The royal hierarchy of Twitter dweebs
>> Bryan Schott: Foreign M
hello, and welcome to Special Session. I am your
host, Bryan Schott. This is the show where we not only
talk about the most important Utah political news from the
past week, but we help you understand the story
behind the story, what's really going on, and
why it matters. We don't have
lobbyists or wannabe elected officials
or current elected officials as a co
host on this show. We'll have them as guests, but not as a
co host like some other shows in Utah would.
And the reason we don't do that is because they're
usually pushing an agenda or trying to protect
some turf. There are things they don't want to talk about, or
they won't give you an
unvarnished opinion about what is
really happening. You'll get that here, and that's why
we appreciate you tuning in.
And before we get to this week's news, I'd like to give you just
a little bit of an update on my lawsuit against the Utah
legislature. As you may know, I am suing the
legislature in federal court because they
refused to give me a credential to cover
Capitol Hill. I'm the only journalist that was
denied a credential this year, and
my legal team is claiming that they specifically
rewrote the rules so that they could exclude
me. The good news is we finally got a hearing date. The
bad news is it's not until mid August,
so it's still a couple of months away. And as
I've told you before, the legislature has hired an outside
law firm from Washington, D.C. known as
Conservoi McCarthy to defend them in
this suit instead of the Utah Attorney
General's office. This is the same firm that's representing
the legislature and the gerrymandering case. And they're also
involved in the, uh, litigation over the
abortion trigger law as well. And
so far in 2025, the Utah
legislature has paid Conserv
McCarthy more than 600.
Last month it was just over $511,000. Now
it's 612,000. And that's for those
three lawsuits. And that's a lot of money. You want to
know how much? It's more than what they paid so far this year for
health insurance coverage for legislative
employees, which is just over $500,000. So
they've given $600,000 to defend in these lawsuits
to a firm that's in Washington, D.C.
and which is more than what they've paid for health coverage
for their employees. And as we go forward,
in 2025, that number will continue to rise.
And that's taxpayer money, folks. That's your money that they're spending
on this. Here's a quick pitch for you to sign up for my
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One other thing you get when you do that is my
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Okay, with that out of the way, let's get to the week in Utah
Political news.
Utah's members of Congress love to pretend that
they're deficit hawks and just
oh, so worried about the national debt
and budget deficit. But they're doing their damnedest
right now to pretend that the big beautiful
bill, the reconciliation package that was passed by the House
and now moving through the Senate, does not
blow a massive hole in the budget or
the deficit. We learned this week that the
nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office
estimates that the bill adds
$2.4 trillion to the
deficit over the next decade. And that's
mostly because of the
$3.75 trillion in
tax cuts, uh, in the bill that
primarily benefit the wealthiest Americans and
COR corporations. Now, those tax cuts are offset by
about 1.3 to $1.6 trillion
in spending cuts, mostly on Medicaid
and food assistance programs. And we'll talk about that in a second.
Now, despite these numbers that, uh, the cbo,
a nonpartisan office, says that it will, um,
uh, add $2.4 trillion to
the deficit by 2034. Utah's
representatives in the House who voted for the bill are working
overtime to say that's
not true. Here's what freshman
Representative Mike Kennedy said during an interview
on C SPAN on Thursday.
>> Mike Kennedy: This bill is going to cut our deficit by
$1.5 trillion. With economic growth
estimated 1.8% by the CBO. The
reality is they're not factoring in the dynamic
aspects of cutting taxes on the American people.
And I'm proud to be a part of supporting this bill. The
Congressional Budget Office has been wrong over and over again.
And the reality is that when we cut taxes, they count
that as a deficit. It increases the deficit.
The reality is when we're cutting taxes on working class people
People that are working overtime, people that are actually
getting tips. But the CBO counts out as a
deficit increase rather than a deficit decrease.
When people have more money in their pocket, when they're. When
their tips aren't taxed, when their overtime isn't taxed.
>> Bryan Schott: Now, when he talks about that $1.5
trillion in savings that's from
the spending reductions, the difference
between that and the estimated $2.4 trillion
increase in the deficit is this.
When, when you cut taxes, that
reduces revenue coming into the
government. Cut taxes, you're bringing in
less money, and that means there's less money to
spend. What the CBO estimate looks at
is the fact that they're not cutting SPE
by the same amount as they are reducing revenue. The
tax cuts reduce revenue by
more than the spending cuts that they are proposing.
Uh, Representative Blake Moore made the same
argument in a Fox News interview earlier
this week.
>> Mr. Moore: This bill we're bringing to the floor is revenue neutral
based on a very conservative growth estimate for the economy
based on $1.6 trillion of offsets, whether
that be through spending cuts or other type of revenue
increases.
>> Mike Kennedy: And that's historic.
>> Mr. Moore: That's something that we haven't done that level before.
>> Bryan Schott: So the argument here is that the tax cuts
will pay for themselves because people will
have more money to spend, and that will boost the
economy. But the problem is that that
almost never happens after
the Trump tax cuts were enacted in
2017, and this current bill
extends them. It is true that the Federal
Government, between 2018 and
2024, $1.5
trillion more in revenue
than what the CBO projected would happen with the
Trump tax cuts. That's true. But
about two thirds of that increase
comes from inflation. Um, there was
inflationary pressures on
salaries, so people were earning more because of inflation.
There were cost of living adjustments. Uh, and so that's where
the extra revenue came from. If you adjust
all of the numbers from that original CBO estimate
for inflation, the real numbers were pretty much right
on what the CBO predicted.
Now, the biggest driver of the deficit increase
in this bill that's going through Congress right Now is the
2017 Trump tax cuts, making those
permanent. Um, most of the money, most
of the benefit for those tax cuts goes to
the wealthiest Americans and corporations.
Um, if you look at the
top 1% of households, the top 1%
of wage earners in the United States who make
$734,000 a year or
more, they would see, on average, about
$62,000 a year in tax reduction.
The bottom 60%, those are people who make
$96,000 or less, they'll get
about $200. So compare that to
the $62,000 that the top
1% would receive in tax reductions to the
$200 per year for the bottom
60%. In fact, the richest
0.1%, 0.1%
of ear
million dollars or more per year, their tax
cut would be around
$314,000 a year.
That group, those 200,000 multi
millionaires and billionaires, would receive, uh,
more total dollars in tax cuts than the
187 million families in the
bottom 60%. So when you hear people talking
about how this benefits the wealthy, that's what they're
talking about. Most of this money
goes to the top 1% and above
the elite of the el earners
in the United States now. But you'll hear people say, well, that
will boost economic growth. It's trickle down economics.
But we know the trickle down economics does not work. It
has not worked in the past. They're arguing
that enacting trillions of dollars in new tax
cuts or extending these tax cuts will produce
enough economic growth to produce an
extra $2.6 trillion in
revenue through 2035. So these
tax cuts will pay for themselves.
That's extremely optimistic.
And there's really no proof that that has ever
happened in the past. Trickle down
does not happen. It does not work. It's a theory that,
uh, sounds great in theory, but it does not
work in practice. After the
2017 tax cuts were passed during the first
Trump administration, uh, the Joint Committee on
Taxation and the Federal Reserve Board
looked at what sort of economic boost it would
have provided for workers in this country.
And what they found is that people who earn about
$114,000 a year or less, you
know, the middle class, the working class in this country, they really
saw no meaningful change in their earnings from this
tax cut. So the arguments that this is going to boost the
economy and, and uh, rising tide raises all
boats. Well, it actually raises some boats and it
would provide a massive tax cut to the
wealthiest Americans.
Let's talk about Medicare and Medicaid and what impact
this reconciliation bill will have on that,
because that was also part of the discussion. The difference between the
two is Medicare is a federal program
for seniors and some people with
disabilities. Medicaid is a federal
and state program for low
income individuals and families. Now, under this
bill, a lot of the cost cutting
is in Medicaid. And you'll hear people say they want to get rid of
waste and abuse and fraud. That's
really not what is happening, because the CBO
estimates that about 11 million people
would lose their health coverage because of
this bill. Representative Kennedy has made a lot of
hay about undocumented immigrants receiving
Medicaid benefits. There are about 1.4
million immigrants in the country who cannot prove legal
status who are receiving Medicaid benefits through
state programs like California, I think, is one of them.
That's one of the largest ones. Those people would lose their access
to Medicaid because of the cuts in this
bill. But that estimated 1.4
million immigrants who would lose access
to their health coverage is not all
of the people who would be impacted by this bill.
About 7.8 million more people would
lose Medicaid coverage, uh, because of
expiring Affordable Care act
subsidies and new rules implemented
in the bill, including work requirements.
Um, um, actually, overall, the CBO
estimates that about 16 million people
could lose access to health coverage
over the next decade. And let's talk a little
bit about those work requirements. Um, um, that would
be responsible for an estimated
$344 billion in
savings in this legislation. An estimated
and a half million people would be subject to those work
requirements, and about 5.2 million
would lose their coverage because they
would not be to meet those work
requirements, um, for one reason or another.
Because it does put up more hurdles for people accessing
healthcare. Uh, there's paperwork, there's a lot of
red tape you have to go through. People up to the age of 64
would have to work 80 hours a month in order to
keep their coverage and document twice
a year that they are working. Uh, they could
also perform community service to
meet that 80 hour a month
requirement. But that does put up some hurdles. And
people will lose their, uh,
access to health care, their access to
Medicaid because of these work
requirements. It's an estimated 5.2 million
people. The other part of this is
Medicare. And Congress has a thing called paygo,
which stands for pay as you go. And that's a rule
that requires new legislation that
increases spending or reducing
revenue. The tax cuts reduces revenue.
Remember that? It has to be offset by
corresponding cuts in spending
or increases in revenue. And this bill does not
increase revenue. So where is it going to offset it? It's going
to offset it in other parts of the budget. And the CBO
has come out and said because of the
large deficit that this bill
creates, it reduces revenue by about
2.4 trillion more than the cuts in the bill.
That would probably trigger some
automatic cuts to Medicare, about
$535 billion.
Over the next decade because of, uh,
so when you hear Representative Kennedy, when you hear Representative Moore
talking about how this bill, uh, does
not increase the deficit, they're not
counting the reductions in revenue from the tax
cuts. They're also hoping that that will be offset by
an economic boost which will increase revenues.
So they're not actually blowing a hole in the budget. And those are
very, very rosy projections, very
hopeful projections. Some might even call it wish
casting. Now they're starting to work on the bill in the
Senate, and both of Utah senators are a little bit
squ on the bill. Senator Mike Lee, he came
out this week and talked about how it doesn't cut enough
spending. He'd like to cut even more spending. Uh,
and John Curtis wrote an op ed in the Deseret News
recently where he argued
for saving some of the clean energy tax credits.
In the bill. He wrote, we must be wise.
We simply cannot afford to treat good policy
ideas as guilty by political
association. So this bill has to go through the process. In
the Senate, there are some people who are wary of
cutting Medicaid by as much as it does.
Um, there was a meeting at the White House this week with Senate
Republican leaders where they wanted to get to $2
trillion in spending reductions. But
where does that come from? Well, most of it right now comes from
Medicaid and food assistance, and there's really not
a lot of fat to cut in the budget, and those are the
kind of things that they have to cut. So pay attention to this as it
goes forward, because a lot of the assumptions
that elected officials are relying on
are based on scenarios and projections that just have not
played out when people have tried to use them in the
past.
Over the weekend, Utah representative Trevor Lee, the author
of the state's ban on Pride flags, threw a fit on
social media when the Utah Mammoth posted
a Pride themed version of its logo.
Lee tweeted, Utahns overwhelmingly
don't support Pride Month. We are the most
kind people in the world and are taken advantage
of because of that kindness. Nothing makes
Utahns more mad when political ideologies
get pushed into their lives. And even worse,
having taxes prop up those ideologies.
Watch for some significant legislation this
session that pushes back against these
woke groups. By significant
legislation, Lee means he wants to
force any organization that takes
public money to be what he calls
politically neutral. In
2024, Utah lawmakers voted
to provide about a billion dollars in tax money
to the Smith Entertainment Group. That's the company that owns the
Utah Mammoth and the Utah Jazz. And
that money is supposed to go for Delta center
upgrades and renovating the surrounding
area. And that's what Lee is talking about
when he wants to force companies that
take public money to be politically
neutral. Now, Lee is too chicken to talk to real
journalists, but he did go on a local
conservative talk radio program because he
knew they wouldn't push back against him or challenge him
at all. And he gave some details about what
he was thinking. This is what he said.
>> Mr. Moore: If any entity is going to start taking taxpayer
money, it needs to be politically neutral. This is just like the
flag bill and Utah's. They overwhelmingly agree
with this idea. But for whatever reason,
people in certain communities with these different
ideologies feel like they're entitled and that they can be
using taxpayer money to promote their ideals and
their agendas. And I think Utahns are tired of it.
They're sick of it. And when the Smith
entertainment group is going to be receiving close to a billion
dollars from taxpayers, that's no
small amount of money. And that is where I have some serious
issues that, um, if they want to be a private
company and group, they can do what they want. But the minute they take
taxpayer money, that is our money going to fund their
agendas. They're now promoting. I want government to be politically
neutral. And I don't think it's a threat to say that
they need to have some restrictions or some strings with this money that
we're giving them. I mean, that is something that both sides should
agree on, because it can go both ways.
>> Bryan Schott: What Lee is proposing here is a ban on
pride celebrations for any organization or company
that takes public money, like the Smith entertainment
group is doing. The problem for Lee
is that is probably
unconstitutional. This week I spoke to
some first amendment experts about what Lee
was proposing. And, you know, we don't have any
specific details about what this legislation
would look like, but this kind of
thing would run afoul of the first
amendment in their opinion. The knight
first amendment institute at Columbia University told me this
week that what Lee is proposing is
legislation to require the company that owns the Utah
mammoth and jazz to restrict their speech
in order to conform to the government's
viewpoint. And the first amendment forbids
that the government cannot control the speech
or viewpoints of private companies through the
threat of withholding funds or by making the
availability of that funding dependent on
the companies speaking in a way that the government
prefers. I also spoke to the
foundation for individual rights and expression,
fire.org and they said the
same thing, um, that the fact that the government is
choosing to subsidize this arena for
the team does not give the government
any ability to ban it from creating
a logo for Pride Month or for Christmas
or for the Fourth of July or anything else.
The First Amendment protects their right to
take ideological viewpoints, and it's
well established that you don't lose that right when you take
money from the government. In fact, just last
year, the United States Supreme Court ruled in
Moody v. Net Choice. That's the Texas law that
attempted to crack down on social media platforms for
allegedly censoring conservatives.
The court wrote in their ruling that,
quote, a state may not interfere with
private actor speech to advance its own
vision of ideological balance. So Lee
yelling about political neutrality
here, it would be unconstitutional.
Now, again, we don't know what his legislation would look like
or the exact language in his proposal, but in
broad strokes, what he's trying to do
is something that does run against
the First Amendment. Has that stopped Utah lawmakers
in the past? No. When they want to make a
point, they usually go full speed ahead,
even if there is a chance that a bill
could be found unconstitutional. But if they want to make that
point strong enough, they just ignore that. It
used to be in the legislature that when lawmakers
introduced a bill, it had what was called a
constitutional note on it. It was a legal
analysis showing whether that
legislation would draw a challenge
on constitutional grounds. And
lawmakers got tired of the public and
reporters zeroing in on that
part of the legislation and then asking
them questions about it. They got tired of that, so they just did away
with it. Now there are no constitutional
notes on bills. Individual lawmakers can
ask for an analysis of a bill whether
it's constitutional or not, but there's
nothing public on the legislation. Lee may be
talking about political neutrality, but what this is
is he's upset about pride
flags, about pride logos. He, you know, he
was the author of HB 77, which
is the ban on pride flags in the state.
Utah is the first state to ban pride flags in
classrooms and at government buildings, although it looks like Salt
Lake City found a loophole in the law
and got around that. We've talked about that on previous
podcasts. Back in March, I got a
recording of Lee speaking to that
far right group, Utah Citizens for the Constitution.
In that meeting, he said that
the main point of HB77 was
to stop the flying of pride
flags. He said HB77 was, quote,
to make sure during Pride Month in Salt Lake City,
you're not able to fly pride flags all over the place,
which is something people are Sick and tired of.
So this is not about political neutrality. It is
about Trevor Lee and his
animosity towards Pride month and
the LGBTQ + community in
general. Just look at his history. When he ran for the
legislature in 2022, I reported that he was
behind an anonymous Twitter account that posted
hateful and anti LGBTQ
content. That same year, he went on a
conservative podcast and used, uh, several
transphobic slurs when talking
about Governor Spencer Cox. In
2023, after he was elected, he ignited
a bit of a legislative firestorm
when he attacked the Utah Transit Authority on social
media because they had a Pride themed bus.
So Lee has a long history
of animosity towards these
groups, so his claims of political
neutrality ring hollow.
You gotta feel just a little bit bad for Utah Senator
Mike, Mike Lee right now because his two
billionaire daddies are having a
very, very messy public fight
and he's kind of caught in the middle, not knowing
which one to support. As everyone
knows, this week the Trump
musk bromance melted down
in public. Something that anybody with even
a half a brain could see coming from about
a mile away. And while this was going on,
Lee was on Twitter trying to
cope with his emotions, trying to work through this,
because he's really conflicted. One of the
saddest things he posted was, ah, quote,
repost if you agree that the world is a better
place with the Trump musk bromance
fully intact. And then he tagged both of them.
This is Senator Lee's Kobayashi
Maru. And if you're unfamiliar with that, that's
from the Star Trek movies. It's a sim.
There is no way to win the
scenario. And that's where Mike Lee is, right
here. Because both of these people are very
important to him right now, and he
cannot back one or the other because
it might have some repercussions for him down the line.
Trump holds the keys to the one thing that Mike Lee
wants more than anything in the world, and that is being
nominated to the Supreme Court. If you remember,
during his first term, Lee was put
forward as a possible nomination by the
Federalist Society. Society. And a bunch of right wing legal
minds, including Cleta Mitchell, sent a letter to Trump supporting
Mike Lee. Ted Cruz was supporting Lee for that
job. Lee ultimately was not chosen.
And with Trump's recent trashing of the
Federalist Society, you have to wonder if Lee would ever
make that list again. That's one thing that Lee
covets, and the only person who would give it to him is
Donald Trump. But if he were to support Donald Trump
publicly and push back
against Musk. Well, that would impact
Lee's public profile right now.
When Lee started his based Mike Lee
Twitter account, he spent so much
time trying to get
Musk's attention. He tweeted at Musk
constantly. He was so thirsty to
get Musk's attention, and he finally got it.
And now Lee is among the, uh, a
cool crowd on Twitter. He's in the
royal hierarchy of Twitter dweebs.
He's not as high profile as others,
but he does have almost 600,000 followers right now.
He's got a fairly large audience, and it's probably
one of the reasons why he tweets like
crazy. You know, he's paid $186,000
by US taxpayers to be a poster on
Twitter. And if he backs Trump in
this feud, Musk could take that away.
Musk could reduce his reach. We know he's done it in the
past. Musk could, uh, make it so that he's
shadow banned or reduce the number
of people who see his content and really
mute him and take away a lot of that audience.
Mike Lee's stuck in a really tough
situation. I mean, he could, you
know, engage in negotiations over this
reconciliation bill and, and, and, and try
to change it and, and maybe suggest some
legislation that has a ch. But
the Mike Lee we know right now, he's really stuck in
a tough place because his two
billionaire daddies are having a falling out
in public. Lee kind of helped contribute
to this whole situation earlier this week
because when Musk started tweeting that there wasn't enough
spending reduction in the bill, remember, Musk came out against the
bill, called an abomination, said it raised the
deficit too much, and he urged people to kill
the bill. Lee joined in on those calls.
That was part of the genesis of this Trump Musk
rift. And Lee helped with that. I suspect he'll stay
on the sidelines, hoping that they somehow
kiss and make up. Also this
week, Lee came up with another one of his
doozy ideas. Um, on
Thursday, he tweeted that he was going to propose a
constitutional amendment that would kick every member of
Congress out if inflation
exceeds 3%. That's an idea that was first
floated by billionaire Warren Buffett. It
this is not gonna happen. There's no way that
anybody does this for a number of reasons. First of all, a
constitutional amendment needs a two thirds
vote in both houses of Congress, and
then it has to be ratified by three quarters of the states, which is
38 states. Now, Senator Lee likes
to talk a big game about
proposing Bills. He'll propose bills for this and
propose bills for that, and he comes up with these catchy
acronyms for them. But. But he's only
passed a dozen bills since he's been
in Congress. Uh, actually, if you take out the
bills naming buildings, he's only
passed nine pieces of legislation where
he's been the primary sponsor all the way through the process. Only
nine of those have gotten all the way through. So he doesn't exactly
have a lot of juice in Congress when it comes to passing
legislation. So I doubt that he'll be able to get a
constitutional amendment through. Through. So while
this sounds like a good idea on its face, when you
think about it for half a second, it really doesn't
make sense, which is the way it is with a lot of
legislation that Lee proposes. I
suspect that Lee will tweet about this for a while,
then he'll forget about it, and then he'll bring it back
sometime down the road when he needs attention again. But there is
one thing of consequence that Lee did this
week, or at least is talking about doing. He told a
reporter that he might bring back
this provision to sell
public lands and put it into the
reconciliation bill. It was. That was first sponsored by
Representative Celeste Malloy and Representative Mark
Amadei of Nevada, and that was stripped out
of the final version of the bill that passed the House. Lee is talking about
possibly bringing it back. About
500,000 acres of public
lands in Utah would be in Beaver and Washington
counties. We don't have a lot of details about that.
This was just an answer he gave to a reporter, and then his office
gave a statement, other media talking about how
he wanted to do what was in the best interest of the
Western United States and how so much of our public
lands are owned by the federal government. So I don't know how
serious he is with this. The person who's really spearheading it is
Montana Republican Senator Steve Daines.
And he says that, um, he's, uh, not interested
in inserting, uh, any specific
public land sales, uh, in the
legislation, but he wants to talk with Lee
to create a scenario that would
minimize any large sales, any broad
sales of public land. So it doesn't sound
like they're going to put the 500,000 acres of public
land that was in the bill before back in, because
Danes really wants to tamp down on that. But we really don't know
yet. We haven't seen any concrete
language or any concrete proposals. And
remember, the first time we found out about this was at the
last minute when Representative Malloy and
Representative Amadei dropped it in
in a late night hearing, a late night markup
of this bill and it came out of nowhere. No one was
expecting it. So who knows if that will happen again.
But Lee is the chairman of the committee that would be in charge of this and he
says he is at least open to the idea.
A little bit of palace drama on Utah's
Capitol Hill this week as the House Republican
Caucus elected new leaders.
House Majority Leader Jefferson Moss has stepped down to
take a position in the Cox
administration. And he was
replaced by Casey Snyder as the new
Majority Leader. Representative Candace Perucci was
elected as Majority Whip and Representative
Bridger Belinda was named the
Assistant Majority Whip. This is the third high
profile shuffling of House leadership that we've seen
since 2021. In 2021,
then House Majority Leader Francis Gibson
stepped down in the election to replace him.
Mike Schultz jumped, uh, from his
position as House Majority Whip. And then
Representative Moss was elected as
Majority Whip to replace Schultz. And then
in 2023, House Speaker Brad
Wilson stepped down. He resigned from the
House because he was running for Senate.
And that's when Mike Schultz was elected Speaker.
Speaker Jefferson Moss was elected as Majority Leader.
Carrie Ann Liszenby became the Majority
Whip and then Casey Snyder.
Representative Snyder was elected Assistant Majority
Whip. Snyder is now the Majority Leader.
So he jumps from Assistant Majority Whip to
Majority Leader. And the big loser in this
whole election is Representative Carrie Ann Lizzenby.
She is out of leadership after just two sessions
as the Majority Whip in the House.
She was the number three Republican in the House and now
she's out because she had to resign her position
as the Majority Whip to run for Majority
Leader. Same thing that Snyder did. And that opened up
the Majority Whip and the Assistant Majority Whip seats
which were taken by Perrucci and Bolender.
And that's a big blow for Liz and B to be
out of leadership. She was on the rise. She was
arguably one of the more influential members
of the House Republican Caucus. If you talk
to people, she was really behind a lot of the action
on the floor, one of the driving forces there. And
now she is out. And that is interesting
because she is probably one of the more,
uh, extreme members of the House Republican
Caucus. She sponsored a lot of legislation to
dramatically expand gun rights in the state.
And just this last session she got in
on the election integrity movement. Remember,
she had some pieces of legislation. One to get
Utah out of the Eric Multi
State Clearinghouse to clean the voting rolls. I
reported at the that she had a provision in that bill that would
have given access to a lot of personal
information of Utah voters to an election
denier. She ultimately stripped that out of the bill,
but the bill didn't pass. So now she is
out of leadership and
replaced by Snyder, Perucci
and Bo Linder. Perucci is probably
one of the more ambitious members of
the House gop. She's very young, she's very
aggressive. Uh, she was a sponsor of the
Utah fits all scholarship. And so she's got
conservative bona fides talking with people.
There's an expectation that she may run
for a higher office, maybe the Utah Senate, or
have her sights set on an even higher office
down the line. Belinda's rise to
House leadership is kind of
astonishing because he
is just in his second term in the House.
He was first elected in
2022, and this is just his
second term. And now he's already the House
ascend consistent majority whip, the number four
Republican in the House. That makes him one of the
fastest rising members of the House in terms
of profile in recent memory. I really can't remember
anyone who in just their second term,
jumped into leadership, Especially when Republicans have
such a big super majority in
the House. For him to leapfrog so
many other people who have seniority on
him and win that seat, that is saying quite
a bit. Here's what you need to watch for. Over the next couple of
weeks, the House is going to have to shuffle committee assignments.
Both Perucci and Bolinder
are chairs of their committees.
Perchi is the chair of the House Education Committee. Belinda
is the chair of the House Health and Human Services Committee.
They have more responsibilities now as
the majority whip and the assistant majority whip.
And you usually do not see members of leadership,
uh, spending a lot of time on committees. They'll be
assigned to committees, but they usually do don't attend
those meetings because of their added
responsibilities, and they certainly don't chair them. So I'm
guessing Perrucci will no longer be the chair of the House Education
Committee, and Belinda will no longer be the chair
of the House Health and Human Services Committee. What happens
to Liz and be does she become the chair
of one of those two committees? The easiest thing to do would
be for her to become the chair of
the House Education Committee or the House Health and Human Services
Committee. It depends on whether she angered
anybody who actually won those seats, because
leadership are the ones who get to decide those assignments.
When Brad Wilson stepped down as speaker, Schultz
won the speakership, but he was opposed in that election
by Representative Melissa Garf Ballard
Schultz punished her with her committee assignment. She
lost a committee chairmanship that she had.
Because of that, she was shuffled off the high profile committees
and put onto the less desirable committees. And you have to wonder if
that's what's going to happen to Liz and be now that
she is out of House leadership. We'll
probably see that committee shuffle take place
before the June interim meetings in a couple of weeks.
They also have to give committee assignments to
whoever replaces Moss in the Legislature
because Utah County Republicans are holding a special
election for that seat later this month.
So that will cause another shuffle in the
committees. But pay attention to where
Liz and B lands on the committee
assignments. She could get a chairmanship, but if she
doesn't, that's going to say a lot.
This story was suggested by one of the
subscribers on our Utah Political Watch
Discord that is an exclusive benefit for
subscribers. On our newsletter we discuss the issues
of the day, news stories of the day. You can get access to
that by becoming subscriber for as little as $5 a month.
Go to my website, Utah Political Watch dot
news. Anyway, one of the people in the Discord wanted me to talk about
this story from the past couple of weeks where House Speaker
Mike Schultz and other Republican
lawmaker outrage they're calling
for the resignation of seventh uh, District
Judge John Torgerson. They want him to
resign or they're threatening impeachment
because he did not send It's a man to prison who
pleaded guilty to having child
sexual abuse material or CSAM. The
22 year old man from Maine was
convicted of two counts of child
sexual exploitation. Those carry a jail sentence
of up to 15 years in prison for each
count. Count. Now in response, uh,
the Utah courts issued a statement to the Salt Lake
Tribune where they noted that Torgerson was following
the sentencing guidelines the legislature approved
earlier this year. That may be true,
but adult probation and parole recommended the
man be sentenced to jail and the
prosecuting attorney also asked for a
prison sentence because of these crimes.
According to a record recording reviewed by local
media of the court hearing, Torgerson, uh,
said quote, I can't send everybody to prison who
views child pornography. There aren't
enough prisons. And Torgerson decided
not to send the man to jail. When this
story first came out, it was first reported by ksl. House
Speaker Mike Schultz was furious
and he lashed out at the
lack of jail time, uh, that this judge
handed down in this case. It should be noted
that Schultz waltz ran to
the Post Millennial to do an interview
about this and if you don't know what the Post Millennial is,
that is a notorious fake news rag.
One of their editors is Andy no, who has a
troubling history with truthful reporting.
He has associations with white supremacists,
like a group called Patriot Prayer. Uh, he
would go on ride alongs with them in the Pacific
Northwest. Um, the local reporter that
Schultz talked to is another pretend journalist journalist
who was behind another rag that
shouldn't be taken seriously. The Cougar Chronicle.
So just understand, uh, that's where Schultz
decided to go to vent his frustrations about
this story. And Schultz wants
Torgerson to resign. He made it clear he wants Torgerson to
resign or the legislature could open up
impeachment hearings against him. Torgerson
was appointed to the bench by Governor Gary Herbert in
2018. Most recently, he
was in the news. He threw out the wrongful death sentence suit
filed by the family of Gabby Petito
against the Moab police. You remember that story?
She disappeared and she was allegedly murdered by
her boyfriend, Bryan Laundrie. And
Petito's family sued the Moab police,
claiming they were negligible because
they had an interaction with laundry and
Petito a few months before she was
murdered, but didn't take any action.
She left with laundry and ended
up having her life taken from her. Torgerson threw
out that suit because he said it would violate the Utah constitution. And you
couldn't hold the Moab police liable for something
that happened months later. Earlier
this year, Schultz went after another Utah judge,
Third District Judge William Kendall. But that case
was a little bit different. Uh, Kendall was charged with
forcible sexual abuse and possession
and distribution of a controlled substance.
And at the time, Schultz threatened impeachment. Impeachment.
But, uh, Kendall resigned. So we didn't
go down that road. There are no criminal
charges against Torgerson in this case. So that's where
the those two stories diverge. The last
time the House tried to impeach a judge
was in 2003, when
Judge Ray Harding Jr. Was again
charged with drug possession. The House
actually opened an impeachment investigation, but Harding
resigned before it could go and anywhere. Politically, this
outrage against Torgerson comes at a very fraught time
in the relationship between the Republican
controlled legislature and the judiciary.
Last year, lawmakers were
angered by judges when they ruled against the
legislature in the gerrymandering case and
in the Amendment D and Amendment A cases.
And then earlier this year, they ruled that the
Utah fits all scholarship, the school vouchers program
was unconstitutional. In
response to that law. Lawmakers ran several
pieces of legislation this last session targeting
the judiciary, but those were set
aside after lawmakers and the bar
association were able to strike a deal, uh,
especially over one bill that would have given lawmakers
more of a say in judicial retention. If you
remember that piece of legislation, it would have set up
a separate legislative committee
to determine whether judges were fit for
the bench, and they would investigate any sort
of ethics complaint made against judges and then
issue press release on it. Uh, that one went
by the wayside after the deal with the bar association.
There was one other piece of legislation that
would have changed the way that the Chief justice of
the Supreme Court is selected. Right now, the five members
of the Utah Supreme Court select a Chief justice from
amongst themselves. This would have changed that process
so that the governor would nominate the Chief justice
of the Supreme Court, and then it would be confirmed by the
Senate. Governor Spencer Cox vetoed that bill.
Speaking of the Utah Supreme Court, those tensions could
flare back up later this year. Justice John
Pierce announced this week that he would be
stepping down from the bench. Retiring from the bench. On
December 1, he was appointed by
Governor Gary Herbert to the Utah Supreme Court.
He was also Herbert's general counsel
for a number of years when Herbert was
governor. Now, for his successor,
Governor Cox won't just get to pick anyone. A an
appellate nominating commission will, uh,
select seven names. They'll come up with seven nominees that
they will send to Cox. He'll pick one of them, and then the Senate will have to
confirm, uh, that pick to the Supreme
Court. But it'll be interesting to see how those
hearings go, because lawmakers are still
smarting from a number of judicial
decisions here in Utah over the last
year. Will Torgerson resign?
Possibly. It depends on how much pressure Speaker
Mike Schultz and other lawmakers will put on him.
He doesn't have any criminal charges hanging over his head. So
it's different than what happened earlier this year. And you have to
wonder just how much pressure Schultz can
bring to force him to retire. When you look at
this current controversy with Judge Torgerson,
uh, for a ruling that Schultz and
Republican lawmakers vehemently disagree with,
it's interesting to contrast that with how
Schultz and the Republican caucus
handled the issue of former
Utah Board of Education member Natalie
Klein in 2024, when she
fals suggested that a female
high school athlete was transgender,
that launched an furious online attack
against that family. They had to
get law enforcement because there were threats made, even
though what Klein insinuated in her post was
completely false. They just could not
muster enough support to
impeach Klein. They, they, they tiptoed around it,
they danced around it, but ultimately they
couldn't get there. And she refused to resign. Design.
And so they had to let the process play out. She was
ultimately defeated in her reelection bid at the
Salt Lake county convention. That's dynamic isn't going to play
out here. Judges are appointed by the governor. It's not up to
voters. So you have to wonder just how much pressure
Schultz can bring on Judge
Torgerson to try to get him to step down. You
have to wonder if they want to go through the whole process
of opening an impeachment inquiry, holding an impeachment
vote in the House and then a trial in the Senate to force
him out the of, of office. Maybe they'll do that. Maybe that'll put
enough pressure on him to resign. We'll just have to keep our
eye on this.
If you care at all about government
transparency, you'll want to pay attention to this story
because this seems like another big loss
for the public's ability to find
out what their government is doing. Earlier this
year, the Utah Legislature did away with the seven
member State Records Committee. They are the committee who, who would
hear appeals when grandma or open
records requests were denied and decide
whether or not to release those records. And they passed
legislation that would replace that committee with a
single person who would get
to make those decisions rather than a seven person
body. And this week, Governor Spencer Cox tapped Lonnie
Person for the role. Now, Person was in charge
of government records for former Attorney General
Sean Reyes. And during his tenure in that office
office, he fought like hell to keep
Reyes's calendars away from the media.
There was a legislative audit earlier this year of
the Attorney General's office and they
found that the office was, quote, not
reasonably transparent, making it
difficult to hold the position accountable.
And while they didn't mention grandma requests
specifically in that audit, it was clear what they were
talking about. And person who was in charge of
whether or not to release those records to the, the public was in
charge of that. And it wasn't just Attorney General
Reyes's calendars. It was a lot of documents that the
media or the public was trying to get ahold of that he
simply played keep away with. And this is the person
who Governor Spencer Cox wants to appoint
as the government records officer. He
is scheduled for a confirmation hearing on Monday. They're
moving this through as quickly as they can. I'm sure that a lot
of people show up to speak against it. But I
suspect that it's just going to be formality and he
will be confirmed, which is alarming
that this is the person that Governor Cox has decided to put
in that position. Lawmakers already can
withhold their calendars. That's something that they rushed
to get through in the legislature a couple of
years ago, um, changing the law so
that not only their calendars, but the calendars of public
employees, state staffers, were not subject to
open records requests, which, you know, now we don't
know what they're doing or who they are meeting with.
And the person who spearheaded that
for Reyes and ultimately lost in court
is going to be in charge of government records. So
this. This is not great. It really doesn't bode
well for the future of government transparency in
Utah. Now, if he denies your request, if he gets confirmed,
which I'm pretty sure he will, and he denies your request, you can always
go to court. But the legislature made it much harder
for people to do that, because in the past,
you could sue for attorney's fees. Right? Uh,
you could go to court and challenge a
denial of your grandma request and sue for.
To get your attorney's fees back. Now you have to prove that
the government acted with malice to get
your attorney's fees. And that's a very high bar
to meet. It's very alarming. This is the path we are going down
in terms of getting a hold of government records and
finding out what your elected officials are doing with your money
and holding them accountable. Accountable. The Republican
majority in the legislature, uh, they don't like
media scrutiny at all. They don't want you to know
what they are doing. That's why they exempted their
calendars from open meetings requests. That's why
they are not very forthcoming with that information.
They don't like that scrutiny. As you know, I'm
having to sue them in federal court because they
refuse to give me a press pass. My legal team
is claiming they're punishing me because they don't like the way that
I report on them. And that's why they don't want me to have a
media pass up at the legislature. So they are
allergic to public scrutiny. They don't like to be
held accountable. Now, we don't know how person will approach
this job. Um, but his
record so far, everything he's done in the past, it
really does not inspire a lot of confidence.
That's enough for this week.
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