of delegates in Utah county to elect

her to that seat. And she's going to hold it for at least two years and

then she'll be the incumbent when the 2026 elections

roll around. And she is a product of the

Republican caucus and convention system in

which only Republican delegates choose the

replacements for lawmakers who resign

their seats in the middle of the term. And I

wrote about this earlier, but if you look at what happened with Brady

Brammer's seat where he is now in the Senate replacing

Mike Kennedy In 2024, Brammer was reelected

to his seat in HD54. He

resign after he won the election to replace Kennedy. And

that's how Chevalier won his seat. But let's

look at that Senate seat that Brammer assumed

from Kennedy. Brammer needed 171

votes, that's it. To win that seat. And

he was the sixth straight lawmaker

to be initially appointed to that

seat rather than an open election. The last

time that that particular seat in the Senate, now

there's been redistricting, but that particular seat in

the Senate the last time time it was part

of an open election where there was a vacancy during

a regular election was more than 40

years ago. So Brammer was appointed to

replace Kennedy. Kennedy in

2021 was appointed to that seat to

replace Dan Hemmert. Hemmert

was appointed to that seat in

2019 when Al

Jackson resigned because he took a job in another

state. State. Al Jackson was appointed to

that seat in 2014 after

former Senator John Valentine

was picked to chair the Utah State

Tax Commission. John Valentine was a

member of the Utah House of Representatives

when he was appointed to replace Craig Peterson

in 1998. Peterson was

appointed to that seat in the Utah Senate in

1988 to replace

Republican Paul Rogers. And

Rogers was the last Republican elected to

that particular seat in an open election.

Every other time, the vacancy was filled by a

special election and decided by delegates. And

that's why Republican delegates are fighting so hard to

save the caucus convention system, because they have a

lot of power over who fills those seats

in a vacancy.

This is an interesting story. I don't know how much impact it's going to

have on Utah's political landscape, but we found out this

week that the United Utah Party, which has been around since

2017, and the Utah Forward Party, which

fielded candidates for the first time in the 2024

election, they're going to be merging or they've. They've got a

proposal to merge on the table. If you look

at the voter registration numbers, United Utah Party has

about 2200 people and the Utah Forward

Party has 200 members. The Utah Forward

Party is part of the National Forward, which was founded by

Andrew Yang in 2022. And they made a little bit

of news earlier this year when State Senator

Daniel Thatcher, on the final day of the 2025

session, renounced his membership in the

Republican Party and became a member of the Forward Party.

So he's the first elected official of the Forward Party in the state

of Utah. So if the merger goes through, you'll have about

2,400 members in this party, and that will

mean the Green Party will now be the smallest party in the

state. They've got about 600 people. As I said, the United Utah

Party's been around since their first

candidate was Jim Bennett, the son of former U.S.

senator Bob Bennett. He ran as the party's

nominee in the special election to replace Jason

Chaffetz. They've had very limited

success since 2017.

In 2020, Bryan Fabby ran for state

auditor and he finished in second place behind

John Dougal. But there was no Democrat in the

race. He. He got 13% of the vote,

which was 62 points behind Dougal.

Last year, Michelle Quist ran for Attorney

General as the UUP nominee. She finished in third

place and got just over 7% of the vote. It remains

to be seen how much of an appetite there really is for a

third party. Utah is Republican

dominated. If you look at those voter registration numbers,

Republicans, the biggest political party in Utah,

followed by unaffiliated voters, and then the

Democrats. And Even if the two

parties merge, their 2,400 members are going

to equal about

1/1 all the registered

voters in the state. Realistically, it's going to be

very hard for this new merged party to gain any

sort of traction. That's just the way it works. It's

really hard to get voters to abandon the two

party system because they haven't won

anything. That's your switched parties. He had already

won an election and he's not running for reelection when his

term is up next year. So the reality of the situation

is it's going to be really difficult for them to

get any sort of traction. Maybe they'll get a boost from their

convention. Former New Jersey Governor Christine

Todd Whitman, who is the co founder of

the Forward Party, she's scheduled to be the keynote speaker at that.

Maybe they'll get a little bit of a boost, but they've still got a

huge hill to climb if they want to become

relevant. They're behind a bunch of other parties, the

Constitution Party, the Independent American Party, the

Libertarians. They wish they were the Libertarian

Party in Utah right now and they're not close. We'll see

what happens. But the cynical in me says don't hold, hold your breath.

I'm sure there's a lot more that we could talk about, but we're gonna leave it

there for this week. Before we go, I'd like to remind

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