Mike Lee hits some roadblocks
>> Bryan Schott: Until Monday. This is Barry, uh, Champlain
reminding you that sticks and stones
can break your bones, but words cause
permanent damage.
Hey there, and welcome to Special Session. I'm Bryan Schott.
This is the show where a surly, longtime Utah
journalist. That's me. Breaks down the important political news
of the last week and helps you understand the story and what
it all means.
I think the most obvious place to start this week is with the latest
developments with Senator Mike Lee's plan to sell off
millions of acres of public lands. That idea,
that proposal of his, hit a couple of roadblocks
this week, and he may not be able to
overcome them. If you'll remember, Senator Lee added a
provision to the one big beautiful bill, as
President Donald Trump calls it, that could have put
nearly 3 million acres of Forest Service
and Bureau of Land Management lands on the auction
block. Now, some analyses said that up to
250 million acres of land in 11 west
western states could potentially be up for sale.
Earlier this week, the Senate parliamentarian ruled
that the idea violated what they call the Byrd Rule. And
I'm gonna help you understand what that means. This massive
tax and spending bill is making its way through Congress as a
reconciliation bill, and that means it only needs
a simple majority to pass. The Senate
Democrats can't filibuster the bill, which means
that Republicans would need 60 votes to
overcome a filibuster, which they clearly don't have.
But when it's a reconciliation bill,
they. A simple majority.
Reconciliation was created as part of the
Congressional Budget act of 1974, and
that allows Congress to consider tax,
spending and debt limit legislation
in an expedited basis with no
filibuster. They've used it 22 times since
1974. It most recently has been
used when the same party has control of the
White House, the House of Representatives, and Senate. But
they don't have 60 votes in the Senate. So this is a way
to push budget priorities through
without having to overcome a
filibuster. Reconciliation can only be used
on very specific
issues. For one, they can use it to
address mandatory spending on entitlement
programs like Medicaid, Medicare. However, Social
Security is specifically exempted from the
process. There's part of reconciliation called
the Byrd Rule, and that is named after
the late Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia.
What it does is allow senators to block
extraneous provisions. They can
raise an objection and nick something
that does not specifically address
changes to the budget. So when you're
pushing legislation through
reconciliation, it has to be
budget related. The Senate parliamentarian
Is who acts as a referee when it comes to
reconciliation. They get to decide what's in
or out when an objection is raised.
Their decisions are not 100% binding. Senators
can vote to override the
parliamentarians decisions, but for the most part,
they abide by whatever they decide
when it comes to reconciliation. And
senator Lee's proposal to sell
millions of acres of public land was
ruled as an extraneous issue. It was kicked out
of the bill. Now, right before Democrats in the
senate announced that Lee's land sale had been
excluded from the bill, he took to social
media and said he was going to revise his
plan due to feedback from the hunting and
fishing community and others. Clearly,
he was trying to get ahead of the story that what he was trying to do
was not allowed. So he said he's going to be
proposing these changes. And then we found out what those changes
were a couple of days later. His revised plan removes
forest service lands from the bill, but it keeps blm
land in, and it still mandates the sale
of anywhere between 600,000 and 1.2
million acres of BLM land.
Lee is pushing this entire idea as a solution
to the housing crisis. Open up land where
people and build houses, because it's hard to find a
house in the western United States. And his
revised proposal does clarify
that any land that is sold must be used for
housing or housing purposes. And he specifies that
any land sold, any of this blm land that's sold must be
within five miles of a population
boundary. But the senate parliamentarian's decision is not
his only problem. The other is that there's
a lot of people opposed to this idea. They
don't like the idea of selling off
America's public, public lands. Critics say
this is just Lee trying once again
to shrink how much land the federal
government owns. The feds do own more than half
of the land in Utah, Nevada, Idaho and Alaska.
And in fact, they own 67% of the land
here in Utah, which is something that Utah leaders
don't like. Remember, the legislature
tried to sue to take control of some of
those lands from the federal government, and the supreme court
turned that lawsuit away. So
conservation and environmental groups absolutely
hate this idea. They think it is terrible. But they're not the
only ones. So do his fellow Republicans in
Congress. Montana Republican senator Steve
Dane said on Thursday that he's confident that this
provision, the revised provision, will not
survive the reconciliation process.
It'll be kicked out as extraneous. And even if it does,
he says he has enough votes in the senate to Kill it. Over in the
House, Representative Ryan Zinke, who served as the
Secretary of Interior in the first Trump administration,
he got this provision stripped out of the House
version of this bill. You remember Representative Celeste
Malloy tacked it in at the last minute,
and it would have sold up to 500,000 acres
of publicly owned land in the West.
Zinke got that stripped out. It's back in now.
And he said he would vote against the bill if Lee's land sale
provision remained intact. Now, we still don't
know of, as of this recording, whether this idea will
pass muster with the Senate
parliamentarian. My guess is it probably
won't because there are already existing
laws on the books governing the sale of public lands,
and this issue does circumvent
that, which is kind of one of the definitions
of what is an extraneous issue under the Byrd
rule. And that's the reason why Lee is trying to put
this in the reconciliation package. He
knows he would not be able to get a standalone
bill through the regular process. He
will not get 60 votes in the Senate. That would not happen at
all. And I think it would be a really heavy lift in the
House. He knows there's no way he could get
this passed through the regular process. And so he
wants to use the reconciliation process as an
end run around that to try and accomplish
something he's been wanting to do for years. And
why would he want to do that? Lee gets a lot of
campaign money from the real estate and the oil
and gas sectors, industries that might
be just a little more than interested in
the sale of public lands in the Western United States.
According to open secrets, between 2019 and
2024, Lee and his
affiliated PACs got
$677,000
from political action committees and individuals
related to the real estate industry, and
$456,000 into campaign
donations from the oil and gas
industry. So Lee has to overcome a whole bunch of
roadblocks in order to even get this provision
included in the reconciliation package,
not to mention getting in the
Senate and in the House. But the good news for
Lee is that it gets his ha, ha
funny social media posts about the assassination of
a Democratic Minnesota lawmaker and the
attempted assassination of another one out
of the news. By the way, he still hasn't
apologized for that, but we're moving on, and
everybody's now focused on what he's trying to do
with the public land sale.
By the way, the parliamentarian also nixed another
provision from the reconciliation bill that
is championed by member
of Congress from Utah On Friday,
the parliamentarian ruled out a
provision that created a nationwide school
vouchers program based on legislation pushed by
Representative Burgess Owens. And the provision and
reconciliation sought to enact a permanent
tax credit for individuals who donate
to organizations that support educational
expenses, including private school tuition. So if you
make a donation to one of these organizations,
you can claim a tax write off. So that
provision is out. Lease, public land sale is out,
probably will get nixed if it gets back
in, which is highly doubtful, but
who knows? The Senate is hoping to get this
bill passed sometime before July
4th, but now they're starting to waver on that. They may
not make it by the July 4th break, but there's a lot
of time between now and then, so anything can happen.
Stay tuned.
We're still trying to untangle what happened at, uh, the
no Kings rally in Salt Lake Lake City during that
March on June 14th. An armed volunteer
says that he saw a person with a rifle, detected a
threat, pulled out his weapon and fired. The person who had the
rifle, Arturo Gamboa, was hit, as
was Arthur Falasa Alou, who later died.
Gamboa was initially arrested by the Salt Lake City
police on suspicion of murder. Even though he did not fire his
weapon. He was released late last week after his
lawyers challenged the legality of his detention. The
investigation is still ongoing. The armed volunteer who
allegedly fired his weapon has not been named
publicly by officials and no charges have
been filed. There are also some other things that really
don't make sense about this whole situation.
I did some digging this week, and what, uh, I found
raises even more questions. The protest was
put on by a group called Utah 50
51. And that is an organization
that is loosely affiliated with the national
50:51 movement. They're not directly
AFFILIA affiliated. It's. It's a really loose
connection. It's not like the national organization
coordinates directly with the local
group. They're autonomous from each other,
so that's why they're loosely affiliated. The national movement actually cut
ties with the Utah group after the
shooting because the Utah group had armed
volunteers there, and that violates the
values of the national movement. I
got a hold of a copy of the application
for the protest for the event that was
filed with Salt Lake City. And it wasn't
Utah 5051 that was listed
as the group that was organizing this
event. It was a company called
Utah Protest and Rally llc.
That company is not a Utah company. It was
registered in Wyoming in April.
Essentially, it's a shell company. The paperwork filed
with The Wyoming Secretary of State
revealed an address at a
virtual office in a strip mall in
Sheridan, Wyoming, home to nearly 4,000
other shell companies, including companies that
are related to some of the money making ventures for
Donald Trump and his family. The company that does the Trump watch
is headquartered at that exact same address. So
is the company that does Trump's gold sneakers.
Wyoming laws are very conducive for the
creation of these anonymous shell
companies. There's not a lot of information the state
requires you to fil them. Over the past
couple of years, Wyoming has overtaken Delaware as the
place where people incorporate their
LLCs because they can do it anonymously.
Trying to find the people behind this company was
a dead end. There was some information on
the paperwork filed with the state that
listed the agent, the company that
helped them form this llc,
which is pretty much the only thing that's required. I
reached out to that company, but they made it known in
no uncertain terms that they had nothing to
do with this Utah Protest and Rally
llc. They also said they would not forward
any communications. They would not help me try to get in touch
with the people behind this company. So it was pretty much
a dead end. Also listed on the permit
as the organizer, as the local point
of contact, is a person by the name of
Michael Andaman. This person
appears to be a ghost. In fact, the
only presence for a Michael
Andaman linked to Utah is a
LinkedIn profile that is essentially brand new.
It was created sometime in the last month.
I can't tell whether or not it was created before
the M. June 14th protest or afterwards.
There's no profile picture. The only work
history it has on it is it lists
this person as an investor in some
company called Andaman Holdings.
When I looked up Andaman Holdings, I found a few of them
in other states, but really could not link anyone
named Michael Andaman to any of these
companies. So this person appears to be a ghost. It is
extremely weird. So you have a shell company
in Wyoming that I can't get any information
about and can't get a hold of the people in charge of
it. And you have a gentleman by the name of Michael
Andaman listed on this permit as the
organizer. And there's really no
indication whether or not this person exists.
And if this is a fictitious person using the
last name Andaman, that's really kind of a
terrible joke if you think about it. There are also some
questions that still remain about the use of these
armed volunteer peacekeepers. It appears
that local law enforcement was unaware
that they were going to be There on the permit
application for a, uh, demonstration that you have to file
with the city, it asks whether
organizers plan to hire private
security for the event or hire off
duty Salt Lake City police officers. The
person who filled it out chose none
and there is no option for the
use of private security, which is
what these volunteer peacekeepers would have been. There's no
option and there's no way to inform the police. I
asked the Salt Lake City police whether or not they were told
that there would be armed volunteers at this
event and they said no.
They said they had an awareness that event organizers
were going to have people on hand to help
facilitate the march, but they were not
classified as security. So there
are still a ton of questions
about this that remain unanswered.
I know the investigation is ongoing, but this is
really strange that the organizers
are using a, uh, shell company in Wyoming and
the group appears to be headed by a person
who may or may not exist.
Well, here we go again. In a repeat of what he
did back in 2021, Governor Spencer Cox
has declared June 29th. That's
this coming Sunday. I'm, uh, recording this on Friday, so
you may be already past this, but Sunday, June 29, as
a statewide day of prayer and fasting
for rain because Utah's in the
midst of a pretty bad drought. In fact, drought conditions
across the state have increased by more than
80% since earlier in this month. We've had three
hundred and eighty wildfires across the state this year
and it's, it's, it's not good, people. If
you look at the weather outlook, there's very little chance
of rain over the next few weeks and we've got
July 4th coming up. So people are going to be
shooting off fireworks which could make
the fire situation worse. Cox did
this back in 2021. And I don't know if you remember this.
Comedian John Oliver on his HBO show
last week tonight just
absolutely roasted Cox
for his declaration. He was
criticizing Utah's overuse of water
and then he lit into Cox for his call
for prayer to solve the situation.
>> Speaker B: And, and while Utah has recently passed
some new laws encouraging conservation, they've also
been pursuing a billion dollar pipeline to bring in what
some in Utah insist is additional surplus water
from Lake Powell, a surplus that anyone who so
much as looks at that lake would know simply does
not exist. And I know that that seems
wildly irresponsible on Utah's part. And that is because
it is. Though to be fair, it is still not the
worst idea they've had because just Watch this video
from the governor of Utah in response to drought
conditions there just last year.
>> Speaker C: We need more rain, and we need it now. We
need some divine intervention. That's why
I'm asking Utahns of all faiths to join
me in a Weekend of Prayer, June 4th through
the 6th. By praying collaboratively
and collectively asking God or whatever
higher power you believe in for more rain,
we may be able to escape the deadliest aspects of the
continuing drought.
>> Speaker D: Wow.
>> Speaker B: You know Utah is desperate when they are
to join in a prayer. I'm asking you tarns
of all faiths, whether that's the Mormon one or one of the many
wrong ones, to collectively pray to the
Christian God and the false deities. The rest of you worship
for more reign so that we can solve this crisis before
those of you who have not accepted Jesus Christ into your hearts
burn in the fires of eternal hell.
>> Bryan Schott: At the end of the segment, God, played by actor
Bryan Cox, showed up and he tore into
Cox just to drive the point home.
>> Speaker B: So let's hope those states get to work in the next two months and come
up with a decent plan, because we desperately need
to prepare for a much drier future in the
American west and do it more equitably this
time, because it is imperative that we learn from our
past mistakes. And for anyone who still
thinks that this is something we can just pray our way
out of, I actually have a special message
from a very special guest.
>> Speaker D: Hi, it's me.
>> Bryan Schott: God.
>> Speaker D: I know I don't often do this, but I just wanted to
appear in person to make one thing
perfectly clear. You
can't pray your way out of a drought.
Frankly, I'm insulted you even asked me.
You got yourself in this mess. Get
yourself the out of it. I gave
you plenty of water. It's not my fault you wasted
it building surfing lagoons and golf courses
in the middle of a desert
Utah.
Your capital is Salt Lake
City. It's next to a small
salt lake. A lake of
salt. Take the
hint. So, no, I
will not be answering your prayer for rain.
The point is, I want
humans of all faiths to come
together and act like rational
adults when it comes to water use.
Heed my words, my children, and
conserve the once bountiful gifts of rivers
and lakes which I created for you
on Earth.
Now.
>> Bryan Schott: Off. I know that that
really got under Cox's skin. And you could tell because
he and Lieutenant Governor Deidre Henderson, when
they would show up at Republican events, they would
specifically point out how they were mocked by the liberal media
for calling for prayers for rain.
Now everybody looks stupid. So they were taking a victory lap,
but you could tell that ribbing by Oliver
really got under his skin. This will be the third
time that Cox will call for a statewide day of
prayer in 2023. He did it as a thank you
for all of the record breaking moisture we had
in the previous winter. I'm not trying to criticize
Cox's call for prayer to solve the problem, but
you kind of think that maybe it's going to take
a little bit more than that. I mean, we're in the middle
of a mega drought. This is
driest multi decade period
the southwestern United States has seen
since the year 800. Scientists
are saying this is the driest as it's
ever been. And climate models show that
drier conditions will continue
in this area through the end of the 21st
century at least. So buckle up. It's going to be
really dry and it's only going to get drier. And I, uh, think
aren't really expected to improve. So calling for a
statewide day of prayer is doing something.
But also, you know, God helps those
who help themselves. So maybe we should be
praying that state leaders take a little more initiative,
don't you think?
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