Special Session with Bryan Schott

>> Bryan Schott: This is special session. I'm your host Bryan Schott. It's

been a particularly bad couple of weeks for the Utah

Legislature. The referendum to overturn Utah's

anti union bill blew past the signature goal

to get on the ballot. A judge ruled the state's

private school voucher program is

unconstitutional and legislative leaders

couldn't muster the support to override any of

Governor Cox's vetoes from this past session.

Essentially, lawmakers have more Ls than the

planet Krypton. We're going to talk about all

of that in this week's show. Stay tuned.

Plus, I'll have a conversation with former New Jersey

Governor Christine Todd Whitman. She's the co

founder of the Forward Party in Utah. The United

Utah Party and the Forward Parties

merged last weekend. She was in town to speak

at the new organization's convention. In that conversation

we talk about the structure of the new party. It's not like

traditional political parties. It's not top

down. I'll explain what that means later in the show

and we'll talk about how that works.

Plus, how can this new party get their message to break through

to voters in a traditional two party

system with a media system,

a media ecosystem that is

designed to ignore third parties?

That'll be part of our conversation as well. That's all coming up in a

bit. But first let's dig into the news from the past

week.

Earlier this week, the referendum that seeking to

overturn Utah's anti Union Bill

HB267 blew

past the signature goal that it needed to get

on the ballot. HB267 is the bill

that was rammed through by Republican lawmakers this

session and signed into law by Governor Spencer

Cox that takes away the collective bargaining

rights of public employees in the state.

After that happened, a coalition of union groups called Protect

Utah Workers, they came together and

organized a petition drive to try and put this on

the ballot for a referendum. It's really tough to get a

referendum on the ballot. You need to get

signatures statewide that are equal

to 8% of all the active voters in

the state. That's right now, about 140,000

signatures. A little bit more than that, that. But you also need to hit

that 8% signature goal. In

15 of the state's 29

Senate districts, referendum organizers

turned in more than

320,000 signatures before the

deadline, which was an impressive amount that

really got a lot of people's attention. So unless a ton of

signatures got thrown out, they were probably going to meet

those signature goals. But not only did they meet them,

but they crushed them. As of

Friday morning, they had hit the goal

in 20 Senate districts, not

the 15, but in 20 of them, and had over

220,000 signatures

certified. And they did reach the signature goal in a couple

of Senate districts that are kind of eyebrow raising.

They met the goal in the district of Senate

President Stuart Adams. They met the goal In

Senate District 19, which is the home

to Senate Majority Leader Kirk

Cullimore. He was the senate sponsor of

HB267. So that's a symbolic

victory. And on Friday, they also reached the

signature goal in Senate District 22, which

is represented by Senator Heidi Baldery. And

the reason that's significant is Baldery was an employee of the

Utah branch of Americans for Prosperity.

And Americans for Prosperity was one of those groups that was

really pushing for this bill, and they were trying

to organize an effort to get people to

remove their signatures from the petitions

in order to keep it off the ballot. That's part of this whole

process. Once you sign the petition, your name is posted

online, and then you have 30 days from

that point to remove your name from the

petition. And there was going to be

an effort to try to convince people to take their names off

of the petitions in order to keep it off the ballot, but

there were so many signatures submitted

and they've surpassed the goals in

so many districts that that effort isn't

going to happen now. It just doesn't work, and it would

cost way too much money, and it probably wouldn't

be successful. Back in

2018, there a

ballot initiative, the Count My Vote ballot initiative,

which would have gotten rid of Utah's caucus

convention system for nominating candidates and

gone to a straight direct primary.

They secured enough signatures to

qualify for the ballot. But there was

another group, Keep My Voice, which

was named that way to confuse

people. They tried to do a ballot initiative to do

the opposite of what Count My Vote did, but they didn't even

get in close to the number of signatures that they needed.

So they abandoned that effort. And then they just

decided they were going to try to convince people to take their

names off of the Count My Vote petitions.

And they were able to get about 100

people in two Senate districts

to remove their signatures, and that was

enough to keep that ballot initiative off of

the ballot. And opponents thought that they might be able to do the

same thing here, but there were just so many signatures

submitted that that wasn't going to work. And

in fact, as of Friday morning, they're within striking

dist of a few more districts. I would expect

them to finish with maybe enough

signatures to meet that 8% goal

in 21, 22, maybe

23 of the state's 29

districts. Make no mistake, this is a massive rebuke

to Republicans in the legislature. They

were hailed by conservative

groups across the nation, alec, the American Legislative

Exchange Council. They praised

Representative Jordan Tusher who was the main sponsor of the bill

and Senator Kirk Cullimore who was the Senate sponsor.

They praised them once the bill passed. And

this is something that's sort of near and dear to the

heart of Senate President Stuart Adams. A couple of

years ago he was named as part of a group called

the Workers for Opportunity Advisory

Board that's part of the Mackinac center out of

Michigan. Now the Mackinac center, they're officially

nonpartisan, but this is a think tank that

advocates for school choice, lower

taxes, right to work laws.

So what does that sound to you? It's a conservative

right wing organization and this is an issue that

they would be on the side of limiting

union rights in the state. So this is

something that aligns with Senate President

Stuart Adams belief system. He's also

on the board of Alex. So when these

unions were able to organize and get enough

signatures to put this issue on the ballot as a referendum, put the

law on hold and put it up to the

voters, that's a big pushback,

a big rebuke Duke to the Republicans in the

legislature Also, this bill was

a huge priority for a couple

of conservative and right wing groups in the state. I

already mentioned Americans for Prosperity. I'm told that they

were going to pour a bunch of money into the

state as part of the effort to get people to remove their

signatures from the petitions. This is an issue that they

supported, but it was also a massive priority of

the right wing Utah Parents United.

I've reported on this multiple times, but they

talked about this bill before the session

started. They really wanted to punish the

Utah Education association for any number

of things. They didn't like the fact that they pushed

back against Amendment A. They didn't like the fact that

they sued to block the

vouchers program. And we'll get to that in a second.

Utah Parents United really was pushing this piece of

legislation to punish the uea.

Utah Parents United, they had an effort called

decline to sign. They were trying to get people not to

sign the petitions.

Didn't work big time. So this

really is a black eye for the

Republicans in the legislature, Utah Parents

United and other conservative groups that

would be pushing for this

initiative. It's not official yet. Next week is

the deadline for clerks to finish

verifying signatures and then the lieutenant

governor has until June sometime to decide

whether or not it it was sufficient to make the

ballot. It's going to make the ballot. So the law will go

on hold and then it'll be on

hold until the 2026 election when voters have a chance to weigh

in on it. Governor Spencer Cox could call a special

election this November because he has to issue

a proclamation saying that this is going to be on the

ballot. He could call a special election this

November, but that would require the legislature to

pay for a statewide election because we only have municipal

elections this year, not a statewide election. And I'm

not sure if that's what he is going to do or

not. But the law will go on hold until voters have a chance

to weigh in on it and then expect big money

to pour into the state on both sides of the

issue. I reported that unions, not only here in the

state but nationwide, spent money and

resources, millions of dollars in the signature

effort to put this on the ballot. They're not going to abandon this once

it goes on the ballot. They're going to pay for advertising,

they're going to pay for electioneering. And you're going to

see groups like Americans for

Prosperity and any other group that pops

up opposed to this trying to convince people to

vote the other way. So this is going to be a very

hot issue, at least until this

year and probably 2026 when it actually

goes on the ballot. Now, the only reason

that this is possible, and remember

this, is because the legislature didn't get

2/3 in both houses. They didn't get a

2/3 vote. If they had gotten 2/3, if they had

gotten 50 in the House and 20 people

voting for it in the Senate, then a

referendum would not have been possible. This is only possible because

there were enough legislators who had some hesitations about the

issue to vote against it that

they weren't able to reach that critical 2/3

threshold.

Unless you've been living under a rock. You know that a judge found the

Utah Fits all scholarship, our private school

vouchers program, unconstitutional.

That program, Utah Fits all, allowed parents

to take money that was supposed to go to public

education, up to $8,000 a year per

child and use it for private school

tuition, homeschooling expenses or other

educational expenses as they seem fit. There was

very little oversight from the state. A

judge found that unconstitutional. And

the amount of COPE and

rewriting history among legislative

Republicans is something to watch

right now. What the Judge ruled is that

the program Utah Fits all, which was

passed by the legislature in

2023, violated Article 10

and Article 13 of the Utah

Constitution. Article 10 says that

the state shall provide a public

education system that is free and open to

every student and free from

sectarian control, meaning that it's free from the

control of religious organization. Also,

it says that the state board of education is

responsible for overseeing education in

the state. And the judge ruled that

the vouchers program is

funding an education system

that is not open to everyone and

it's not free, and it's also not

free from sectarian control because

of religious schools. This ruling, and if you have

a chance to read it, you really should, but this

ruling says that these private schools,

they have an application process. They can

reject anyone. So that's not open

to everyone. There's no

requirement that these private schools have

to accept the entire

$8,000 in this quote, unquote,

scholarship as full tuition pay. So

that's not free. They might have to pay more for

that. There's nothing stopping these private schools from

raising tuitions in order to get

that state money and then continue to charge

money on top of that. So that, according to the judge, is

certainly not free. The system

is not overseen by the state board

of Education. It was administered by an independent

entity with, as I said, very little oversight as to where that

money is going. Now,

during this trial, the legislature tried to get

cute with their defense. They

argue that this, this program, these

vouchers, they're not part of the education system

because it's not overseen by the board of education.

So it's not in violation of Article

10. And the judge didn't buy that.

The judge said, no, this is an education

program, and the legislature

cannot create an education

program that is outside of

the public education program. They don't have the authority

to do that, and that's why it's unconstitutional.

That's it in a nutshell. There was a lot more nuance to it.

The second part of it, the judge not only ruled that

it was a violation of Article 10 of the

Constitution, but the judge also ruled that it was

a violation of Article 13. And Article

13, we've talked about it a lot before on this podcast,

what that says that any

income taxes collected by the state, corporate income

taxes, and individual income taxes, they can only be

used to pay for specific things,

and those are public education and

higher education, which is colleges and universities.

In 2020, voters passed what was called

Amendment G and that

expanded this constitutional revenue

earmark a little Bit. It said that

this income tax revenue could also be used

to support children and to support individuals

with a disability. And the judge says this

violates that

constitutional article. It violates Article

13 because they are taking money that's

supposed to go to public education, and they are giving it to private

education, which you cannot do, or homeschooling, which you cannot

do. The legislature, in their defense, they tried

to split hairs with the language because they

looked at amendment garments and they zeroed

in on the words to support children. They

argued that this program, Utah,

fits all the vouchers program. It

supports children. So we can spend this

money to support children. We can spend this money on

these vouchers because we are supporting children.

The judge went back and looked at all of the debates

surrounding Amendment G when lawmakers

were putting it on the ballot during the 2020

session. Because the legislature is the only

entity that can propose an amendment, the Constitution.

So they were responsible for putting this

on the ballot. And she

looked at all of the bait, listened to the debate, read the

transcripts, and she said that when they

passed this resolution to put Amendment G on the

ballot, there was absolutely

no discussion of anything about school

choice or vouchers or

education. The entire debate,

the entire pitch from the sponsors, from

everybody who was pushing for this, their entire

higher justification was

providing services to children

who have disabilities. And so what the

legislature was trying to do is trying to retcon

this language to support

children into their justification on saying that

we can spend this

money, even though the judge ruled that this is

unconstitutional. And again, you should really read

that ruling if you have a chance, because it's

pretty solid, her explanation and her

reasoning. But even though the judge found the program

unconstitutional, they had a meeting this week, and they

said that they were going to keep the program in place

until the Utah Supreme Court has a chance

to weigh in on it. And. And that actually

makes some sense because there are

families who are using this money right now, and they didn't

want to pull the rug out from underneath them. And the

application process for next year is already underway.

Families are making plans on what they're going to

do, and so they didn't want to interrupt that process

either. So this is going to remain in place until

the Supreme Court has a chance to weigh in.

And that could be a while, the Supreme Court

in particular. But the justice system overall is

not the swiftest of

processes. If you look at what happened with the

gerrymandering case, that case was

given to the Utah supreme court in

late 2022. They finally held arguments in

July of 2023. That was more than six

months later. And then it took a full year for

their to come down last summer. So

I would not expect a swift decision from

the Utah Supreme Court. It actually hasn't even been

appealed yet to the Utah Supreme Court as we record

this now, as you might

imagine, Republicans in the legislature

did not take the news well.

Right after the ruling came out, there were a number of lawmakers who claimed that the

Utah Constitution said that it's parents who are

primarily responsible for the education of their children.

So how dare the courts take away

the rights of parents to choose how to educate their

children. The problem with that is

that does not say that anywhere in the

Constitution that phrases in Utah

code. It's also in the Republican Party

platform, but it's not in the Constitution. So a

lot of people, they had to get off that particular soapbox when some

people said to them, hey, you know what, maybe you

should read the Constitution, especially

if you're a sitting lawmaker. So

now a lot of the criticism that's coming down is that this is

judicial activism. This is a judge who's acting out

of politics rather than out of a

good legal decision. I want to play this clip

from Senator Kirk Cullimore. He was the Senate

sponsor of this program. He's been one of the big

proponents of it. He was appearing on the House of

Representatives official podcast with

Representative Candace Perucci, who was

the main sponsor of the vouchers program bill

when it was first making its way through the process process

in 2023. And they've worked on this together in

the, in, in subsequent years.

So this may not be the most

objective source of information on

this topic. But listen to this clip where

Cullimore expresses his

displeasure for the judges

ruling. What the judge ruled is that the Utah

Fits all program was unconstitutional. But let's be

clear. This, this seems like

judicial activism. This seems like she had the end in mind

and found a way to get there. And, and the reason

being is she, she declared it unconstitutional. And then,

and then for her to make these decisions

and not deem them to be political decisions. We had

two thirds of the legislature that approved this program. We had

the governor sign off on this program. This program

has been law for almost two years now and implemented for

more than a year with 10,000 kids benefiting from it

right now. For one judge

to undo all of that is just

political. It's just judicial activism at

its, at its best. And it's, it's just not right

that she should be able to do that. They go on to once again highlight

the to support children argument that they

made about Article 13. And they

spend a bunch of time in the interview talking about that

argument that Amendment G allows them to spend

money to support children. Just

rehashing the arguments rejected by the judge

and saying that they hope that the Supreme Court

will see their way when the appeal makes it

there. And then Perrucci says something really

interesting. Now, one of the things that happened when they first

passed this bill is lawmakers added

in a pay boost, a salary

increase for teachers. If this

passed initially, when they brought this up, it was

portrayed as, you know, this great thing they were doing for teachers.

Plus, we want to take millions of dollars that are

supposed to go to public education and put it

towards private education and homeschooling, but we're giving this money

to the teachers. It was portrayed as a

sweetener, as an incentive to get

the teachers on board. But in reality,

what it was was a poison pill. Because if the

bill failed, then there would be no

raises for the teachers. There would be no salary

increase for the teachers. So it was

all or nothing. And even in the original

legislation. And teachers would not have gotten the

full amount of the raise,

the full amount of the salary increase unless this

program was funded at the full amount they were

requesting. If it was funded at a lower amount, then

teachers would only get half of the salary increase.

So this was a poison pill. But

Perucci portrayed it a little

differently. I think one thing that we haven't talked about a

lot as part of this amazing

bill was it was a grand compromise, right? And it was us

focusing on teachers and students, driving it right down to

the core of education. And so part of this was we gave a

$6,000 compensation increase

to teachers across the state, one of the biggest pay

raises in Utah's history. And the

union lawsuit of this, and

this decision actually puts that in jeopardy because the two are

interconnected. You have to have the program in effect for that

compromise to stand, which means the union not

only went after a program that benefits families and

children, but also a teacher pay raise, which

seems a little bit crazy to me. It wasn't a grand

compromise. It was a poison pill,

a carrot and a stick. Vote for this, or the teachers

don't get a salary increase. The Utah Education

association opposed this measure

when it first came up. They were saying, yeah, we'd love to see our

teachers get a salary bump, but

not at the expense of taking money out of public schools.

Millions of dollars at this point, hundreds of millions of dollars a

year out of public education. And that's

what this is doing. Lawmakers get really,

really prickly when you talk

about how underfunded Utah

schools are. And if you look at how much the state

spends per student, we are always at

or near the bottom of all

50 states. In Washington, D.C. we are always in the

bottom three, most years in the bottom. And they get

really prickly when you talk about that because they like

to show how committed they are to education and how much

money into education over the past few years.

A lot of the money that they put into education

is required by Utah law.

Every year the legislature is

required, it's mandated that

they increase funding to cover

inflation and any increase

in the school population. This year that was

$178 million.

That was the biggest chunk of money they put

towards public education. And it was what they had

to do. They had no choice in how much

that is. And that's going to go up next year because

this inflation is calculated on a five

year rolling basis. And as

lawmakers have been

unhesitant, I don't know if that's a word, but

unhesitant to point out, there's been a lot of inflation over

the past few years. So that inflation

figure is going to go up and there's going to be more money

going into public schools. But they have to do that. So

even before the legislature started last year, in

December, they increase, they voted to

increase the WPU by 4% or

$178 million, which was mandatory.

They'll have to do that again this December.

But if you look at what they actually spent this

year, a lot of the big

money was for their pet projects. Speaker Mike

Schultz had his career and technical education.

That's $65 million that they put in

there. They spent another $40 million on

vouchers. They gave teachers another

$1,000

salary boost and that cost $50

million. That's money that could have

boosted the WPU, which is

the amount they spend per student, by another

1% or so. And that would have been a discretionary

increase. What they did this year was mostly

mandatory. So when you hear them talk about their commitment to

education, a lot of that is stuff that they

have to do in the first place.

Now, this vouchers issue is

not over yet. Lawmakers are. They've said that they're

exploring what they call a legislative fix, which they can

do. The easiest thing that they could do is fund

the program out of the general fund. It

would probably still have to be

overseen by the state school board. And

that's one of the reasons why they changed the

structure of the program this year. If you remember,

they passed a bill that brought

this program under the umbrella

of the State Board of Education. It wasn't

before there was a private company that was administering

these vouchers, and they're no longer in charge

of it. They're now looking for another

company or someone to manage this

program under the umbrella of the State Board of

Education. They're still extremely autonomous,

but they're at least under that umbrella. And.

And when you look at this ruling, you

can see that lawmakers are trying to fix

something that they realized was a

problem. They realized it was a problem because the Constitution

says this public education system has to be

overseen by the State Board of Education. So by bringing

this program in under the umbrella of the State Board of

Education, they're trying to fix that problem or

at least fix part of the problem. I don't know

how they get around the free and open to everyone,

because this is an educational program, but at

least, you know, the easiest thing that they could do, as I said, is funded out of

the general fund, not the income tax fund,

which used to be called the education fund, but not funded out of

the general fund to get least get around that

constitutional issue.

No veto override session this year, Governor

Speaker Spencer Cox vetoed six bills from the

2025 session. And this week,

lawmakers announced, legislative leaders announced that they

were not going to be calling for a veto override

session. Even though there were six vetoes, there were really

only three that were being

seriously discussed for a veto override. There was

HB306 that would allow the state

to pay vendors in

gold rather than in cash. If they

wanted that bill passed with both

houses with enough votes to override

a veto. And when they pulled their members,

I'm told that the House had enough

support for a veto override. But

the Senate was trying to get the House to

add two other bills, get enough support

to override the veto on two Senate

bills that they wanted added to that agenda.

That would be SB 37. That was the one that

would divert property tax money collected by local school

districts districts and take that money. Instead of

going directly to the local school districts, they would have to send it to

the state where it would go into the general fund, and

then the state would send that same amount of money

back to the schools from the income tax

fund. So essentially it was money laundering. That's

what critics said it was. And it

was. They were Taking money that was supposed to go to

schools and putting it in the general fund.

And then they were paying out of the income tax fund.

And. And this would have boosted the amount of

money available in the general fund, which

funds everything else in the budget. And Governor Cox

vetoed it because he said that it set

a bad precedent and also called into question the

commitment to funding education. Now this bill

did pass the Senate. It had the 2/3

support in the Senate, but they were 9

short in the House and they weren't able to get nine

people to flip their votes. And that's why it didn't get

asked Senate Bill 296. That

bill changed the way that the Chief justice

of the Utah Supreme Court is selected. Currently the

five justices on the court, they vote among themselves and pick one of

them to be the chief justice. And what

this would have done has made it so that the

governor would nominate the Chief justice

of the Utah Supreme Court and then it would be can

that person would be confirmed by the Utah State

Senate. Governor Cox vetoed the bill. He said it caused

politics to intrude into judicial matters and there

wasn't enough support really in either house to get this.

Three senators would have had to change their votes. And

if they were trying to get the house to add this on, you know, they probably

would have gotten there. But there were 10 representatives who would have

had to change their votes in order to get this added to the

call. So that didn't happen. So they

couldn't come to an agreement. That's what I'm told. From, from legislative

sources, those negotiations were unable to

reach conclusion. They couldn't come to an agreement. So there

will be no veto override session. Now back

to HB306 for a second. This

was sponsored by Representative Ken

Ivory. And this bill, it

had a lot of problems, a lot of problems

with it. And it shows

how these ideas and this was a very fringy idea.

When you dig into, into it, it shows how some of these fringe

ideas can slip through the

cracks. Because everyone up at the legislature

is so busy. It's a 45 day session

they're getting. There's just an onslaught of issues and

legislation coming their way and they don't have time to dig into these

issues. But I did. And the genesis of this bill

and the people pushing for it, it raises a lot of questions

really. Eyebrow raising. So the

bill had a fiscal note. It would cost about

$177,000. And

that's because the state would have to hire a vendor to create

A system to allow the state

to pay vendors in gold, because they don't

have that right now and would have to integrate with the rest of the

state's payment system. So legislative leaders were

not going to fund that in the final budget. They weren't going to pay

for it. And that's when a private person, a

private entity, Kevin Freeman, he's a. He's a

YouTube host, I guess, and an author. He

offered to put the money up. Kevin Freeman wrote a book

called Pirate Money. And I read it

and. Oh, boy.

Wow. This book

argues that governments should change

to precious metals as a

payment system, as a currency system, instead of

the currency system we have now.

Basically, it's an offshoot of the going back

to the gold standards theory. But the reason

why is something else.

The book centers around this

thing called the Great Reset. And if you don't know what the Great

Reset is, it is a conspiracy

theory that a shadowy

cabal of global

elites are going to

manufacture crisis, an economic

crisis, crash the global economy in

order to establish

a totalitarian government. This

started during the COVID pandemic, when

the world's economy, because of the economic

troubles, the economic difficulties,

because of the COVID pandemic, the World Economic

Forum had a program called

the Great Reset. And what they were doing is they were trying to figure

out ways to help the global economy

recover from the pandemic. But

conspiracy theorists grabbed onto that

and saw it as an insidious plot

to enslave humanity.

Get rid of personal possessions and home

ownership and cars and force, vaccine,

whatever you wanted. They could map whatever conspiracy theory

they wanted onto this in service of this

totalitarian government. And Freeman,

in his book, argues

that this. That's the reason why we need to

start paying for things in precious metals, gold and

silver, because these global elites, led by

Klaus Schwab, who's the head of the World Economic

Forum, they're planning to

enslave humanity. He talks about this

specifically in the book. I read the book. I don't think

many lawmakers read the book outside of Ken Ivory

and whoever else. That's problem number

one with this bill. Problem number two with this bill

bill is that the state

would have to establish a payment

program that Freeman was going to fund a payment

program so the state could pay with precious

metals. In his book,

he mentions a

payment app, a payment processing

platform called Glintpay Gold

Glint. Glintpay. He uses it. He

mentions it at least 15 times

in his book. Glintpay

was one of two companies that pitched

their precious metal currency

platform to Utah's precious metals

work group last year, Freeman was

a member of that work group, and he helped

them write their final report that said the

state should adopt a gold payment

platform. So it's kind of

presents a little bit of a conflict of interest when

the person who's offering to fund this thing for the

state has already endorsed one of the

companies that would probably be

bidding to get the contract for this platform.

Now, Representative Ivory, he said, well, he's just doing this

out of the goodness of his heart. He's doing this because he wants to see it done.

He doesn't have a conflict of interest. He doesn't know he doesn't

own a payment platform. We don't know that. We don't

know what his connections are to Glint. He uses it,

he endorses it, he advocates for it in

this book. So. So

that just seems like a little bit of a conflict

of interest. But I know this stuff because I

read the book, I read Freeman's

book. I've dug into it. I took some time, and it

wasn't an insignificant amount of

time. I know for a fact that a lot of

lawmakers, they don't know these

connections. They didn't read the book, they

didn't look into it. They don't dig into these

issues like this, and they are trusting their

fellow lawmakers or lobbyists or

whoever to be honest with them and

explain the need for this sort of thing. If you ask

Representative Ivory, he's not going to say, oh, yeah, it's this

conspiracy. He's not going to call it a conspiracy theory, but

that's what it is. It is a conspiracy theory

that we need to get rid of cash because the

economy is going to collapse because we're going to

all be enslaved. This bill did pass the House of

Representatives the first time. It went through unanimously.

A bunch of Democrats even voted for it. It only

got 58 votes when it came back after the Senate made some

changes to it. I've talked to people who said it's likely

that lawmakers really didn't understand what they were voting for the first

time around. They spend precious little time even talking

about these bills on the floor. And

unless you're in the committee that digs into

this, then you know you're really not going to be up

on what the issues are. And even then, committee time can

be extremely limited. So this bill is a perfect

example of how these fringe ideas

get adopted by governments, because,

frankly, people aren't paying attention. Freeman has pushed

for this in other states, and one state,

I believe it was. Louisiana voted

against adopting a gold payment

system because they didn't know enough about

it. And the lawmakers there who were pushing for

it said they read his book. Book. Unless you're going to

have every lawmaker sit down and read his book as

background information on this bill, they're not going to

know what's going on. So this is just a perfect

example of how this kind of idea

can slip through the cracks and get adopted by a state if people really

aren't paying attention to what's going on, or if people really don't

understand the backstory.

A couple of congressional stories that are worthy of your

attention this week. On Wednesday,

Utah Senators Mike Lee and John Curtis

joined most of the rest of the Republicans in the Senate

and they voted against a bipartisan proposal

that would have reversed the tariffs that President Donald

Trump has imposed on nearly every

country. The measure did end in a 49 to 49

tie, which meant that it failed. There were three Republicans

who voted in favor of the measure, Rand

Paul, Susan Collins, and Lisa Murkowski.

And that's interesting because Mike Lee and Rand Paul

used to be aligned on almost every issue.

This is a rare break between the two of them,

but those three cross party lines to vote with Democrats.

Later in the evening, both Lee and Curtis voted to table

a motion from the Democrats that would have allowed

them to bring this issue back up for another

vote next week. And that

caused Vice President J.D. vance to

go to the Capitol and cast the tie breaking vote to keep it

from coming back up because that also ended in a 49 to

49 tie. So Lee and Curtis.

That kind of sounds like a steak sauce. Lee and Curtis

put it on your steak for bountiful

flavor. Anyway, Lee and Curtis

voted essentially to keep the

tariffs that Donald Trump has imposed in place.

Now, if this even, even if this measure had

passed the Senate and it only needed a simple majority,

it probably would have gone nowhere in the House. But it was a

symbolic, symbolic measure or a

symbolic effort to express some disapproval

for President Donald Trump's tariffs, which

are going to have a major impact on Utah's

economy. A report from the Kim C. Gardner

Policy Institute last year said that in

2023, Utah imported

$18.6 billion

in goods from 151 countries,

10.9 billion of that, almost 60%, came from

just four countries, the United Kingdom, Canada,

Mexico and China. And Utah

exported $17.4 billion

to countries around the globe. And

11.4

billion of that went to those same four trading

partners, Canada, Mexico, United Kingdom

and China. So this is going to have a big

impact on Utah's economy

once these tariffs really kick in and get

going. I reached out to the offices of Lee and

Curtis, not the steak sauce, the senators,

and they didn't respond, didn't tell

me why they voted in favor or voted

against that measure to keep Trump's tariffs in

place. That's the first congressional story. The second story is

in the House. All four of Utah Republicans in the

House shot down a push by Democrats

to investigate Defense Secretary Pete

Hegseth and his use of the Signal

secure messaging app. The House Rules Committee

earlier this week they tucked a measure

into a resolution that was

targeting Biden era environmental

regulations. This little provision

that they put into this bill paused what's

called a resolution of inquiry. What a

resolution of inquiry is is a

tactic typically used by the minority party

to force a vote on launching an

investigation. And what this provision did

is it paused any resolution of

inquiry until September 3rd. As I

said, this was part of a package of measures

intended to roll back environmental regulations from the

Biden administration. Blake Moore, Celeste Malloy,

Burgess Owens and Mike Kennedy, all four of those voted

in favor of this measure, which passed on a straight

party line vote. There was reporting that the reason

why Republicans didn't want these

resolutions of inquiry to come up

is because the House is very narrowly divided.

And if you get a few Republicans to

join Democrats in voting to investigate,

Secretary Pete Haig says use of the

Signal app, then it could pass and they were very

nervous about that. As has been widely reported,

Secretary Hegseth allegedly shared

details, attack details, classified

information, sensitive information about military

strikes in Yemen. In one

Signal Group chat with White House officials that

mistakenly included a journalist.

It's a fantastic article in the Atlantic. You should go read

it. And then there's been subsequent reporting that there was

another Signal Group chat that in that

he shared many of these same details that

included his wife and his brother and his personal

lawyer. You would think that that's the kind of thing you would want

to investigate. But Republicans

in the House don't want to take the chance that

they could launch an investigation into it. So they

just removed a, the mechanism

that would have allowed Democrats to push for that. And the four

Republicans from Utah in the House voted in favor of that.

Again, they did not respond when I reached out to them and asked

them for a statement or a comment on why they voted

in favor of that measure.

Last week, the Utah Department of Health and Human

Services informed lawmakers that they intend

to resurrect Medicaid work

requirements that have been on hold since

2020. They're going to ask the Trump

administration for a waiver to implement

these work requirements. If approved, the Medicaid recipients

in Utah would be required to complete an online job

assessment and online job training. Plus

they would have to apply for 48 jobs within

the first three months. There are some exemptions to the

program. Some of them are Utahns over

60, pregnant women. If you're working

30 hours a week, a few other exemptions as

well. Students would also be exempt from

these requirements. If you don't meet the

requirements in the three months,

then you're suspended. And during that suspension, it's a

three month suspension, you can take steps to come into

compliance by completing the training,

applying for the jobs or getting an exemption.

And if you don't come into compliance in those three months, then

you lose your Medicaid eligible eligibility.

Now, in the document that I saw from

DHHS that was sent to Utah

lawmakers, they say that these work requirements

will encourage work and community

participation, help Utahns build a

healthy lifestyle, they'll boost employment

numbers while allowing the state to take

their limited Medicaid dollars and allow them to

focus it on the most vulnerable

recipients. It's important to understand the

history of work requirements in the state.

Let's go back to 2018. Utah

voters approved Prop 3

on the ballot. And what that did was that fully

expanded Medicaid under the Affordable

Care Act Obamacare. What it did was it fully

expanded Medicaid to all Utahns earning up to

138% of the federal

poverty level. But lawmakers

didn't like that. They were worried that it was gonna

cost too much. And so what they did was they

overrode that citizen approved ballot

initiative and they passed a much

more limited program. What that did was it

expanded Medicaid to about

100% of the federal poverty

line, but also required them to apply for a

waiver from the federal government

to implement work requirements requirements. That

waiver was granted by the Trump administration

in late 2019, like late

December 2019, right before

Christmas. So the Utah work requirement

program, it got approved and it kicked in on

January 1, 2020, but

it was suspended by the state a few months later

in April because of the COVID pandemic.

And it never restarted. And then there was a change in

administration. Joe Biden won the election. The Biden administration

administration then yanked that waiver away

from Utah and a couple of other states that had gotten it

granted under the Trump administration. So

this program, which was approved by the first Trump

administration, was in effect for about three

months, maybe four. About three months, I would

say, before it was suspended. A little over more than three months before it was

suspended, and it never restarted.

That's not the first time that lawmakers have tried this

sort of thing. Back in 2014,

Utah was trying to figure out a way to

expand Medicaid under the

Affordable Care Act. But they wanted to come up with their

own Utah solution. And one of the things that they

proposed was a work requirement.

Federal government said no, that didn't work. And Even back

in 2010, the legislature

floated a pilot program that would have required

Medicaid recipients to do community

service in order to get the benefits. That also didn't

go anywhere. But we're back with the Trump

administration back in the White House. So you can expect that

this waiver is probably going to get

approved. Last month, a couple of other states, Arizona

and Arkansas, they submitted applications for these

waivers, and those are probably going to get approved

as well. There was a case that was

going to the Supreme Court challenging these

work requirements. But after the Biden

administration suspended the work

requirements, suspended the waivers, the Supreme Court decided

the issue was moot and they decided not to rule on it.

So they just kicked the suit to the side. Utah

has about 351,000 people on

Medicaid right now, according to the latest statistics

from the state. Enrollment jumped, like,

it really jumped by about 200,000

people during the COVID pandemic. And that makes

sense. You know, there was a health crisis, People were out of

work. So it jumped by nearly

200,000 people. But it has since fallen back.

It's almost back to pre pandemic levels. Critics

say that imposing these work requirements could really put

a lot of people, a lot of people

nationwide and also here in the state at risk

of losing benefits. There was a study from

the nonpartisan center on Budget and Policy

Priorities, in fact, earlier this year,

and they estimate that putting a work requirement

in place would put about 38%

of Utahns, or about 127,000

people, at risk of losing their benefits.

We don't even know what this is gonna look like

because Congress is looking at big cuts to

Medicaid in order to pay for their big tax cut

package. So we don't even know how much money the state is going to

have or whether they're going to have to cut back on benefits because

a budget cut, cuts at the federal level to Medicaid.

Expect this request for a waiver to impose these work

requirements to reimpose these work requirements to

get approved fairly quickly. Utah already had it

once, so I anticipate that they will probably get those

work requirements approved again and the

program will be back in place at some

point in the near future.

Last weekend, members of the United Utah

Party dissolved their organization. They've been around since

2017 and they voted to merge

with the upstart Utah Forward party.

With about 2,400 members, the new organization

becomes the sixth largest political party in

Utah, just ahead of the Green Party. It's

part of the National Forward Party, which was launched by former

Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang in 2020

22. It's believed to be the first time that two political

parties have merged in Utah. I can't seem to find any other

reports of this happening before, so

it is historic in that sense. But

you have to wonder just what kind of an impact they'll be able to

make here in the state or how much traction they'll

be able to get. The most high profile member of

the new party is Senator Daniel Thatcher. You'll remember

he resigned his position in the Republican Party party on

the final day of the 2025 legislature

to join the Forward Party. During his speech at the

convention, he had some pretty

pointed criticisms of his former political

home.

>> Daniel Thatcher: The absolute contempt

coming from the legislature this year

just completely blew my mind.

I have for years been concerned, concerned about the

direction, but I always believed

that the GOP would come back to its founding

principles. Amendment D

completely,

completely made it clear that that is not going to

happen. Since I left the GOP in

March, I have had so many

people say, you know, why did you change your

principles?

I feel like I have to keep repeating

myself. I have never

changed my principles. So

because I believe that the GOP has ceased to uphold the rule

of law because they are

no longer grounded to the Constitution

and because they're not even following their own

platform, which was why I joined them in the first place.

They are no longer entitled to my support, my

commitment.

My commitment is not to a

party or any

individual. No cults of

personality for me. Thank you. My

commitment is to principles

parties. Should you

leave a party that you belong to and

join the Forward Party? I

can't answer that question for you,

but I can answer it for me.

The Forward Party is different from anything.

>> Bryan Schott: I've ever seen before.

>> Daniel Thatcher: It is why I feel so at

home in this place that

feels clean.

I feel safe in

this room. I feel respected

in this room. I feel like I can

disagree with someone and not have any name

calling or our tables flipping.

I love that we are

not locked into you must believe

this policy to belong. You

must a litmus test, a purity test

or you can't be in our

party. I love that we are committed to

principle. I don't want to

fight Republicans or

Democrats. I want

to fight ignorance and

contempt.

>> Bryan Schott: The Forward Party is interesting. It operates

differently than a traditional political party

party. Instead of a top down

approach, individual, state and

local parties decide which issues are

the most important. Instead of a party

platform, they have a list of priorities and

members vote on that

list. Anybody can propose something to be added

to the list and then the members vote on it.

And the top vote getters are what the party

focuses on. On. On Saturday, the members of the

merged party were they cast ballots on what their first

list of priorities would be as a newly

merged organization. And the results were

interesting at the top of the list, election process

reform, representative voting

districts, voting methods,

campaign finance reform, government

transparency. They want to limit partisan

influence. Those are things that got like 70%

support when people voted voted on them. And you could vote as

for as many as you wanted to. Immigration, that was

actually in the middle, about 60% support.

And the very bottom, the last place issue was the right

to bear arms. 29% support.

Anybody who is nominated or anybody who wants to run

as a member of the Forward Party, they just have to sign a

pledge that says among other things, that they'll uphold the

Constitution, they believe in the rule of law. You know,

pretty basic stuff. Stuff. Now the keynote

speaker at Saturday's event was Forward Party co

founder Christine Todd Whitman. She's the former

Republican governor of New Jersey. She also was the head

of the Environmental Protection Agency under President George

W. Bush from 2001 to 2003.

I sat down with Governor Whitman on Saturday for a brief

conversation about the party. We talked about how a

national party can function when you've got local

entities deciding what's important to them rather

than one grand unifying concept.

And we also discussed how they can get their message

to resonate in a media ecosphere that can

be at times difficult to

penetrate. Now, one note for you in this

interview, Governor Whitman says that they count Utah

Senator John Curtis as one of their supporters.

That struck me as odd and you can hear it in the interview. So I reached out to

Curtis's people. They said that they have spoken a

few times with people involved in the Forward Party, but

there's no official connection. It's not much more

beyond just talking and

some friendly exchanges. In fact,

one person close to Curtis said that they actually

had to ask the Forward Party to stop using his

name in connection with their

support. And they also found it a little curious that Whitman

would bring him up. And so now with that important

context, here's my conversation with Governor

Whitman. Governor Whitman,

the Forward Party is,

it's unlike anything I've heard of

where you're letting local

parties, local candidates decide

what's important to them. And it's not a top

down talk about how you're going to

make that work because it feels like it might be herding

cats. I mean it feels like you have to,

well, you obviously have to change your

paradigm of how you view

how politics are substantial.

>> Christine Todd Whitman: People are used to. If you Republican,

you stand for X, Y and Z or Democrats, you do

abc that's not what we are.

Because our country is so diverse and our communities are

so divorced diverse that the needs and the wants of people

are very different. And we should have

representatives, people in office who can represent their

constituency, what's mattering to them, what's important to their

state. I mean border issues are

big in Arizona, but they're not major

issues in New Jersey. And so people,

it really, it makes no sense if you think about it to have

national parties that have single have these hard

and fast issues to which you've got to adhere.

So what we're saying to people is we're giving you the

opportunity to vote for someone or

to support a party party that says we have

principles and these are the principles that are going to guide

us. And we're very clear that a candidate

who wants to support a forward or

wants to be a forward candidate, where we are on the

ballot, signs a pledge that says they'll uphold the rule

of law, respect the Constitution,

work with anyone to solve problems, create a safe

space to discuss controversial issues and work

constantly to ensure sure that people who are

legally have a legal right to vote, get to vote. And

it's based on the principles of protecting

our democracy, ensuring a diversity of

opportunity for people and dignity by

giving people the kinds of educational

opportunities, job training and things that they can earn their own

living. And then beyond that we have

recommendations of how best to accomplish

things such as if you want

to ensure that people have an opportunity to vote,

well then maybe ranked choice voting, open primaries,

first across. There are a lot of different ways to do it

and we're saying you don't have to do it this one way, but here are

ways that have worked and see what will work in your

community.

>> Bryan Schott: You bring up a very interesting point. About

how border issues are very important to people in Arizona, but

not in New Jersey. But when you look at

the Republican Party today,

that is a core tenet of what the party is

very worked up about right now, border

issues. And it's mainly because

they have a media apparatus that pounds

this message daily

to a very small group of people, but a very small,

devoted and loud group of

people. How do you break through

that to get

or how does a party

break through that when there's this institutional

structure that, you know, basically

dictates what the followers of one party

are going to be upset about or very passionate about on

a given day?

>> Christine Todd Whitman: Well, you said it. They're very loud.

The minority is very loud, but that's the minority.

It's not a majority. In most of the

parties, it's not a majority. And so

we're talking to the people who are feeling, feeling, look,

I care about this issue, but I'm not crazy or

I'm not, you know, I think some people are going to

extreme. When you can get people, as we said

in the meeting earlier, when you get people in a

room and they agree that this is an issue and they

say you bring them from different sides of that issue and

say, do you agree this is an issue? They say, yes. Then you say, okay,

let's solve it. Let's sit down and talk about it.

And to your point, and it also is

our point point, twice now in

recent years, I guess 2001 isn't that recent

anymore, but in 2001 or the end of

2001, beginning of 2002, George Bush

43 sent an immigration bill to the Hill

for the Hill to do what it normally does, which is to hold hearings

on it. They never held a hearing

because they didn't want to solve the issue. And then in

this last presidential cycle, there was a

bipartisan bill, had good bipartisan

support, would have passed. But

the president, now president, and then

the presidential candidate Donald Trump, said, don't do it, don't

pass it, because I want the issue to use

as something to excite my

base. Well, a lot of people said that's wrong. This

is a major issue that could and should be

solved. And they don't like that. And that's what we're

saying. And you can get through to that more and more

people. That's why the fastest growing party and the largest

party now in the country is the unaffiliateds who

are saying, box on both your houses. I'm not seeing

you solve problems. I'm not seeing you Address the issues about

which I care, or at least not doing it in a sensible

way. And I want something different.

>> Bryan Schott: How do you break through the problem of negative partisanship?

People don't vote for anything anymore. They vote against

something I think they.

>> Christine Todd Whitman: Will vote for if they're given something to vote vote for

and someone they vote for. And that's actually why

while we are, we have

congressional candidates. We have a US Senator. Thank you.

Senator Curtis who's affiliated with the Forward

Party. We have

congress people who are forward.

>> Bryan Schott: Senator Curtis is.

>> Christine Todd Whitman: He was. He's affiliated with the Forward Party.

He's not a. Didn't run as a forwardist.

>> Bryan Schott: Okay.

>> Christine Todd Whitman: But he is counted as one of ours because we did

a lot of support for him and worked with him.

>> Bryan Schott: You're talking about John. John Curtis here in Utah.

>> Christine Todd Whitman: Here in Utah, yes.

>> Bryan Schott: Interesting. Okay.

>> Christine Todd Whitman: Yeah. And what we're saying,

we're starting at the local level. And when somebody sees somebody running for

school board or town council that they know and respect

and they hear this message of how they're going to run as a

forwardist, that's where you start to build. And

that's. And people will vote for that person. And then what,

what history has shown us when they come to the

ballot, to the ballot box to vote for one,

they'll stay on the ballot and look for similar candidates up

and down. And that's why we're trying to run as many as we can

where districts where it makes sense

of people who are forward us who agree with our

principles. And that's going to. That's

the kind of thing that will make the difference and start the

wave. It's not going to happen overnight. It's going to take a

long time. I mean, we're hoping by 2028

we are a nationally recognized party by the Federal Election

Commission. But that's a ways

off.

>> Bryan Schott: You have been in the political arena

for a very long time and

it used to be that you

had the fringes on both sides on the right and

left. They were very loud, but they weren't able to really do

anything. And the middle is where the decision were

made. It feels like that has been inverted

where you have these very loud fringes on both the right and left

and they're driving our policy right now.

How do you flip that back to the way it was? Because

there are people who are unaffiliated, not affiliated with either

party, but by the time they get to the ballot box, a

lot of elections for Congress are already

decided.

>> Christine Todd Whitman: Well, that's where we elect our people. And that's where you start making a difference.

The beauty is what you need to understand is you don't have to have

100%, you don't have to have all the legislators.

You only need that fulcrum, that nucleus that

can make a difference. I mean, if you think back at the past Congress

and you think of Joe Manchin who one

single senator who was pivotal on a

whole major number of issues

and he was able to affect votes, that's one person in the

Senate. So you don't have to have

everybody. And what we're saying is we'll get a

enough in these state legislatures or town

councils who start to make that difference and

can start to break through. And that's what people want.

I mean, it's clearly what people want if you see the way

that the party has grown today.

>> Bryan Schott: Governor Whitman, thank you for your time.

>> Christine Todd Whitman: My pleasure.

>> Bryan Schott: That's all I got for this week. Thanks for

listening. I'd like to remind you to subscribe

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Todd Whitman, and thank you for listening.

We'll be back with another episode next week.

>> Christine Todd Whitman: Sa.