Utah’s once-a-decade redistricting process is barreling to a close with both the legislative and independent redistricting committees are finishing up public meetings around the state. The independent group already has several map proposals online. They will present their final proposals to lawmakers on November 1. Chairman Rex Facer says they have to take a number of things into consideration as they draw their maps. “Part of what was going on in our mind was trying to think about the logistics of being a representative. One of the challenges we have is the rural parts of the state are sparsely populated, so those districts have to be really big, and the logistics of managing that size is really, really difficult,” Facer says.  --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/utah-politics/message

Given the strength of former President Donald Trump’s hold on the GOP, it’s reasonable to believe the party’s future is leaning harder into the MAGA agenda. But Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan thinks that’s the wrong path.Duncan says Trump gave his supporters and other Republicans a “short-term sugar high” with his bombastic and combative style. But, that rush also turned off a lot of voters and caused him to lose an election that should have been an easy layup.“We forgot to remind America of the policies conservatives are really good at. We need to own the economy and the best vision for people’s next job and their career advancement. We forgot to do it,” Duncan says. “We need to own the policy lanes to get back to the kitchen tables and boardrooms across America to start winning elections again.”Duncan lays out his vision for the future of the GOP in his new book “GOP 2.0. How the 2020 Election Can Lead to a Better Way Forward for America’s Conservative Party.”Duncan also talks about his experience in the aftermath of the 2020 election as Trump and his allies furiously worked to overturn his loss to Joe Biden. Duncan’s refusal to go along with Trump’s falsehoods about election fraud led to threats of violence against him and his family.“I was down in my office at the Capitol looking out my window. There were guys with AR-15s and body armor protecting me from potentially other Republicans, not terrorists,” Duncan said. “We had state troopers outside watching us while I was playing catch with my kids.”Geoff Duncan on Twitter: @GeoffDuncanGA --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/utah-politics/message

Rep. Suzanne Harrison, D-Draper, has a unique perspective on the COVID-19 pandemic. Not only is she a Utah Legislator, but she also works in a busy operating room as an anesthesiologist.“As someone who’s been working in our hospitals during this fourth wave, this is a huge problem,” Harrison says. “Our staff is exhausted and we’re having a hard time finding beds for the people that need care.”She thinks her Republican colleagues in the Legislature have needlessly politicized the public response to the pandemic, which has harmed the state’s effort to respond.“In some ways, legislative leaders are talking out of both sides of their mouth. On one side they’re saying getting the vaccine is important, but on the other side, they give credibility to anti-vaccine groups by giving them time to present at a legislative hearing. It undermines the work our doctors and nurses are doing to save lives,” Harrison says.Listen to the full conversation below.Rep. Suzanne Harrison on Twitter: @VoteSuz --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/utah-politics/message

On this week’s show, we chat with Grant Burningham. He’s the new Statewatch Editor for The Tribune and will lead our government and politics reporting team. He discusses the importance of holding public officials accountable, and providing context to political news.Author Ben Mezrich also joins the podcast this week. His book, “The Accidental Billionaires” about the founding of Facebook was turned into the Academy Award-winning film “The Social Network.”His new book, “The Antisocial Network: The GameStop Short Squeeze and the Ragtag Group of Amateur Traders That Brought Wall Street to its Knees” tells the crazy story about how a group of Reddit users were able to beat Wall Street. He also discusses what happens when sentiment drives trading rather than the intrinsic value of a thing. Grant Burningham on Twitter: @GrantebBen Mezrich on Twitter: @Benmezrich --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/utah-politics/message

Author Tom Nichols says democracy across the globe is under threat, but not for the reason you may think.Nichols, who is a contributing writer for The Atlantic, argues technologically advanced societies have increased their standard of living so rapidly, citizens are becoming bored, and care less about their fellow citizens.“People just got used to the idea that if things didn’t go the way they wanted or things didn’t happen in ways they approved of, it wasn’t the fault of some government policy, it was the fault of democracy, and they wanted to overhaul the whole system and replace it with something more rigid,” Nichols said.He says in his new book Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assult from within on Modern Democracy that this is happening across the globe as once democratic nations are abandoning protections for free speech and religion and other important institutions.Nichols says nowhere is it more evident that Americans don’t care about their fellow citizens than in our elections.“Our politics has become all about hurting other people, instead of trying to create something positive. We used to go to the polls and say, here’s what I’m voting for. Now we go to the polls to vote against something and we hope it makes others really mad. The idea that we could all work together toward something has become alien to millions of people,” Nichols said.Listen to the full conversation with Nichols below.Tom Nichols on Twitter: @RadioFreeTom --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/utah-politics/message

In 2017, then-Weber County Commissioner Kerry Gibson was the subject of a criminal investigation. After several months, prosecutors declined to file charges against Gibson because they said there was not enough evidence to charge him with the crime of misusing public money. The report on the investigation, and what prosecutors found, remained out of the public eye. Longtime local journalist Cathy McKitrick filed an open records request to make those findings public, but Gibson fought hard to keep it under wraps. “Gibson kept claiming the release of the documents would embarrass his family and tarnish his reputation. But, as a public official, he is subject to a higher level of scrutiny,” McKitrick says. After a three-year court battle, the Utah Supreme Court ruled earlier this month that Utah’s open records laws do apply, and McKitrick won access to the documents. She joins the podcast to discuss her fight to get the report, and why it’s important to hold public officials accountable.  --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/utah-politics/message

After a pandemic-related delay, the Census Bureau finally released the data Utah lawmakers will use to redraw the state’s political boundaries in the once-a-decade redistricting process. On this episode, we bring you an on-the-record conversation between The Salt Lake Tribune Editorial Board and Rep. Paul Ray, R-Clearfield and Sen. Scott Sandall, R-Tremonton, the chairs of the Legislature’s Redistricting Committee. Ray says he’s eager to get down to business, but he understands no matter what the final maps look like, not everybody will be happy.“Our job is to look at the data, put it together, and do what we feel is the best move for Utah. There’s always going to be a contingent of people that claim something is gerrymandered. There’s nothing we can do about that,” Ray says. They discuss their approach to drawing the state’s new political maps, how the public can get involved, and whether Utah’s districts are drawn to favor Republicans over Democrats.  --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/utah-politics/message

Sen. Mitt Romney was warned ahead of the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol that he might be the target of violence from supporters of former President Donald Trump. That warning came from fellow Sen. Angus King of Maine, who himself was alerted to possible violence by America’s top military leaders. That’s just one of the dozens of startling revelations contained in the new book “I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year” by Washington Post reporters Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig.Rucker says Gen. Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was alarmed by threats of violence on social media, so he gave Sen. King a heads up. “King then thought Mitt Romney is definitely a target. He’s persona non grata for Trump world and MAGA supporters. King gave Romney a call who was at home with his wife,” Rucker says.Rucker and Leonnig spoke at length with Romney for their book. Romney told the pair he informed his wife, Ann, about the threats of violence as he prepared to return to Washington to certify Democrat Joe Biden’s win in the 2020 election over Trump. Ann Romney pleaded with Mitt not to return to D.C., because it was too dangerous and his life could be at stake.“Mitt said he had to go back because it’s his job and his duty. ‘Nothing is going to keep me from going, and by the way, I’ll be safe in the U.S. Capitol. There’s nothing that’s going to happen to me there,’ he told her,” Rucker said. Rucker says Romney was warned by his staffers on January 6 he had to get to safety as rioters broke into the Capitol. That led to the dramatic video of Romney running into Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman who told him to return to the Senate chamber because the rioters were just seconds away.“It’s a chilling reminder of how close he came to real violence and potentially losing his life. He’s the first person, maybe the second person behind Mike Pence, but one of the first people those rioters would have wanted to destroy,” Rucker says. Philip Rucker on Twitter: @PhilipRucker --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/utah-politics/message

Rep. Blake Moore violated federal law by failing to report up to $1.1 million in stock trades. But, for that he was fined just $200 by the House Ethics Committee.Dave Levinthal, Deputy Washington Editor for Insider.com, who broke the Moore story, says these laws are in place for a reason.“It was put in place to defend against potential conflicts of interest or just give the public the ability to see what members of Congress are doing in terms of their personal stock trades at a time when they’re being lobbied by the very companies they themselves may invest in,” Leventhal said. “These companies many times will have tens of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars at stake with the decisions being made by the government, including contracts the government hands out to them. There’s a tangled web of financial interests here, and this was put in place to shine sunlight and provide transparency,” Levinthal added. He also says the small fine Moore was required to pay shows how poorly Congress does when it comes to regulating themselves. “It’s like having two football teams take the field and there’s no referee. The two teams just sort of decide how they’re going to play the game. Oftentimes you’ll have situations where the penalties are quite low because nobody really wants to put themselves into a situation that could be precarious,” Leventhal said.Dave Levinthal on Twitter: @DaveLevinthal --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/utah-politics/message

The American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, is holding its annual meeting in Salt Lake City next week. Lawmakers, mostly Republicans, from around the country will converge on Utah. There, they’ll meet with representatives from the private sector to discuss public policy proposals that may be implemented in statehouses around the country. Those proposals take the form of “model legislation” that serves as a template legislators can use to craft their own legislation.Critics of ALEC say the group promotes “pro business” bills that are simply “copy and paste” proposals. A recent investigation found at least 10,000 bills copied from ALEC’s model legislation were introduced nationwide over an eight-year period, with more than 2,100 being signed into law. Today we present an unedited, on-the-record conversation with The Salt Lake Tribune’s Editorial Board and representatives of ALEC. George Pyle and Tim Fitzpatrick from The Tribune engage in conversation with Utah Senate President Stuart Adams, R-Layton, who is the national chairman of ALEC this year, Lisa Nelson, ALEC’s CEO, Bill Meierling, ALEC’s Chief Marketing Officer and Johnathan Williams, ALEC’s Chief Economist. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/utah-politics/message

New Utah GOP Chairman Carson Jorgensen says he thinks the current debate over the teaching of race and racism in Utah’s schools is an important one to have, but he doesn’t want the rhetoric to lead to bad policy. “We have to be very specific when we’re talking about critical race theory because it’s become a kind of a byword at this point. A lot of people are labeling things that aren’t CRT as CRT at this point. It’s such a hot-button issue,” Jorgensen said.Critical race theory is not taught in Utah’s public schools. In June the Utah Board of Education passed rules on how race and equity are addressed in the state. Last month the Utah Republican Party passed a resolution against adding the topic to the curriculum in Utah’s schools. Asked about the proposal from Rep. Steve Christiansen, R-West Jordan, who has suggested banning “divisive topics” in Utah’s classrooms as a roundabout way of blocking topics parents might object to, Jorgensen said he disagreed with that approach.“We need to be careful. Banning anything that’s divisive could lead to math being considered divisive. When you ban something, there has to be a reason behind it,” Jorgensen said.  --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/utah-politics/message

America’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic was driven as much by politics as it was by science as policymakers tried to balance public health with economic health. Andy Slavitt, who headed up the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services during the Obama administration says 15 months on, many of the choices made by our leaders don’t look so great in hindsight.“It was a huge public health challenge, and that meant tough decisions and trade-offs. But a lot of what happened came back to politics, which caused us to take a very different approach. And it was to our detriment,” Slavitt said. Slavitt is the author of the new book Preventable: The Inside Story of How Leadership Failures, Politics, and Selfishness Doomed the U.S. Coronavirus Response. He’s also the host of the “In the Bubble” podcast which examines the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Earlier this year, Utah lawmakers passed the so-called “pandemic endgame” bill, which ended Utah’s mask mandate on April 10 of this year. They also moved to rein in the power of public health officials.Despite those maneuvers, the number of cases in Utah is rising again as the delta variant of the virus takes hold. “I wish nothing more than a virus would respond to legislation. That would be really nice. We can fool ourselves for some amount of time, but that’s not real political leadership,” Slavitt said. Slavitt also details why the Trump administration made the cynical decision to leave the response to the pandemic up to the states, and the real story behind “Operation Warp Speed.”You can listen and subscribe to the podcast for free. Leave a rating and review for the show on Apple Podcasts or Podchaser.  --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/utah-politics/message

Last year, Sen. Mike Lee caused a bit of a firestorm on social media when he published a tweetstorm attacking democracy. “Democracy isn’t the objective; liberty, peace, and prosperity are. We want the human condition to flourish,” Lee tweeted. Lee’s statement was surprising, but it really shouldn’t be according to Ben Rhodes, former Deputy National Security Advisor under President Barack Obama. “There’s always been a definition of America that says anyone can be American. You can come from anywhere, look like anything, believe anything and be equally American. But for certain people, America is rooted in a very exclusive either ethnic framework or Judeo-Christian belief structure,” Rhodes said. Rhodes was a guest on the “Utah Politics” podcast this week. He says broad demographic shifts in the country are causing a debate over what it means to be American.“A democracy in a majority non-white country kind of changes our whole conception of power. We’re really debating our national identity here. And democracy means that people who look different might increasingly be in charge, and that causes some concern,” Rhodes said. Rhodes also discusses the rise of authoritarian movements across the globe, which he examines in his new book “After the Fall: Being American in the World We’ve Made.” He also talks about the pullout of American troops from Afghanistan and how working on the 1997 re-election campaign of New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani shifted his whole worldview. Subscribe to the podcast for free here.  --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/utah-politics/message

A proposed bill to bar transgendered athletes from participating in girl’s sports in Utah will come back for the second time in the 2022 Utah Legislature. Drew Armstrong is the co-founder of “Dragon Dads,” a support group for fathers of transgender and non-binary children, is a Utah Republican delegate. Armstrong says the proposal is a solution in search of a problem. “I’m frustrated with this because if we ran a bill that said we shouldn’t allow livestock in high school hallways, it would probably affect a larger portion of our student population,” said Armstrong. Armstrong, who is the father of a transgendered child, is only half-joking.“I’ve heard stories about people bringing a cow into the school or something like that. I’ve heard no stories about their being a problem with transgender students playing in sports in high schools or junior high or on the college level in Utah,” says Armstrong. Armstrong is our guest on the podcast to discuss the raft of anti-transgender bills that have popped up around the country in recent years. He also talks about the growing visibility of transgender and non-binary people in popular culture, and how he squares being a Utah Republican delegate with the GOP-led efforts to restrict transgender rights. You can subscribe to the podcast for free here.  --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/utah-politics/message

On this week’s episode, we go inside The Salt Lake Tribune and listen in to a conversation between Rep. Blake Moore and the Tribune’s Editorial Board.Moore spoke with the board earlier this week to discuss a myriad of issues from Hill Air Force Base to public lands and the future of the Republican Party. Moore also discussed whether he’s getting any push back from within the House Republican Caucus because he voted in favor of establishing a bipartisan commission to investigate the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. “I haven’t been treated differently. I haven’t been forced into anything. I haven’t received a single call,” said Moore. “I remember talking to (House Minority Leader) Kevin McCarthy and asked if this would affect me being on the Armed Services Committee, which is super important for me and the district. He said absolutely not. That has nothing to do with it,” added Moore.  --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/utah-politics/message

The sight of Sen. Mitt Romney, who was the GOP nominee for president just nine years ago, getting booed by Utah Republicans was “just terrible,” says longtime political pundit Chris Matthews.“I don’t understand it. He didn’t do anything wrong,” Matthews told the Tribune on this week’s Utah Politics podcast. “He’s been a Republican all his life. He’s tough on taxes. He’s tough on big government. He’s the classic conservative.”Romney was showered with catcalls by Republican delegates at the state convention last month after he voted twice to remove former President Donald Trump from office in a pair of Senate impeachment trials.Matthews, the former host of Hardball on MSNBC and author of the new book This Country: My Life in Politics and History, says the GOP has changed so drastically since Romney lost the 2012 election that they’ve come unmoored from what they used to stand for.“What do they (Republicans) believe in as policy? Are they a party of free trade? No more. Are they a party of fiscal responsibility? No more,” he said.Mathews blames Trump for leading the GOP astray.“Trump says those aren’t his concerns. Sometimes I wonder what Trump really cares about. I don’t know what Trump really thinks about anything,” Matthews said.He began his career in Washington working for the Capitol Police, which gives him a unique perspective on the attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters in January.“Trump refused to say he lost. That’s the chivalrous, patriotic thing to do, and Trump refused to do it,” Matthews said. “In politics, if you lose, you admit it. It’s a hard night, and you have to do it. That’s a big part of American politics. It’s not in the Constitution, but it’s what you do,” he says.Matthews also discusses his time working for Utah Sen. Frank Moss, the last Democrat in the U.S. Senate from the Beehive State and his departure from his television show. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/utah-politics/message

The controversy over critical race theory is not confined to Utah. Several other Republican-controlled states are moving to restrict how race and racism are addressed in their K-12 classrooms.Axios race and justice reporter Russell Contreras joins us this week to discuss how the controversy is playing out in other states.He says fears that teachers are introducing the concept in their classrooms are mostly unfounded.“In public schools, very seldom is someone bringing up critical race theory. That’s not the setting,” Contreras said. “They usually keep lessons very simple about diversity. I have never heard of a fifth-grade teacher saying they’re going to talk about critical race theory in a lesson about the American revolution. I’ve never heard of it.”Contreras says many of the bills to ban critical race theory allow teachers to talk about issues like slavery, but they can’t discuss who was responsible, which affects our understanding of America.“How can you talk about why Utah was founded without talking about the discrimination of LDS people in the American Midwest and Ohio? They faced violence based on their religious beliefs and had to flee west. Who is responsible for that?” he asks. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/utah-politics/message

Critical race theory is not currently taught in Utah’s schools, and there are no plans to introduce the curriculum anytime soon. So why are so many people worried about it?The concept looks at American history by examining how racism and racial issues have shaped events and led us to where we are today.“A lot of people grew up with a pretty narrow view of American history,” says Darlene McDonald of the Utah Black Roundtable. “We learned about Martin Luther King Jr. Maybe we learned a little bit about Malcolm X. But they don’t know about Bloody Sunday or Marcus Garvey or Nat Turner.”“A lot of people grew up believing the civil rights movement began and ended with the Reverend Dr. King,” she added.McDonald says there are a lot of things in American history that make people very uncomfortable, and that’s one of the reasons we shy away from confronting them.“We want to have this idealistic idea of what slavery was,” she says. “People didn’t just show up to work one day. They did not work eight hours, then went home to the family, ate a good meal, went to bed and went back to work the next day. But, that’s what people want to have in their minds of what it was and who the slave owners were.” --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/utah-politics/message

Utah is preparing for the once-per-decade process of redrawing political maps. This week we take a deep dive into redistricting with Rex Facer, the chairman of Utah’s independent redistricting commission. He discusses the rules and considerations he and the other members of the commission have to consider when they get down to drawing new map proposals later this year. “We don’t want to agree beforehand to draw maps that are going to force competitiveness where competitiveness wouldn’t naturally occur,” says Facer. “Competitive elections are a good thing because it forces us to have more thoughtful conversations on ideas. But we have to realize that not every place is going to end up with competitive elections,” he adds. He also discusses how the delay in census data makes their job more difficult.Rex Facer on Twitter: @RexFacerSubscribe to the podcast for free here.  --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/utah-politics/message

This week on the “Utah Politics” podcast, we discuss the future of the Republican Party and whether the GOP needs to break up with former President Donald Trump. First, we speak with Evan McMullin. The former independent presidential candidate joined with 150 other Republicans to release a “Call for American Renewal,” urging the GOP to focus on issues like democracy, constitutional order and ethical government. “It’s time to have a new conversation in America, and it shouldn’t be driven by personalities,” says McMulllin. “It should be driven by principles and ideas. I think Americans wat to get back to ideas and talk less about the personalities.”Then we’re joined by Rep. Candace Pierucci, R-Riverton, who is one of the youngest members of the Utah Legislature. She says the party needs to find a way to end the divisiveness because there’s room for a wide range of conservative voices in the GOP. Evan McMullin on Twitter: @EvanMcMullinRep. Candace Pierucci on FacebookSubscribe to the podcast for free here.  --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/utah-politics/message