A few weeks ago, 300,000 people received a letter from the Lt. Governor’s office telling them that their voter registration information — which they had specifically chosen to keep private — would soon be publicly available to anyone willing to pay a fee. Scary! What makes it worse is that the bill behind it was run by Sen. John Johnson and Rep. Trevor Lee, two legislators with a well-documented history of trying to turn voter data into a commodity.

We want to explain exactly what SB153 does. But we also want to give you some context that comes specifically from our experience running campaigns in this state. Because in some ways, this law is genuinely concerning, and in other ways, it brings Utah back in line with how every other state in America already works and how Utah used to work, too.

First: What Even Is a Voter File, and Why Does It Matter?

Every state maintains a voter registration list — a database of everyone who is registered to vote. Depending on the state, that list contains some combination of your name, address, party affiliation, age range, and vote history, meaning which elections you participated in, but never who you voted for. This is called the voter file. It is the foundational tool of political campaigning everywhere in America, and it has been for decades.

Who can access it, and under what conditions, varies by state. After SB153, Utah joined more than 30 states that allow voter files to be purchased by anyone with a political interest. Another 19 states limit access to specific groups like campaigns, parties, nonprofits, and journalists. Zero states lock it away entirely. The voter file is how candidates find out who their voters are. It’s how parties identify their own members. It’s how campaigns figure out who to talk to, who to turn out, and who they actually represent. It is not a secret list. It is the basic infrastructure of participatory democracy.

What the voter file typically contains is closer to what used to be in the phone book: your name, your address, your party affiliation, and a record of whether you voted in recent elections. That’s it. The goal is to help candidates reach voters. Not to expose you, not to surveil you — to let the people running for office in your community know that you exist.

Utah was a dramatic outlier in this landscape.

What the Bill Actually Does

SB153 rolls back voter registration privacy protections that have been in place since 2018. Starting May 25, your full legal name, voter ID number, home and mailing address, voting precinct and districts, party affiliation, voter status, and a history of which elections you’ve voted in will be available to anyone who pays a fee to access the state voter list.

A few things that are important to say upfront. Your Social Security number, driver’s license number, and full date of birth remain private for everyone, under both state and federal law. It also does not include who you voted for in any given election.

There is no public lookup tool where anyone could type in your name and pull up your address. It’s not a list posted on a website somewhere. There is no searchable database. What exists is a bulk voter file that can be purchased from the Lt. Governor’s office for $1,050, only for specific political purposes, by campaigns, parties, and political organizations. Nobody is walking up to a government counter and asking for your address specifically.

The law also clarifies that voter lists can only be purchased for those specific political purposes. It is a class A misdemeanor to knowingly disclose information obtained from the voter list on the internet. The doxxing concern we’ve heard a lot about is real and valid, but the law does have guardrails.

To keep your record protected under the new law, you have to qualify as an “at-risk voter.” That category covers victims or threatened victims of domestic or intimate partner violence (with or without court orders or police reports), law enforcement officers, military members, public figures, and people protected by a court order. It also applies to anyone who lives with someone in any of these categories. The deadline to apply is May 6. Forms are at vote.utah.gov/voter-privacy-information.

Here’s the part that got buried in early coverage: the 300,000 letters were just the first wave, sent to voters in “withheld” status. Another million voters will lose their “private” status. All told, this law affects 1.3 million of Utah’s roughly 1.8 million active registered voters. That is most of the state.

How We Got Here: A Brief History of Utah Being the Only State Like This

Before 2018, Utah voter registration information was public, like it is in most states. Then the Legislature passed two laws — SB74 and HB218 — that created a new opt-in privacy system.

The implementation created a mess that nobody fully intended. Utah ended up with two distinct privacy categories that worked very differently from each other, and most people had no idea which one they were in or what the difference actually meant.

“Private” voters still had their information shared with political parties, candidates, and their contractors — it just wasn’t available to the general public. “Withheld” was the genuinely locked category, where records could not be released under any circumstances. So if you were a domestic violence survivor who needed real protection, “withheld” was the status that was actually private. “Private” was more of a medium setting: your information was still going to campaigns and parties.

The problem is that both categories ballooned far beyond what anyone anticipated. The “private” category grew to around a million voters, many of whom appear to have ended up there without actively choosing it. This is something we know from working in Utah politics: the way voter registrations were processed, including through the DMV, pushed a significant number of people into private status by default rather than by deliberate decision. The private record opt-in is just a big check box at the bottom of the voter registration form, so a lot of folks just… checked it. Many voters were classified as private without any reason listed for the classification.

The result: since 2018, Utah has been the only state in the country allowing voters to withhold their information without a reason. Utah’s deputy director of elections has said the change will make election administration “cleaner and simpler” following multiple confusing changes to privacy status over the past decade. The system was genuinely broken in ways that had downstream consequences for everyone.

Since 2018, the Legislature has debated whether those laws went too far and created unintended consequences. What they never did was find a careful, targeted fix — something that cleaned up the accidental-default problem while keeping strong protections for people with genuine safety needs. Instead, they handed the bill to two of their least careful members and got SB153.

About John Johnson and Trevor Lee

These are two of the most reliably problematic actors in the Utah Legislature, and that track record matters for understanding how this bill got written.

Trevor Lee, in particular, has spent multiple sessions trying to push voter data into territory that would make SB153 look modest. Earlier this very session, he had a voter registration cleanup bill that he amended on the floor into a voter data-selling scheme. The Senate killed it immediately.

Johnson’s stated rationale is that SB153 brings Utah in line with federal law. Utah’s previous system had created real legal exposure. Phil Lyman sued the state in 2025, arguing that the “withheld” status violated the National Voter Registration Act, which requires voter records to be open to public inspection. That lawsuit was ultimately dismissed because the judge ruled Lyman wasn’t directly harmed as a candidate, but the underlying legal tension was real, and it was part of why the Legislature acted.

What the law does poorly is the at-risk exemption. The protection may be too narrow and too bureaucratically burdensome. The threshold should be lower, and the process should be easier. That is a legitimate and important criticism of this specific bill.

The Implications for Democracy

We have spent years working to elect Democrats in Utah — one of the most under-resourced political environments in the country and there have been very real consequences to the 2018 laws.

Running competitive campaigns requires knowing who you’re talking to. When a Democratic candidate is trying to reach low-turnout Democrats in their district to encourage them to vote, those voters need to exist in the data. They might go to them with a different message than a voter they are trying to persuade. When a campaign is going door to door, the doors need addresses behind them. When a volunteer is phone banking, they need a list of actual voters in the district.

But here’s what we have watched happen in Utah because of a voter file where over half the state was effectively invisible to campaigns: Democratic candidates in competitive districts couldn’t find their own voters. Campaigns couldn’t identify who to persuade, who to turn out, or who needed to hear from them. Those voters didn’t get mailers, didn’t get door knocks, and didn’t hear from the candidate at all — which made them less likely to participate, which made already-difficult races harder to win.

It’s also harder to register new voters because we don’t know if private voters are unregistered or registered.

In a well-funded race, campaigns can partially work around a broken voter file by purchasing enhanced data from commercial brokers — third-party companies that compile voter information from dozens of other sources and sell it back for a premium. Which means campaigns with large budgets could reconstruct some of what was missing. Underfunded Democratic campaigns in competitive districts, which describes most of our work, could not. The voter file gap didn’t hurt everyone equally. It hurt the campaigns that could least afford it the most.

All of this is not to say that you should be happy that your data will soon be more accessible, but it may help to explain the motivations behind the legislature taking up this issue during a competitive election year.

What You Should Do Right Now

If you were in “private” or “withheld” status and have genuine safety concerns about your information being accessible, the deadline to apply for at-risk status is May 6. Here is exactly who qualifies:

• Victims, or likely victims, of domestic violence or dating violence

• Law enforcement officers

• Individuals protected by a protective or protection order

• Members of the armed forces

• Public figures

• Anyone who resides with a person in any of the above categories

Forms are at your county clerk’s office and at vote.utah.gov/voter-privacy-information.

And if you want this law to change, you know what to do. Contact your state legislators — and while you’re at it, make sure Sen. John Johnson and Rep. Trevor Lee hear from you too. They sponsored this bill. They should know how you feel about it.

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And since people keep asking — and we should have done this a while ago — we figured it was past time to give you the full picture.

This week we turned the mics on ourselves. Our backgrounds, how we got into this work, how our company came together, and why we are so annoyingly optimistic about Utah.

Listen in on your favorite podcast app or watch on Youtube.

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Listen on your favorite podcast app or you can see the full interview on YouTube:

Watch on YouTube

Amazingly, in the middle of everything that is happening in American politics right now, something went right. Not because the powerful suddenly grew a conscience. Not because the other side gave up or gave in. But because enough regular people decided that the truth mattered, that fairness mattered, and that (despite wondering if anyone would ever listen) they were willing to fight for it.

The Prop 4 repeal petition fell below the signature threshold this morning. The Lt. Gov will need to make the official certification at the end of April but it will, most likely, not appear on the November 2026 ballot.

This ballot initiative to permanently return gerrymandering power to the Utah Legislature — backed by $4.35 million from a Trump-aligned dark money PAC, the President of the United State’s endorsement, Don Jr. ‘s (and Ted Nugent’s for some reason?) online promotion, our senior Senator and Attorney General, Turning Point USA, and the full weight of the Utah Republican Party — is over.

The people who stopped it were regular people. They were volunteers, small dollar donors, the team at Better Boundaries who have been fighting this fight for eight years. Lawyers and plaintiffs from the League of Women Voters of Utah and Mormon Women for Ethical Government who took this all the way to the Utah Supreme Court. Utahns who got a letter or a phone call, learned what they’d actually signed, and decided to do something about it. People who believed and kept believing – despite years of setbacks – that voters should get to choose their representatives and not the other way around.

Even when we are up against some of the most powerful people in the literal world, the underdog can still win. Simply by doing the right thing.

A Very Brief Retelling Of A Very Long Grudge Match

In 2018, a group of regular Utahns decided to do something about gerrymandering. People who thought it was wrong that politicians got to draw the districts that kept them in power, and who believed other Utahns would agree if they just asked them. They gathered hundreds of thousands of signatures — up against some of the toughest signature gathering laws in the country — put Proposition 4 on the ballot, and won. The independent redistricting commission was law.

The Legislature gutted it two years later.

They passed SB200 in 2020, stripping the commission of real authority and giving themselves the power to ignore its maps entirely. In 2021, they drew new congressional maps that carved Salt Lake County into four separate districts — splitting the most Democratic part of the state so precisely that all four congressional seats were effectively guaranteed Republican forever. Experts called it one of the most aggressive gerrymanders in the country. The Legislature called it their constitutional right.

The League of Women Voters of Utah and Mormon Women for Ethical Government sued. The case moved through the courts for years — slowly, expensively, unglamorously — the way that real legal fights actually work. In 2024, the Utah Supreme Court ruled that the Legislature cannot erase voter-passed reforms that exist specifically to check legislative power. In August 2025, the judiciary reinstated Prop 4 in full and ordered fair maps.

The Legislature submitted a replacement map and emailed their own supporters calling it the map that would “stop the Democrats.” The judge rejected it. She adopted the plaintiffs’ map instead.

And before the ruling was even cold, the Utah Republican Party had a bit of a public meltdown and launched a petition to repeal Prop 4 entirely — using, ironically, the same citizen initiative mechanism that made Prop 4 law in the first place. Funded by $4.35 million from Securing American Greatness Inc., a Trump-aligned PAC. Out-of-state signature gatherers spread across Utah, misleading voters and using every resource available to hit their numbers, on the backs of vulnerable people.

They submitted over 200,000 signatures and cleared the very difficult geographic thresholds in exactly 26 of 29 Senate districts (exactly what is required by Utah law). In their most vulnerable district, their margin was just 658 signatures.

Under Utah law (because yes, the Legislature has historically wanted to make these initiatives as hard as possible), voters have 45 days from when their signature is posted to remove their name from a petition. Volunteers jumped into action. They made calls. They texted. Knocked on doors. Drove around the valley. Organized. People signed up for phonebanks and spent their evenings reaching out to voters who had been misled, explaining what the petition actually did, and walking them through how to remove their names.

On the last night of the legislative session, the Legislature passed a law banning prepaid postage for signature removal forms — a direct attempt to slow the campaign down. The Governor signed it the next morning. Voters kept going anyway.

Nearly 1,000 people in Senate District 15 alone removed their signatures so far. Nine thousand people statewide decided they didn’t want their name on that petition after all. This morning, SD15 fell 259 signatures below the threshold. The petition to repeal Prop 4 failed.

Absolutely none of this was guaranteed. None of it was easy. It happened because people spent years in courtrooms fighting for something most people never even heard about, and because thousands of volunteers believed that an informed voter is a powerful voter. The underdogs should not have won.

That is not a small thing. Especially right now.

Why We Get A Little Emotional

It would be easy, in this particular political moment, to look at four million dollars and a presidential endorsement and conclude that the math just doesn’t work for regular people anymore. It’s easy to be cynical. To think that the rules are written for someone else (and they are) and it’s not worth trying. That showing up is a nice idea that doesn’t actually move the needle. Today is evidence against that conclusion. Not a guarantee — but real, documented, specific evidence that people who cared about something real and true, who refused to stop, who trusted that other voters would care too if they just knew what they’d actually signed — were right. They deserve this moment. And in 2026, that matters more than this one petition.

We’re Not Done (Sorry, We Never Are)

There are still voters out there who were misled and still deserve the chance to remove their names. The 45-day window doesn’t close until April 23rd, and we are running phonebanks every Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday until it does. Every person who was tricked deserves the opportunity to fix it and to have their voice heard.

Come make calls with us.

If you signed the petition and want your name removed: go to protectutahvoters.com, print the removal form, sign it, and mail or deliver it to your county clerk.

But…

Rob Axson, Utah Republican Party chair and leader of this now-failed initiative, said this morning: “This fight is not over but just beginning.” Amazingly, he’s telling the truth, and we’re not pretending otherwise.

Senate President Stuart Adams has floated calling a special session to put a constitutional amendment on the November ballot — language that would give the Legislature ultimate authority over voter-passed initiatives (including Prop 4). They tried something similar in 2024 with Amendment D, and the Supreme Court invalidated it for deceiving voters and failing to follow the law. They’re likely to try again.

But today, we let this be what it is. Eight years of work. Thousands of people showed up. An underdog story that ended the right way for the right reasons.

It doesn’t always. But today it did. And congratulations are in order.

But once the dust settles, the feelings can subside but the numbers never do. Because numbers tell you what actually happened.

So for all of our fellow data nerds, chart lovers, and people who enjoy staring at legislative spreadsheets like they’re baseball stats, this is for you. We’ve pulled together the numbers from the 2026 session and tried to interpret what they mean, the trends, and the outliers.

You can find the big themes, gossip, and breakdowns of specific bills over on the podcast and our last Substack. Today is just for the data.

More Bills, Fewer Results

This year set a record for bill introductions. The legislature filed 1,016 bills, the highest number we’ve seen. But more bills doesn’t necessarily mean more productivity.

Out of those 1,016 bills:

• 734 received at least one vote somewhere in the process

• 540 ultimately passed

That’s still a huge volume of legislation, but interestingly, it’s not higher than the record passage numbers from the last two sessions.

So, legislators had a lot of ideas this year but they just didn’t turn as many of them into law.

There are a few possible explanations. Maybe the legislature spent more time fighting internally? Maybe leadership was more selective about what they allowed to move? Or maybe the girls were fighting? Or maybe introducing a lot of culture-war messaging bills that were never going anywhere clogged up the system?

Looking at you, Trevor Lee.

At Elevate we tracked 166 bills closely throughout the session.

Here’s how those categories performed:

• Bills we supported: 44% pass rate

• Bills we opposed: 36% pass rate

• Bills we didn’t track or we’re neutral on: 57% pass rate

The neutral category had the highest success rate, which makes sense. A lot of the bills we don’t take a position on are the kind of technical or procedural legislation that quietly moves through the process, clean up code, were just fine pieces of legislation.

Still, the numbers are a good reminder that the legislature passes a lot of bills most people never hear about while the controversial ones soak up all the attention.

This is one of our paid subscriber posts. If you value the deep data analysis and charts, consider subscribing for free and if you like it, you can keep the $6/month subscription.

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It’s officially been one week since the legislative session ended. We meant to get this recap out sooner… but between the post-session fog, Gabi’s literal concussion fog, catching up on actual life, laundry, and sleep, and trying to remember what daylight looks like, that just didn’t happen.

So here we are — slightly rested, marginally hydrated, and finally ready to talk about what the hill just happened.

We’ve talked through the big themes, the drama, and the gossipy moments over on YouTube and the podcast. So this won’t be that. In fact, in consideration of word count, we haven’t included much commentary here. But many have asked for a comprehensive list of what passed and what didn’t. So, for those of you who like your politics with bill numbers attached (nerds), here’s the rundown of most of what went down this session or at least the big things we were tracking.

Win Wins: Good Bills That Passed

We know we didn’t give you a lot of good news during session. We feel bad about that because there are genuinely positive things that happen. But when you’re drowning in bad bills and chaotic hearings, it’s hard not to focus on the fires instead of the things quietly going right.

But that’s also part of the problem with politics and media. The bad stuff dominates the conversation, and the good work can disappear under the noise. We don’t want to fall into that trap either. So before we get back into the depressing stuff, here are the bills that actually made things better or sorta nudged Utah in a better direction.

SB0069 — School Device Revisions (”Bell-to-Bell Phone Ban”) | Sen. Lincoln Fillmore – Extends Utah’s school phone ban from “during instructional time” to the full school day — bell to bell instead of just during class. Kids can still have phones; they just can’t be on them all day at school.

HB0068 — Housing and Community Development Amendments | Rep. Calvin Roberts – Consolidates Utah’s fragmented housing programs into a single new Division of Housing inside the Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity, with one director accountable to the Governor. Housing advocates have been asking for this kind of coordination for years. It responds to actual audit findings about the lack of coordination.

HB0051 — Adoption Amendments | Rep. Katy Hall – Significant updates to Utah’s adoption laws: strengthens protections for birth parents, reduces coercive financial practices by agencies, increases transparency and public accountability, and improves oversight.

HB0075 — American Indian and Alaska Native Education Amendments | Rep. Christine Watkins – Reinforces Utah’s commitment to American Indian and Alaska Native students by updating existing law, formalizing the state education plan, and allowing grant funds to be used for essential learning materials.

HB0087 — Animal Crime Victim Amendments (”Biscuit’s Bill”) | Rep. Verona Mauga – Speeds up rescue and care for abused animals by allowing courts to transfer or forfeit them before a criminal case concludes so animals aren’t stuck in limbo for months while cases drag on. Also allows courts to make abusers pay sheltering and vet costs.

HB0122 — Pregnant and Postpartum Inmate Amendments | Rep. Candice Pierucci – Extends postpartum recovery protections for incarcerated people to 12 weeks, limits the use of restraints during that period, and extends access to social workers to help with childcare and reunification planning.

HB0290 — Child Tax Credit Amendments | Rep. Tracy Miller – Raises the income limits for Utah’s $1,000 per child tax credit phase-out, letting more middle-income families qualify for the full credit.

HB0329 — State Employee Maternity and Leave Amendments | Rep. Ariel Defay – Expands paid family leave for state employees and public school workers, increasing postpartum recovery leave from three weeks to nine weeks and creating new paid leave options for adoption and other family situations.

HB0390 — Veterans PTSD Clinical Research Amendments | Rep. Jen Dailey-Provost – Supports clinical research into innovative PTSD treatment options for veterans including emerging therapies that fall outside current standard-of-care pathways like psilocybin, MDMA, and DMT. Utah’s veteran community has been waiting for this kind of legislative backing for evidence-based solutions, and it’s genuinely good to see it pass.

HCR006 — Concurrent Resolution Regarding the Utah Housing Strategic Plan | Rep. Stephen Whyte – Formally endorses the state’s Utah Housing Strategic Plan and commits lawmakers and the governor to support and track its implementation.

HB0296 — Water Commitment Amendments | Rep. Hoang Nguyen – Creates a pathway for conserved water to be directed to the Great Salt Lake rather than being automatically funneled toward future development and consumptive use. In a state watching the lake collapse in real time, this is a meaningful step.

HB0339 — Street Medicine Amendments | Rep. Tyler Clancy – Directs the University of Utah Health to study the creation of a formal street medicine program bringing medical care directly to people experiencing unsheltered homelessness in Davis, Salt Lake, and Utah counties, and requires the state to develop statewide guidelines and best practices.

SB0244 — Cardiac Emergency Response Plans in Schools | Sen. Jerry Stevenson – Requires schools to develop cardiac emergency response plans, including proper placement of AEDs and training staff in CPR and first aid.

SB0051 — School Safety Modifications | Sen. Derrin Owens – Creates a statewide system for tracking and sharing information about students who have made credible threats of violence when they transfer districts, with privacy protections and legal immunity for staff who report in good faith. The goal is to help schools identify dangerous situations earlier and prevent violence.

The Dodged Bullets: Bad Bills That Died

Some of the best parts about this year’s session were the moments where bad bills died. Continuing on with good news… Here are the bad bills that didn’t become law.

HB0088 — Public Assistance Amendments | Rep. Trevor Lee – The central immigration bill of the session. Would have tightened verification of lawful presence to receive most public benefits — narrowing existing exceptions and restricting access to programs for undocumented Utahns including WIC, immunizations, and communicable disease treatment. It failed. Seven attempts across the session, including a resurrection through HB386 after the original died.

HB0386 — Immigration Amendments | Rep. Lisa Shepherd – After HB88 failed after multiple attempts, this bill was used as a vehicle to insert essentially the same language. No Senator wanted to attach their name and reputation to this poison pill.

HB0085 — State Sovereignty Amendments | Rep. Lisa Shepherd – Declared that the UN, WHO, and World Economic Forum have zero legal authority in Utah and blocked state and local officials from declaring emergencies based on those organizations’ declarations. Passed the House, failed in the Senate.

HB0095 — Public Employee Gender-specific Language Requirements | Rep. Nicholeen Peck – Would have protected public employees — including teachers — from discipline for refusing to use a student’s preferred pronouns, as long as they claimed a religious or moral objection. Didn’t even make it through the first step.

HB0096 — Ivermectin Amendments | Rep. Trevor Lee – Would have allowed pharmacists to dispense ivermectin without a patient-specific prescription through a standing order system. Failed in committee.

HB0152 — Educational Vaccine Exemption Amendments | Rep. Trevor Lee – Would have made it easier to get a school vaccine exemption by eliminating the requirement that parents complete an education module or consult with a provider first — stripping out the exact “pause and learn” step designed to reduce misinformation. Failed in committee.

HB0156 — Blood Transfusion Amendments | Rep. Kristen Chevrier – Would have required hospitals to accept directed blood donations from patients’ chosen donors — rooted in vaccine misinformation — and shielded hospitals from liability when that blood caused harm. Passed the House, then failed in a Senate committee. Pour one out. Bring Your Own Blood is cancelled for the second year in a row.

HB0183 — Sex Designation Amendments | Rep. Mark Strong – Initially a bill run by Rep. Trevor Lee, but after his toxicity killed the rest of his bills, he tried to gift this to another legislator. Would have replaced “gender” with “sex” throughout state law, wiping out legal protections tied to gender identity in housing, employment, and more for transgender Utahns. It got slightly less bad and passed the House and then failed in the Senate.

HB0193 — Transgender Medical Procedures Amendments | Rep. Nicholeen Peck – Would have banned all public funding for gender-affirming medical care, including through Medicaid and public employee health plans. Failed in Senate committee. Nicholeen Peck is closely following Trevor Lee for toxic and unproductive legislators.

HB0196 — Highway Designation Amendments | Rep. Trevor Lee – Would have let the Legislature override cities to rename local roads — and immediately used that power to designate Salt Lake City’s 900 South as “Charlie Kirk Boulevard.” Didn’t even see the light of day.

HB0210 — Tax Penalties Amendments | Rep. Melissa Ballard – This bill would have repealed Utah’s Earned Income Tax Credit — one of the most effective anti-poverty tools in the state’s toolkit, and a hard-won victory for working families. Failed in the House after being circled three times.

HB0232 — Medicaid Abortion Payment Amendments | Rep. Nicholeen Peck – Would have blocked abortion providers from qualifying as Medicaid providers, cutting off access for Medicaid patients who rely on those providers for reproductive care. Died without seeing the first step.

HB0244 — Employment Amendments | Rep. Lisa Shepherd – Would have prohibited employers from retaliating against employees who cooperate with law enforcement — including ICE agents. In practice: a bill designed to prevent employers from protecting their workers during immigration enforcement operations. Held in committee.

HB0256 — School District Elections Amendments | Rep. Jason Kyle – Would have made local school board races partisan, requiring candidates to run under party labels and through party primaries. This supercharges national culture-war politics in community-level governance and makes it dramatically easier for outside money and party machinery to take over local school boards. Didn’t go very far.

HB0262 — Judicial Election Amendments | Rep. Jason Kyle – Would have raised the threshold for judicial retention elections from a simple majority to 67%. One of the bigger judicial power grabs that didn’t survive.

HB0287 — Immigrant Driving Amendments | Rep. Trevor Lee – Would have repealed Utah’s driving privilege card program entirely, eliminating the legal pathway that allows undocumented Utahns to drive to work, school, and the doctor.

HB0294 — Employer Verification Amendments | Rep. Tiara Auxier – Would have lowered the threshold for mandatory E-Verify (immigration status) requirements from 150 employees to 50. Was amended and died in the Senate after passing the House. This is the second year in a row this legislation failed.

HB0315 — Human Development Instruction | Rep. Nicholeen Peck –Would have required schools to show a specific “baby Olivia/Oliver” video that has been criticized for inaccuracy and misinformation by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, in grades 3 through 12.

HB0399 — Prohibition Against Student Character Tracking and Grading Systems | Rep. Trevor Lee – Broadly banned social-emotional learning, wellbeing frameworks, and character education in public schools — with financial penalties, state audits, public shaming dashboards, and a private right for parents to sue. Would have caused schools to gut student support programs to avoid liability.

HB0479 — Election Code Modifications | Rep. Jefferson Burton – Dramatically rolled back Utah’s vote-by-mail system, requiring most voters to return mail ballots in person with ID and restricting drop boxes to staffed locations with limited hours. Would have made voting significantly harder for working people, seniors, rural voters, and people with disabilities. This is a really big deal.

HB0569 — SNAP Funds Amendments | Rep. Kristen Chevrier – Would have required Utah to keep seeking federal waivers to block SNAP recipients from purchasing broadly defined “ultra-processed” foods, with mandatory checkout system reprogramming if approved. Policing how low-income families feed themselves, session after session.

HJR005 — Proposal to Amend Utah Constitution - Judicial Nominations | Rep. Jason Kyle – Would have rewritten the constitutional process for judicial selection to allow the governor to bypass the nominating commission when appointing judges. One of the biggest judicial power grabs of the session and it didn’t make it.

The Losses: Bad Bills That Passed

Here’s where it gets harder. Despite public testimony, professional objections, and real long-term consequences, these bills made it through. And these are the bills that captivated the most attention during session.

Of all of the coordinated attacks of this session, none were worse than the attacks on the judiciary. That being said, the Legislature entered this session with an aggressive judicial restructuring agenda, and not all of it survived. The constitutional amendment that would have let the governor bypass the judicial nominating commission (HJR005) died. The bill that would have raised judicial retention elections from a simple majority to 67% (HB0262) died. The bill to gerrymander judicial districts (SB0308) died.

So it wasn’t as bad as it could have been but kinda bad is still bad — and three judicial power bills did pass and are now law.

SB0134 — Court Amendments | Sen. Chris Wilson – Plain and simple court packing. And signed by the governor within days of passing. Expands the Utah Supreme Court from five justices to seven and the Court of Appeals from seven to nine, at a cost of nearly $6.5 million — with no request from the court itself and active opposition from the Utah State Bar. The only part of this bill the judiciary actually asked for was the lower court funding, which the legislature used as cover to pass the expansion nobody needed. The timing — right after the legislature lost major cases on redistricting — was not subtle.

HB0392 — District Court Amendments | Rep. Matt MacPherson – The story of this bill is almost the story of the session in miniature. It started as an unambiguously terrible bill: a new statewide constitutional court with judges hand-selected by the governor and exclusive jurisdiction over challenges to state laws — a structure no other state has ever attempted. Under pressure, the bill got amended. Judges would now be randomly selected from existing district court judges across the state. That was an improvement. But the core problem stayed: only the attorney general, the governor, or the Legislature can invoke the three-judge panel — and that invocation cannot be challenged or reviewed. So when the bill passed and was signed, the AG’s office immediately started using it to yank pending cases — redistricting, the Great Salt Lake, the abortion ban — out of the hands of their assigned judges and into the new panel. Plaintiffs filed for restraining orders. Lawsuits piled up so fast that the Legislature had to pass an emergency same-session patch, HB366, opening the panel to any litigant (not just the Gov, legislature, and AG). They think the fix will put them in a better place for the litigation but the fact that they needed it says everything. This bill is still being litigated and will be for some time.

SB0233 — Judicial Performance Evaluation Amendments | Sen. Brady Brammer – Expands judicial performance surveys to include plaintiffs and other parties, and asks those individuals to evaluate a judge’s “legal competence” — including their understanding of constitutional law. Framed as transparency. Functions as a mechanism to build a public record against judges who rule against the legislature.

And for the non-judiciary bad bills that passed….

HB0209 — Voting Amendments | Rep. Cory Maloy – Creates a two-tier voting system in Utah. People who can’t provide documentary proof of citizenship — even if they are U.S. citizens — can register and vote only in federal races, not state or local ones. It also expands voter roll investigations and shifts the burden of proof onto voters on short timelines. A solution to a problem that doesn’t exist, creating a real problem for voters who do.

HB0136 — Unlicensed Driver Amendments | Rep. Matt MacPherson – Escalates driving without a license or driving privilege card from an infraction to a misdemeanor. In practice, an immigration enforcement tool, targeting the undocumented Utahns who can’t obtain standard licenses and who depend on driving privilege cards to get to work.

SB0174 — Exercise of Religious Beliefs and Conscience Amendments | Sen. Keven Stratton – Creates a broad “right of conscience” for healthcare providers, hospitals, and insurers to refuse to provide, participate in, or pay for any healthcare service that violates their religious or moral beliefs — with no requirement to refer patients elsewhere.

HB0174 — Sex Characteristic Change Treatment Amendments | Rep. Rex Shipp – Strengthens Utah’s existing ban on gender-affirming hormones for minors by removing the grandfathering provision that allowed kids already in treatment to continue, and requiring them to taper off within six months. Young people who have been on treatment for years now face forced medical transition.

HB0274 — Sentencing Amendments | Rep. Mike Schultz (the Speaker) – Removes most defense attorneys from the Utah Sentencing Commission and replaces them with more law enforcement. It got marginally less bad during the process — the three defense attorneys were restored — but it still removes the juvenile defender and indigent defender from a body that determines how Utah punishes people. The Speaker sponsoring a bill that weakens defense representation on sentencing policy is not subtle.

HB0214 — Firearms Liability Amendments | Rep. Jordan Teuscher – Makes it harder to sue gun manufacturers and sellers in Utah by narrowing the circumstances under which lawsuits can proceed, blocking claims based on consumer protection or public nuisance law unless those laws explicitly regulate firearms, and creating an extremely narrow standard for negligent marketing claims. Fewer legal tools for communities harmed by gun violence.

HB0404 — Sex-Designated Housing Amendments | Rep. David Shallenberger – Creates an exemption in the Utah Fair Housing Act that lets landlords designate certain shared living spaces as single-sex based on biological sex at birth.

HB0222 — Limitation of Actions Amendments | Rep. Carl Albrecht – Grants fossil fuel companies special legal immunity that no other industry enjoys, preemptively blocking courts from holding them accountable for climate-related harms. Utah families bear the real costs of climate change — wildfire smoke, drought, extreme heat — while this bill removes one of the remaining legal tools available to seek accountability. Sets a dangerous precedent by taking certain claims off the table before courts can even evaluate them.

HB0060 — Water Rights Amendments | Rep. David Shallenberger – Makes it significantly harder for the public to challenge new water rights by limiting who has standing to protest. Also removes the requirement that the state engineer consider whether a new water right would harm public welfare, recreation, or the natural stream environment.

HB0495 — Capital Felony Case Amendments | Rep. Candice Pierucci – Overhauls Utah’s death penalty process to prioritize speed over fairness — weakening protections for intellectually disabled defendants, limiting court review, and restricting appeals. The stakes of getting this wrong are about as high as they get.

HB0545 — Budgetary Modifications | Rep. Val Peterson – Removes the State Auditor’s ability to access emergency funds when she needs them to investigate the Legislature. The body that controls the Auditor’s budget is cutting off the Auditor’s ability to investigate the body that controls the budget. There is not a more concise description of what this session was about.

SB0242 — Transportation Amendments | Sen. Wayne Harper – A state takeover of Salt Lake City’s streets. Strips the city of meaningful control over major road decisions and hands veto power to UDOT, requiring freeway-style standards like 12-foot lane widths for city streets.

SB0295 — Intellectual Diversity in Education and Government | Sen. John Johnson – An anti-DEI omnibus expanding and hardening Utah’s existing bans on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs across K–12, higher ed, and state government.

The Most Painful: Good Bills That Died

These are the ones that sting. Every session, we spend weeks watching good people fight for legislation that would actually improve lives and then watch it die quietly in a committee room or on a floor vote. Most of these ideas are common sense. And most of them died not because they were bad policy, but because a supermajority that controls every gate in the process chose to let them. When good bills die it usually isn’t because the policy was weak. It’s because someone with power decided it wasn’t worth their time, or that it conflicted with a donor priority, or simply that the clock ran out (which is also a choice).

That’s part of what we try to do here — make sure the losses get named, too. Because the people who worked on these bills deserve that, and so do the Utahns who would have benefited from them.

HB0080 — Firearm Storage Requirements | Rep. Andrew Stoddard – Would have created a misdemeanor when an adult leaves a loaded gun unsecured, a child under 16 accesses it, and carries or uses it unlawfully. One of the most evidence-backed interventions for reducing gun deaths by suicide and accidental shooting, especially involving children.

HB0029 — Unfair and Deceptive Pricing Amendments (”Ban Hidden Fees”) | Rep. Tyler Clancy – Required businesses to show the total price upfront — no more bait-and-switch where mandatory fees appear at checkout. Passed the House with only 3 opposed. Never made it to a Senate committee. All-in pricing. What a concept.

SB0180 — School Nutrition Amendments | Sen. Luz Escamilla – Expanded access to free school meals for families earning up to 200% of the federal poverty level using existing liquor tax revenue. Passed the Senate unanimously, in committee and on the floor. Got held in a House committee.

SB0248 — Childcare Amendments | Sen. Luz Escamilla – Created a public-private partnership to retrofit obsolete state buildings into childcare facilities leased to employer sponsors. State employees get childcare access, the state gets lease revenue, employers can actually help workers afford care. Made it all the way to the final step and died on the House floor.

HB0245 — Construction Wage Standard Act | Rep. Tyler Clancy – Reestablished prevailing wage standards for state construction projects, ensuring workers on publicly funded projects get paid fairly. Died on the House floor after passing committee.

SB0176 — Landscaping Procurement Amendments | Sen. Stephanie Pitcher – Required state agencies to buy electric-powered landscaping equipment for smaller state properties in urban counties. Cuts emissions, protects workers from noise and pollution, saves money. Made it all the way to the House floor and died by a single vote. One vote.

SB0215 — Eviction Record Amendments | Sen. Stephanie Pitcher – Shortened the waiting period for automatic expungement of dismissed eviction cases. Right now, even a dismissed eviction follows renters for years, locking them out of housing, jobs, and credit.

SB0076 — Residential Rental Payment Reporting Amendments | Sen. Jen Plumb – Would have required large landlords to offer renters the option to have on-time rent payments reported to credit bureaus. Rent is often a household’s largest monthly expense but rarely helps build credit. Held in Senate committee.

SB0253 — Library Materials Amendments | Sen. Mike McKell – Required clear public policies for how library materials are selected and challenged, limited repeat challenges to once every four years per title, kept materials available while under review, and prevented removal solely due to partisan, ideological, or religious disapproval. Written in collaboration with librarians and affected communities.

HB0104 — State Holiday Amendments | Rep. Ryan D. Wilcox – Would have made Election Day an official state holiday. Failed on the House floor 33-39. A bipartisan idea — sponsored by a Republican — that somehow couldn’t get bipartisan support.

HB0106 — School Attendance Changes | Rep. Andrew Stoddard – Would have established chronic absenteeism data requirements and a study to better understand and address the problem.

HB0184 — Small Lots and Starter Homes Amendments | Rep. Raymond Ward – Created a fast-track process allowing property owners to override local zoning for starter homes, smaller lots, and ADUs, with automatic approval if a city didn’t act within 30 days. A market-friendly approach to the housing crisis that died in rules.

SB0056 — Citizenship Education Amendments | Sen. Kathleen Riebe – Would have required a specific civics curriculum for 10th graders covering voting rights, jury duty, tax responsibilities, employment rights, and interactions with law enforcement.

SB0136 — Enforcement Activities Amendments | Sen. Nate Blouin – The “ICE Out” bill. Would have prohibited state and local law enforcement from assisting ICE in operations at churches, hospitals, libraries, courthouses, and other sensitive locations, and required federal immigration agents to remove face coverings during enforcement.

SB0177 — Product Pricing Amendments | Sen. Stephanie Pitcher – Would have required businesses to clearly disclose when a price was set by an algorithm using a customer’s personal data.

HB0596 — Homelessness Amendments | Rep. Steve Eliason – A sweeping homelessness services bill that would have taken shelter capacity limits away from cities and given them to the state Office of Homeless Services, created a “Code Red” emergency alert system for extreme heat mirroring the existing Code Blue for extreme cold, and made other significant improvements to how Utah coordinates homelessness services.

What’s Next

The session is over. But we definitely don’t stop here.

We have a lot planned. Over the coming weeks we’ll be publishing deeper dives into the things that didn’t fit here. And all the other exciting things happening in Utah politics.

We also want to give a shoutout to Ben Winslow at Fox13 for his incredibly comprehensive and complete recaps on the session. Also check out this week’s RadioWest episode (you might hear some familiar voices).

Finally: we are genuinely, deeply grateful for everyone who followed along this session. Everyone who contacted their legislator, showed up to Hill Talk, shared a post, sent an email, made a call, or just read this far into a very long Substack. You have no idea what it means to us to not be doing this alone. Utah is worth fighting for. You prove that every time you show up.

We’ll see you out there.

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This week we’re skipping the bill-by-bill breakdown (that’s coming in the Substack, don’t worry) and going straight to the drama.

Is this journalism? Debatable. Is it accurate? Allegedly. Did it happen? Our sources say yes. Here is how session felt to us. What did you think?

You’re going to want to see the images we reference so we would recommend watching on YouTube here.

This piece picks up where that recording ended, with some new developments. We would highly recommend listening to that for the full picture.

Trevor Lee’s L’s

Thankfully, Trevor Lee has not been having a great session.

His Harvey Milk → Charlie Kirk street naming bill hasn’t made it out of Rules. His Social Emotional Learning ban was killed in committee. His ivermectin bill died. His vaccine exemption bill died. His pregnant women parking pass bill — which he clarified was not about supporting women, but about Utah’s fertility crisis, because apparently the path to solving a fertility crisis is a closer parking spot— was held in committee. He had a perfectly fine voter registration bill that he somehow turned into a voter data-selling scheme on the floor, and the Senate killed it immediately — and we’ll be returning to that particular habit shortly. His bill that would have legalized hate crimes and discrimination against transgender Utahns and more – one of the most hateful pieces of legislation in the country – was watered down and then reassigned twice to other legislators because he was too toxic to its passage.

Which made HB88 — his signature immigration bill, the one he’s been nursing through seven substitutes all session — the win he needed. The thing that would make the rest of it worth something.

The bill has now been substituted seven times. The substitution process is, in part, a sign of bad legislating. Whether that means disagreement from legislators, technical mistakes, or confusion, it’s not a great sign. What HB88 has consistently done across those seven versions is strip existing exemptions from Utah’s immigration verification requirements — exemptions that currently allow state agencies to serve people regardless of immigration status for things like immunizations, crisis counseling, domestic violence shelters, food banks, and more.

Lee’s stated goal: “If we do our job and get rid of these incentives, then many will self-deport without us having to forcibly do it.”

At least he’s honest, and we’re clear on what this is.

The Human Cost Heard in Committee

As we discuss at length in the podcast, this bill is cruel. With the first iteration of this bill, the House committee hearing included devastating testimony such as:

• A pediatrician described a child with cancer who loves Elephant and Piggy books and prays each night for a cure — currently receiving treatment through the CHIP program that Utah Republicans voted to create in 2023, and that this bill would end for children like him

• A social worker asked: Where do I send an undocumented child who has been sexually abused? She didn’t get an answer

• Emmy Gardner, CEO of Holy Cross Ministries (4,700 clients annually, 85%+ survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, or trafficking), testified that the services this bill eliminates are the specific pathways out of those situations

• A pediatrician noted that measles, whooping cough, and flu don’t check documentation, and that people exposed to heightened immigration enforcement are 12% less likely to accept vaccines

The kind of hearing where you leave needing to sit in your car for a while.

Lee’s response to the vaccine point: “If we’re so worried about these people needing our vaccines, they shouldn’t be here.”

Airtight. Moving on.

In the committee presentation, he didn’t spend much time discussing what the bill did and instead focused his entire argument through a fiscal lens, citing his statistics from a single FAIR report claiming a $931 million annual cost of “illegal immigration in Utah”.

We covered FAIR’s white supremacist and eugenics funding history and the report’s methodological problems extensively in the podcast. And that shit is genuinely crazy.

The First Floor Fight: “A Simple Bill to Clean Up Code”

HB88’s 5th substitute passed committee and hit the House floor. Lee introduced it — and I need you to appreciate this HILARIOUS joke he made, presenting it as “a simple bill to clean up code.”

On the floor, he released the 6th substitute, which had dropped the private right of action provision and removed the mental health care exemption. It also clarified that the bill no longer applied to minors.

A few Republicans moved amendments:

• Rep. Clancy: made a change that child nutrition services should remain available regardless of status. That passed.

• Rep. Snider: made a change that domestic violence services should remain available regardless of status. Also passed.

Rep. Cheryl Acton, a conservative, said she couldn’t believe they were “hiding behind a bureaucratic shield to deny people food” and called it a violation of the Sermon on the Mount.

Rep. Stoddard invoked the Statue of Liberty and reminded the chamber that undocumented immigrants were paying over $250 million into the state. “It’s not being born here that makes you an American. It’s an attitude. A desire.”

Rep. Dunnigan asked whether, under this new version of the bill, someone walking into a homeless shelter in a snowstorm would need to prove citizenship. Lee confirmed: yes.

Then Rep. Karen Peterson moved to circle the bill. Circling means the bill gets placed on hold on the board — the sponsor can bring it back later, but they don’t have to, and bills can quietly die there. It’s procedurally gentler than killing a bill outright, but it can accomplish the same thing. Peterson said her phone was blowing up with stakeholders — cities, counties, service providers — who hadn’t understood how this would hit them on senior meal programs, emergency services, and more. They needed more time to figure out what they were even dealing with.

Lee rejected the motion: “It would just be reason that they don’t want the bill to pass.”

Voice vote (everyone yells their vote to be the loudest). The yeses had it. The bill was circled.

There was a rumor, and then a genuine exhale across the building: we thought HB88 might actually die on the board. Trevor Lee’s signature bill would join the graveyard of his other work this session: the ivermectin dreams, the parking passes, hunters registering to vote, legal transgender hate crimes, all of it.

That exhale lasted about 72 hours.

The Zombie Bill

On Friday afternoon, we heard HB88 is coming back. Curiously, though, in another bill.

Enter HB386, Rep. Lisa Shepherd’s bill. It was genuinely fine, unglamorous legislation — repealing outdated guest worker program provisions that Utah had no legal authority to enforce anyway, the kind of thing that exists on the books because nobody got around to cleaning it up. It had passed committee unanimously.

On the House floor, Trevor Lee moved to substitute the contents of HB88 with language nearly identical to HB88’s 7th substitute into HB386. This version, while not as bad as the original versions, contains restrictions for undocumented immigrants for access to: resident tuition for qualifying students, state retirement benefits, housing loans, professional licensing, and scholarships for Utah high school graduates.

This was not Lee’s first attempt at this strategy. Earlier this session, he had a fine voter registration bill, also passed unanimously, and on the floor, he substituted in language allowing the Lieutenant Governor to contract with outside vendors to sell voter data. The Senate was so disgusted by that maneuver that they killed his bill in committee. And they gave him a (satisfying for us) verbal lashing while they were at it.

The Floor Debate

When Lee proposed the amendment, Rep. Jen Dailey-Provost (D) rose immediately:

“This amendment is nothing more than HB 88 sub[stitute] seven substituted into another bill and is not entirely germane. I am deeply opposed to HB 88 and offended that this bill would be substituted into another bill.”

Rep. Ray Ward asked Lee: if a child was brought here very young, has lived here their whole life, and is now in college, do they pay in-state tuition under this bill?

Lee: “If you are here and you do not have citizenship, you will not be able to receive a grant or tuition that is subsidized by the taxpayers.”

Ward: “So out-of-state tuition is much more expensive to the point that many of those students would have to drop out... The school would forego that tuition money... the state would lose that tuition money. It’s really clear to me that we’ve hurt that person. It’s not clear to me at all that we have benefited the rest of us.”

Lee, on who benefits from blocking these students from college: “Utahns would benefit from this, people like our own children who are paying a ton for their college.”

Then Rep. Hoang Nguyen stood up. Of her own admission, she doesn’t share her story often.

Nguyen is the first Vietnamese American and the first refugee ever elected to the Utah state legislature. Then she told the chamber what that meant:

Her family fled Vietnam after the war. Her father was killed on the street in Oakland when Hoang was five, robbed and murdered by two young men with a gun. Her mother was 35, with seven children between the ages of three and fifteen. They went on Medicaid, food stamps, and housing assistance. A cousin in Utah told her mother it was a better place to raise a family. In 1992, they moved to the west side of Salt Lake. Her mother saved enough to buy a small house in Glendale. Her older siblings sacrificed their educations to help raise the younger kids. She was one of the lucky ones — young enough to go to college, which she did on Pell Grants and in-state tuition.

“My family and I, through the grace of God, through the programs that were in place to get us through the hard time, have been able to create a business where we’ve employed thousands of Utahns.”

She talked about Utah’s record — leading the nation in economic mobility, the bottom 20% able to reach the top 20% over a lifetime, and said that didn’t happen by accident. It happened because of a specific Utah way: supporting your community regardless of where people came from.

“Utahns are one thing. Citizens are one thing. People is the first thing… I fear that what we’re doing here in Utah is eroding what truly makes Utah special.”

The Procedural Nightmare

Rep. Norm Thurston (R) moved to circle again. He said he’d been on the phone with the drafting attorneys of the bill throughout the debate and could not determine what the substitute actually did.

“There is a reasonable chance, colleagues, that this bill makes it easier for undocumented kids to get in-state tuition because we don’t know what it really does. There’s a reasonable chance that it makes it harder for undocumented kids to get in-state tuition because we don’t really know what it does. So if you’re gonna vote on this bill, you better figure out for yourself whether you’re voting to make it easier or harder for those kids. I don’t know.”

Lee rejected the motion to circle, along with Thurston’s concerns. He knew any delay meant this bill could die on the board with his precious HB88.

What followed: 4 minutes and 30 seconds of representatives voting, changing votes, leadership whipping the floor.

• Initial tally: 34-29 to circle (Motion winning, we had hope, things might be okay)

• Call of the house: absent members are physically located and brought back to vote (why they aren’t there in the first place, we do not know)

• Tied 35-35 (cue team Elevate screaming at our computers)

• Then two Representatives (Shallenberger and Welton) who were originally yeses, switched their votes to no (Maybe leadership got to them, maybe it was peer pressure, maybe it was threats of their legislation never getting funded. We don’t know, but certainly something happened)

• Jordan Teuscher: 38th no vote

Motion to circle failed: 35-38.

So the bill lives, but it still has more votes. Back to the substitute. The Speaker ran a voice vote and ruled it passed this time. Division was called — meaning instead of yelling, they were going to take a recorded vote, on the board, on the record.

This vote went down in a similar way:

• Initially- 27 yes, 29 no. (Hope again!)

• Then: 30-30. (Screaming at computers, again)

• Then 34-31. (Not looking good)

• Then, ANOTHER call of the house (Unclear how they would’ve had time to leave since the last call of the house, but that’s neither here nor there)

• Welton — who had voted against Lee on the circle motion — flipped again at the last second to vote for the substitute (he ultimately voted against the final bill, though).

The bill was substituted with a vote of 40-31.

Forty-five minutes to turn a unanimous bill into a partisan one.

And we are still not done. The House still had to vote on the bill itself (now including the new HB88). It went down similarly to the above votes, but I think we have covered that.

That vote passed 39-33.

At the end of floor time, when asked if the Minority Caucus had any announcements before they recess, Rep. Angela Romero was in tears:

“There’s nothing from the Minority Caucus, and I want people to be mindful when we discuss things here, how it impacts people in this body.”

Rep. Casey Snider continued to make jokes.

The Vote Breakdown

While the vote was open, you could watch legislators’ thinking play out in real time on the board. Votes going up, coming back down, going back up. That’s not typically entirely indecision. It’s also a text message. It’s a conversation happening on the floor. Sometimes it’s leadership moving people into line while the clock runs.

A few standouts worth noting.

• Clancy and Snider both moved amendments to the original HB88 to make it less cruel — protecting child nutrition services, protecting domestic violence services. Then both voted for the substitute and the final bill anyway. Whether that’s pragmatism or cover is a question only they can answer.

• On the other side, a handful of Republicans broke against their party on both votes: Acton, Albrecht, Ballard, Barlow, Cutler, Defay, Dunnigan, Eliason, Kohler, Loubet, Tracy Miller, Monson, Okerlund, Karen Peterson, Sawyer, Thurston, Ward, and Watkins — having 18 Republicans vote against a bill like this doesn’t happen all that often in a supermajority state.

• Shallenberger and Welton originally registered as yes votes to circle the bill — meaning they initially supported pausing it — then switched to no before that vote closed. Shallenberger then voted yes on the substitute, moving the bill forward. Welton voted yes on the substitute but flipped to no on final passage.

• Worth paying particular attention to the Republicans in competitive seats. Okerlund, Loubet, Dunnigan, and Eliason all voted no on both the substitute and final passage — a meaningful signal from members who have real electoral incentives to think about how this plays outside the caucus. Ivory, MacPherson, and Koford went the other direction, voting yes both times, despite also being in competitive seats.

The Hat Trick, Explained

HB386 — now carrying HB88’s 7th substitute like Rosemary’s Baby — goes to the Senate, where it will get a committee hearing likely early next week.

So, let’s recap what Trevor Lee accomplished this week.

He took a bill that was dying. He found a bill that was fine. He put the dying bill inside the fine bill and walked it onto the floor on day 38 of 45 — a vote where the people who drafted it couldn’t explain what it did, in a process where the Speaker made a procedural error, in a chamber where the computer froze mid-vote.

And it passed.

It wasn’t good legislating. It wasn’t a careful refinement of policy. And it wasn’t the product of broad agreement or newly resolved concerns. It was desperation.

This is a legislator who has lost every single match this session, finding a way to pawn his racist, hateful, irresponsible legislation off to someone else because his brand became too toxic. And it came with no acknowledgment of the people affected. No reflection. No pause. Just more tweets about “Heritage Americans” and warnings about the “consequences of incentivizing illegal immigration.”

The reason the original bill was struggling wasn’t the message and policy mechanics. It was honesty.

He said the goal was self-deportation. He said compassion stops at the door of irresponsibility. He didn’t wrap it in technical corrections or neutral fiscal language. He stood at the mic and told the chamber exactly what he was trying to do. And that honesty — clarifying as it is for those of us watching — made it genuinely harder to build a majority around the thing. You could see it on the floor. Some Republicans were uneasy. About the students who grew up here. About the professional licenses and housing pathways. About what it looks like to vote yes on something when the sponsor has already explained that the point is to make people leave.

This does not have to be what Utah politics looks like. There is no law requiring that we pass policy aimed at making people afraid, that harms the communities we’ve spent decades building, that costs the state money it doesn’t have to spend, in service of goals its own sponsor can’t defend with accurate numbers. We are choosing this. Some members chose it because they agree with it. Some chose it because they couldn’t stand up to their own party. Some — you could see it on their faces — chose it because the clock ran out before they could figure out what else to do.

The Senate has seen this move before. They killed his last bill over it. Whether they do it again is now the only real question.

You can find your Senator’s phone number here. They’re hearing from people who think this is perfectly reasonable. They should hear from people who don’t.

Contact your state senator before HB386 gets a committee hearing.

Church & State – 370 S 300 E, Salt Lake City, UT 84111

Over the past several weeks, hundreds of people have packed a room every Wednesday night. Together with Better Utah Institute and Better Boundaries, we’ve built something that feels rare right now: a space where people show up, learn what’s actually happening at the Capitol, and then immediately do something about it.

Every week, attendees have written and called their legislators on the issues moving in real time. Not hypothetically. Not someday. Right there, in the room.

But it’s been way more than grim bill updates and action alerts. It’s been community.

We’ve watched Gen Z attendees make vision boards about the future of Utah. We’ve had strangers show up with friendship bracelets. Someone 3D-printed ICE whistles and handed them out. Small businesses have donated food and supplies. People who walked in wanting to help but not knowing how have left connected to organizations and already getting to work.

It’s serious work. And it’s also sweet. And hopeful. And energizing in a way that’s hard to explain unless you’ve felt it.

We’ve heard from so many of you that being in a room full of people who care — who are trying to make Utah more welcoming, more balanced, and more representative — has been grounding. If you’ve been feeling discouraged, isolated, or just tired of doomscrolling alone, Hill Talk is the opposite of that.

February 25 – Housing and Homelessness

We’ll be joined by Utah Housing Coalition, First Step House, and Housing Connect to talk about housing and homelessness – what’s happening this session, what’s at stake, and how to push for real solutions.

And as always, we’ll break down what happened at the Legislature this past week, walk through how to take action in real time, and yes, there will be pizza and drinks.

RSVP here

March 4 – Community Fair Night

This one will feel a little different (in the best way). Nearly every organization that has participated this session — plus some new ones — will be there. Think of it as a one-stop shop for getting involved.

Legislative session ends March 6, and we don’t want the energy to end with it so this week will give you opportunities to meet people, learn where you can get involved, and hopefully take away some cool merch!

RSVP here

March 11 – Post-Session Party

We’re closing it out properly. Ice cream. A DJ. Drinks. Games. A collective exhale. Jackie and I will be there with sticky notes and a whiteboard because, of course, we will.

Showing up matters. But so does celebrating that we did.

RSVP here

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We built Hill Talk because the legislative session can feel isolating and overwhelming. What’s happened instead is that hundreds of you have turned it into something powerful.

Come for the policy. Stay for the people.

We’ll see you on Wednesday.

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And if you can’t attend but you do want to support these events and the work being done, you can donate here. Your contribution will be split between Elevate, Better Utah Institute, and Better Boundaries.

Subscribe now

But please accept our sincerest apologies for any sound imperfections and know that we are just two girls who care very deeply about Utah politics and very little about technology. We’re learning. Be gentle with us.

What we can promise you is that the content is worth it because this week we went down a rabbit hole so deep and so dark that we genuinely could not stop until we hit the bottom. And the bottom, it turns out, involves Nazi propaganda films, a eugenicist who tried to take over the Sierra Club from the inside, a sperm bank for geniuses, and 10 boxes of sealed archives at the University of Michigan that won’t be opened until 2035. All of this because Trevor Lee walked into a committee hearing and cited one source.

We’re breaking down HB 88 — Rep. Trevor Lee’s bill that would strip healthcare, food assistance, WIC, CHIP, domestic violence shelter access, and more from undocumented immigrants and mixed-status families in Utah. We cover who Trevor Lee actually is, where his numbers came from (spoiler: a federally designated hate group), why the math doesn’t add up, and what happened to Alabama, Arizona, and Georgia when they tried this exact same thing.

📌 Voices for Utah Children one-pager on HB 88: https://utahchildren.org/newsroom/speaking-of-kids-blog/protecting-utahs-immigrant-families-say-no-to-hb88#i
📌 FAIR 2023 report: https://www.fairus.org/sites/default/files/2023-03/utah2023.pdf
📌 ProPublica - John Tanton: https://www.propublica.org/article/john-tanton-far-right-extremism-environmentalism-climate-change

Elevate Utah

Utah politics, but digestible. We’re Elevate Utah—independent journalists and strategists explaining what’s happening in Utah politics, why it matters, and most importantly, what you can do about it.

A little love letter to Utah.

Week 1 was all posture - everybody setting up their chess pieces and making their big announcements. Week 2 was acceleration, bills flying through committees at alarming speed. Week 3 was simmering, that tense moment where you’re watching the pot and waiting for something to boil over. And week 4? Week 4 is where we show you the signs of life. The good stuff that’s actually happening while you’ve been overwhelmed by all the terrible bills.

Because we forget sometimes when we’re deep in the legislative weeds, tracking 900+ bills and watching yet another attempt to consolidate power: there are good bills moving. There are bad bills dying. There are actual wins happening that don’t make you want to pack up your entire life and move to Colorado.

But you’re here because Utah is worth fighting for. There’s still plenty happening under the dome that makes us want to lie face down on the Capitol lawn. But ultimately, Utah is worth fighting for. It always has been. And for all the frustration we feel, most of the people elected in this state (yes, even the ones who drive us absolutely insane) believe they’re trying to make Utah better. Even if they have a really funny way of showing it.

So we’re sending you into this long weekend with wins, with good bills you should know about, and with a reminder that democracy isn’t dead yet; we’re all still here.

But before we get into any of it, can we just say something?

We love you.

Truly. We do.

You are the reason we have gotten this far through session.

Over 400 of you have shown up to our weekly in-person events. Four. Hundred. People. Every week.

Utah has never really seen anything like this.

You’ve shown up. You’ve paid attention. You’ve cared loudly. You’ve cared quietly. You’ve cared consistently.

You have no idea what your support means to us. Not just personally, though yes, personally. But also in the larger sense. The energy in those rooms, the questions you ask, the emails you send, the calls you make, it really matters. And people are noticing.

And maybe more importantly, it says something about who you are.

You love this state. You love it hard. You’re willing to fight for it. You’re willing to stay when it would be easier to disengage. Thank God you’re here. Because this work only feels possible when we remember we’re not doing it alone.

So we love you, our Elevate Utah crew (Elevators? The Life Elevated?). We couldn’t do this without you.

Thank you <3

So Naturally, Let’s Talk About Death

Because sometimes at the Utah Legislature, the best news is about the bills that die. And this week, we had bodies.

HB96 - Trevor Lee’s Ivermectin For Everyone

This bill would’ve made Ivermectin available over the counter with no prescription, no medical supervision, just walk into any pharmacy and grab it like it’s Sudafed. It failed in committee this week. Trevor Lee is not having a good session, and frankly, we love that for him.

HB156 - Bring Your Own Blood To The Hospital

This one officially died in the Senate. Kristin Chevrier worked on this bill for two years, poured her heart into it, and it’s genuinely tragic for her that it didn’t make it. But for the rest of us? Pour one out for BYOB. Actually, pour out a bag of blood. It seems you won’t be able to bring your own vaccine-free blood to the hospital.

HB399 - Don’t Teach Empathy

Another Trevor Lee Special. The bill that would ban social-emotional learning in K-12 schools - because apparently teaching kids to understand their feelings and work through conflict is too dangerous for Utah - got held in committee. It might come back. These things have a habit of rising from the dead. But for now, we’re calling it dead.

HB288 - The Voter Registration Bill That Became Something Terrifying

This one started as a nice bill to provide voter registration info when people get hunting licenses. Then Trevor Lee (yes, again) substituted language on the House floor - without consulting the Lieutenant Governor’s office - that would give the LG a tool to audit voter information through external databases.

Senator McKell said turning voter information over to databases “scares him to death.” The Senate unanimously voted to table it. The bill is (mostly) dead. And boy, Trevor really looked gutted. Tough week.

Some Bills Got Less Bad (and that’s a win too!)

Not every win is a full funeral. Sometimes the victory is that something awful becomes… moderately less awful. And that counts.

HB274 - The Sentencing Commission Bill started out removing ALL defense attorneys from the Sentencing Commission and replacing them with more law enforcement. Now the 3 defense attorneys are back on the commission. It still removes the juvenile defender and indigent defender. Is it perfect? No. Is it better than it was? Yes. And as the Legislators like to say, it’s only good policy if no one is happy.

HB197 - The Book Banning Bill started with AI-powered screening tools to automatically identify and ban books, private lawsuits letting parents sue schools for $500 per violation, mandatory filtering software on all school devices, and extensive vendor contract requirements. The substitute removed almost all of that - the AI censorship tools are gone, the private right to sue is gone, the filtering mandates are gone. What’s left is a prohibition on advertising in digital materials and a new requirement that school libraries stock “academically rigorous” books about the founders and US history. Still ideologically motivated, but way less dystopian than algorithms deciding what kids can read.

Sometimes they surprise us. Sometimes bills get better instead of worse. Sometimes the process actually works the way it’s supposed to.

The Good Stuff! (Yes, It Exists)

Okay, we need to be honest about something: we’re part of the problem.

It’s easy to focus only on the bad bills. The ones that make you want to scream into a pillow, yell at your monitor, or go into hiding. Those are the ones that get our attention, get our outrage, get our newsletter real estate. And look, they deserve it - some of this stuff is incredibly alarming.

But we don’t want to only talk about what’s going wrong. We want to give credit where credit is due. It’s important to recognize when legislators do good work, when bills actually solve problems, and when we are making good progress in our state.

So here are the some of the good bills moving through the legislature. These ones make people’s lives better. They are the ones that actually address real problems instead of manufacturing new ones. The ones worth celebrating.

HB443 - Let Voters Choose Their Lawmakers

When a legislator resigns mid-term, who picks their replacement? Right now, it’s usually a handful of party delegates - not voters. Rep. Andrew Stoddard’s bill would require a special election instead. About a quarter of current lawmakers were appointed rather than elected, sometimes by just a few dozen people (party delegates) deciding who represents tens of thousands of Utahns. This bill passed House committee 7-3. Democracy working the way it’s supposed to? Novel concept.

HB68 - Housing Reorganization

This reorganizes state housing agencies into one office with a single director accountable to the Governor - consolidating existing programs instead of creating new bureaucracy. It responds to audit findings about lack of coordination. It would be a good solution to a massive problem. It passed the House 55-13. Housing advocates have been asking for this kind of coordination for years and we are making good progress.

SB180 - Free School Lunch Expansion

Sen. Luz Escamilla’s bill expands eligibility for free school meals so more kids can eat at school without stigma or paperwork barriers. Families earning up to 200% of the federal poverty level would qualify. It uses existing liquor tax revenue and recognizes that no child should go hungry because their family earns just enough to miss outdated eligibility cutoffs. Food security is foundational to learning. This passed the Senate Education Committee unanimously.

HB29 - Ban Hidden Fees

Rep. Tyler Clancy’s bill cracks down on hidden fees by requiring businesses to show the total price upfront - no more bait-and-switch pricing where the “mandatory” fees appear at checkout. It gives the Division of Consumer Protection enforcement power, including fines up to $2,500 per violation. All-in pricing. What a concept. It passed the House with only 3 opposed.

SB215 - Eviction Record Expungement

Sen. Stephanie Pitcher’s bill shortens the waiting period for automatic expungement of dismissed eviction cases. Right now, even if an eviction case gets dismissed, that record follows renters for years, locking them out of housing, jobs, and credit. This bill clears those records sooner, letting families move forward instead of being haunted by a case that went nowhere. On the Senate floor now.

SB76 - Rent Reporting Builds Credit

Sen. Jen Plumb’s bill requires landlords to offer renters the option to have on-time rent payments reported to credit bureaus. It applies to any corporate landlord (even with just one unit) and individual landlords with 16+ units. Rent is often a household’s largest expense, but it rarely helps build credit. This gives renters a voluntary way to strengthen their credit history. In Senate committee.

SB248 - Childcare as Infrastructure

Sen. Escamilla’s bill creates a public-private partnership where the state retrofits obsolete buildings into childcare facilities and leases them to employer sponsors who contract with licensed providers. State employees get childcare access, the state gets lease revenue, and employers can actually help workers afford childcare. Passed committee 4-1.

HB245 - Prevailing Wage Returns

Rep. Tyler Clancy’s bill reestablishes prevailing wage standards for state construction projects - ensuring workers on publicly funded projects get paid fairly. This protects workers from being undercut and maintains construction quality standards. It passed House Business, Labor, and Commerce Committee 6-5. After last year’s labor battle it is good to see that sometimes labor protections actually move forward in the Utah Legislature.

SB253 - Protecting Libraries from Book Bans

Sen. Mike McKell’s bill requires clear, public policies for how library materials are selected and challenged, limits repeat challenges to once every four years per title, keeps materials available while under review, and prevents removal solely due to “partisan, ideological, or religious disapproval.” It protects librarians from retaliation and restricts digital providers from tracking individual student reading. It was written in collaboration with coalitions, librarians, and the people actually affected. Passed Senate Education Committee.

SB51 - School Safety Information Sharing

Sen. Derrin Owens’ bill creates a system for tracking students who have made credible threats of violence, allowing schools to share that information when a student transfers districts. It includes privacy protections and legal immunity for staff who report in good faith. The goal is to help schools identify potentially dangerous situations earlier and prevent violence. This is on it’s last step on the House Floor.

SB69 - Bell-to-Bell Phone Ban

Sen. Lincoln Fillmore’s bill extends the school phone ban from “during instructional time” to “during the school day” - basically bell to bell instead of just during class. Kids can still have phones, they just can’t use them all day at school. It passed the Senate side and now is In House Education Committee.

SB176 - Electric Landscaping Equipment

Sen. Stephanie Pitcher’s bill requires state agencies to buy electric-powered landscaping equipment (mowers, trimmers, leaf blowers) when procuring for smaller state properties in urban counties. It cuts emissions, protects workers and nearby communities from noise and pollution, and saves money over time through lower fuel and maintenance costs. On the Senate floor now.

SB244 - Cardiac Emergency Response in Schools

Sen. Jerry Stevenson’s bill requires schools to develop cardiac emergency response plans, including proper placement of AEDs, training staff in CPR and first aid, and establishing a grant program to help schools implement the plans. Kids’ hearts matter. This is in Senate Education Committee.

So go enjoy your long weekend. Take a break from the legislative chaos. Eat some chocolate. Remember why you care about this state in the first place.

Because when you come back on Tuesday, there will be 20 days left in the session. Twenty days to keep fighting for the good bills, to kill the bad ones, and to remind the legislature that we’re still here, we’re still watching, and we’re not going anywhere.

Utah’s worth it. You’re worth it. We’re all worth it.

See you next week.

As always:

• See our full session guide resource before doing anything

• Bookmark elevateutah.news for bill explainers, trackers, and action alerts

• Follow us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Threads, for daily legislative breakdowns

• Subscribe here for weekly recaps (paid subscribers get a gold star)

• Check the bill tracker for what we support, oppose, and are deeply concerned about

• Come to Our Weekly Hill Talk with Better Utah and Better Boundaries. Wednesdays at Church & State (6–7:30 PM) for live breakdowns and more partner organizations each week

• Email us at hillyeah@elevateutah.news when something looks… suspicious

We are officially on Day 24 of the 45-day legislative session. Which means we’re past halftime. The taffy is going stale, the energy is weird, and the real power plays are underway.

So where are we? A staggering 912 bills have been introduced so far. That feels record-breaking, and honestly, it probably is. Of those, we’re actively ‘tracking’ 207 bills, both good (93) and bad (67).

Despite the avalanche of legislation, only 4.8% of bills have actually made it all the way through the process and officially passed. Which means there’s still a ton to go for the majority of the bills.

But here’s a really not so fun fact: every single bill currently sitting on the governor’s desk or already signed into law, has been sponsored by a Republican. We’re at the halfway mark and not one Democratic bill has made it through.

On the flip side, about 4.2% of bills have died somewhere along the way and nearly half of those were Democratic bills. Now, there are significantly fewer Democrats in the legislature (and therefore fewer Democratic bills introduced), but this is still significant because we’re looking at percentages here. When you look at what proportion of each party’s bills have been killed versus what proportion have passed or even just moved at all, the disparity becomes stark.

And while bills are never really actually dead (there are many ways they can revive a bill and bring it back in zombie form) these numbers still tell you everything you need to know about who controls the process.

The Funnel

As a quick reminder on the process, bills must move through rules, committee, and floor in one chamber, then repeat those same steps in the other chamber. When you combine all House and Senate bills by party, the pattern becomes stark: Republican bills are moving. They’re being heard on the floor, advancing through the first chamber, making steady progress. Democratic bills are backed up in rules and committees, stuck at the very first gates of the process.

This is how the supermajority controls what even gets discussed.

Look at the Republican funnel: it’s thicker at the bottom. Bills are moving through committee, hitting the floor, and even passing.

Now look at the Democratic funnel: it’s thick at the top. Bills are stuck in rules (24%) and committee (30%). Only 16% have made it to the other chamber. The supermajority controls the gates, and it seems they’re keeping them closed.

This isn’t about Democrats sponsoring bad bills that deserve to die. This is about a procedural stranglehold that prevents the minority party from participating in governance at all.

When 100% of passed legislation comes from one party in a body, you don’t have a functioning legislative process. You have a rubber stamp operation.

That’s why paying attention to the process itself is one of the most important things you can do. It can feel complicated and overwhelming and that’s often the point. When the system is confusing enough, people stop watching. And when people stop watching, the supermajority can do whatever they want.

Out of those 912 bills, we’re tracking 67 that we’ve scored as “bad bills.” And yes, that’s Elevate Utah’s totally not unbiased and not impartial opinion. But some legislators have shown a truly impressive ability to run a huge number of these problematic bills.

Rep. Trevor Lee and Rep. Nicholeen Peck are leading the pack with 7 bad bills each.

Trevor Lee’s Greatest Hits:

• HB88 - Tightens immigration verification for public benefits

• HB152 - Removes vaccine exemption education requirements for parents

• HB183 - Eliminates transgender protections and bans birth certificate changes

• HB196 - Lets Legislature rename city streets; renames 900 South “Charlie Kirk Boulevard”

• HB287 - Eliminates driving privilege cards for undocumented residents

• HB288 - Voter registration via hunting/fishing licenses (with privacy concerns added on floor)

• HB399 - Bans schools from teaching or tracking character education/social-emotional learning

Nicholeen Peck’s Collection:

• HB95 - Protects employees who refuse to use students’ preferred pronouns

• HB188 - Expands school-to-police pipeline and limits juvenile diversion programs

• HB193 - Bans all public funding for gender-affirming care

• HB197 - Mandates AI book-banning tools with automatic statewide removals and parent lawsuits

• HB232 - Blocks abortion providers from Medicaid

• HB315 - Requires anti-abortion fetal development videos in grades 3-12

• HJR12 - Resolution promoting marriage before having children

Close behind are Reps. Jason Kyle, Matt MacPherson, David Shallenberger, Candice Pierucci, Jordan Teuscher, and Lincoln Fillmore—all tied with their own concerning collections of legislation.

Want the full picture? Check out our complete bill tracker to see every bill we’re tracking, detailed descriptions, and where they are in the process. You can filter by category, see sponsor information, track status in real-time, and get detailed breakdowns of what each bill actually does.

What You Can Actually Do About This

We have heard from a lot of people and we understand that sixty-seven bad bills is overwhelming. You don’t know where to start, what to prioritize, or if your voice even matters when the system is this rigged.

Here’s the good news: you don’t have to track all the bad bills. You don’t even have to track all 207 bills we’re monitoring. We’ve built an Action Alert page that we keep updated with a small number of bills that are currently moving and need immediate attention. You can start there.

Beyond that, here are the most effective ways to actually influence this process:

1. Thank Your Representatives

• If you live in a Democratic district and feel like your representative already supports your stance and votes how you like, tell them that. It’s hard up there. They’re fighting an uphill battle every single day against a supermajority that won’t even let their bills get hearings. Telling them they’re doing good work and to stay strong actually matters. Send them an email. A text. Show up to their community meetings. They need to know you see them.

2. Contact Bill Sponsors Directly

• You can always reach out to the sponsor of a bill—especially if you have:

  • A personal story related to the issue

  • Expertise related to the issue

  • Specific technical changes they could make to improve the bill

• These can be productive, respectful conversations that lead to real amendments. Legislators are more likely to listen when you’re offering solutions, not just opposition. And sometimes, especially on less ideological bills, you can actually move the needle.

3. Testify in Committee Hearings

• If a bill is scheduled for a committee hearing, you can testify in person or online. This is where most bills die and where you can influence the most.

• Here’s how it works:

  • Many legislators have never heard a real person explain how their legislation would actually affect someone’s life. Be that person.

  • You can attend committee meetings in person at the Capitol. You can find the calendar here.

  • If you want to join virtually, you can do that as well. Click participate in virtual meeting, raise your hand when they ask about public comment here. And make sure your camera is on when you are called on to speak.

4. Talk to Your People

• This might be the most important one: contact your friends and family and let them know about important bills and what they actually do. Start conversations. Send them links to our bill tracker. Forward this newsletter. The supermajority thrives when people aren’t paying attention. Every person you bring into this conversation is someone who might call their legislator, testify in a hearing, or just understand what’s happening in their state government.

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We’ll Make It, I Swear

So, we’re halfway through, which means the pace is about to accelerate dramatically.

As always, remember: quiet weeks are when the most dangerous things move. They’re counting on you to think “only 21 days left, we’re almost done” and stop paying attention. Try not to.

We’re all living on a prayer but we ARE halfway there. <3

Quick Links:

• Whiteboard-like Full Bill Tracker - All 207 bills we’re tracking with scores and status

  • Detailed dashboard with stats, charts, and all the nerdy info.

• Action Alerts - Current priority bills that need immediate attention

We’re now at Day 19 of the 2026 Legislative Session, which means we’re somehow still in week three despite being nearly halfway through the 45-day sprint.

If week one was posture and week two was acceleration, week three was… quieter. Fewer bills moved. Floor sessions felt almost routine. And committee meetings droned on and on into the 6 PM hour.

But that’s exactly when you need to pay attention.

Because when the pace slows down, when the cameras aren’t rolling quite as hot, when the room isn’t packed with people testifying, that’s when they introduce the bills that show you what they’ve been planning all along. That’s when they say the quiet part out loud. That’s when the mask doesn’t just slip; the full costume comes off.

This week, the story isn’t exactly what passed. It’s what got introduced and what those bills reveal about where all of this is heading.

We’ve covered a lot of ground in our first two weekly recaps (week one and week two). The court packing, the constitutional court scheme, the attacks on trans people, the budget cuts, the election bills. If you want the full breakdown of everything that’s moved so far, start there.

This week, we’re focusing on what’s new, what they’re planning, and what’s simmering.

As always:

• See our full session guide resource before doing anything

• Bookmark elevateutah.news for bill explainers, trackers, and action alerts

• Follow us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Threads, for daily legislative breakdowns

• Subscribe here for weekly recaps (paid subscribers get a gold star)

• Check the bill tracker for what we support, oppose, and are deeply concerned about

• Come to Our Weekly Hill Talk with Better Utah and Better Boundaries. Wednesdays at Church & State (6–7:30 PM) for live breakdowns and more partner organizations each week

• Email us at hillyeah@elevateutah.news when something looks… suspicious

Quick Wins

We are always real downers in your inbox, so in an attempt to keep our open rates high, we thought we should give you some good news! We are tracking 90+ GOOD bills this session. We promise a full breakdown on those soon, but if you want to see for yourself, check out our bill tracker.

So, now the small victories:

• SB23 (chemtrails) failed in committee. Yes, a chemtrails bill made it far enough to get a committee hearing. That alone is a problem. But it’s dead now, and the testimony was, as always, top-tier entertainment.

• HB85 (asserting our state sovereignty over international organizations like the UN and WHO) died on the Senate floor. It passed the House, and yet it did not survive the Senate because it was “unnecessary.” On that, we can agree.

• HB188 was held in committee. This was Rep. Nicholeen Peck’s bill to increase school reporting of drug offenses to police. But don’t celebrate too much, we have a feeling this one is coming back soon.

The graveyard is slowly growing. But remember, nothing is ever dead dead in the legislature. Zombie bills always come back to haunt us.

What Moved

As we said, this week seemed slow on the surface. After last week’s sprint that saw SB134 signed into law within 24 hours of its final passage, one of the only controversial bills we saw speed through this week was HB392, the constitutional court bill that got amended to be slightly less bad (now a three-judge panel instead of an entirely new court) and then immediately rushed through its House floor vote and Senate committee. It now awaits its final step on the Senate floor.

In fact, some of the controversial bills we were expecting to have committee hearings were skipped altogether this week. That doesn’t mean much other than leadership might have been looking for a break from all the bad media.

The things that did make progress: Trans Utahns, targeted in rapid succession. Three bills attacking trans people were voted on and moved off the House floor one right after another in what can only be described as legislative torture:

• HB174 strengthens Utah’s existing ban on gender-affirming hormones for minors by removing the old grandfathering carve-out and forcing most remaining youth who are still on treatment to taper off within 6 months. The bill eliminates the earlier “diagnosed before Jan 28, 2023” pathway and requires providers to immediately start reducing doses and end treatment within 6 months. There’s only a very narrow exception for teens who are almost 18 or already 17+ and have been on hormones for 2+ years with parental consent.

• HB193 bans the use of public funds for gender-affirming medical care in Utah. It prohibits any state or local government entity from paying for or reimbursing hormonal transgender treatments, primary sex characteristic surgeries, or secondary sex characteristic surgeries. The ban applies broadly: Medicaid, public employee health plans, and any other government-administered or government-funded program cannot cover these treatments, either directly or indirectly.

• HB258 requires that if an insurance plan covers gender transition care, it must also cover any treatment or therapy meant to “reverse” that transition. Because apparently, we’re legislating insurance coverage based on regret narratives now.

All three passed the House and moved to the Senate.

BYOB passed the House floor. Moving to the Senate side for the second half of its journey, our favorite name of a bill is making progress. HB156 forces hospitals to allow “directed blood” transfusions, meaning a patient can bring their own blood or blood from a chosen donor for a procedure, as long as it’s done through a federally compliant blood bank and it’s not an emergency. The bill also shields hospitals and providers from liability if something goes wrong with that patient-provided blood. Seems likely that soon you may finally be able to bring your own pure, unvaccinated blood to the hospitals after Kristen Chevrier’s push on this bill for 2 years.

HB84 (campus concealed carry) passed House committee after being substituted. Turns out last year’s session accidentally broke the code and made it technically illegal to conceal carry on campuses. This restores the law to what it was before. Everyone seems fine with it now.

SB73 (the proposed “porn tax”) passed Senate committee. It’s no longer structured as a fee; it’s now an excise tax on online providers of content harmful to minors who fail to perform age verification. Also creates new civil penalties for noncompliance. The new money will go into a teen mental health fund, which it seems like they could have just created and funded independently, but we digress.

The slower pace doesn’t mean they’re done. It means they’re loading the chamber.

What They’re Planning: The New Bills

Just because fewer bills were passing this week doesn’t mean the Legislature took a break. If anything, they used the slower pace to get creative. And by creative, we mean they introduced some of the most brazen, conflict-ridden, and constitutionally questionable bills of the entire session.

This is what happens when you have a supermajority with no meaningful opposition and 27 days left to do whatever you want: flood the zone with all the crazy pet projects and wild ideas in the last few weeks, and surely one or two will slip through. So here is some of the new stuff:

SB233: Let the Legislature Rate Their Judges

Brady Brammer (because, of course, it’s Brady Brammer) introduced a bill this week that makes changes to the Judicial Performance Evaluation Commission (JPEC), the body that reviews and rates judges when they’re up for retention.

Currently, JPEC includes lawyers and other people who work with judges regularly – people who can evaluate judicial temperament, legal knowledge, and courtroom conduct from direct professional experience.

SB233 changes that to open up the evaluation process to “anyone who’s been seen in front of a judge.” Plaintiffs. Defendants. People who won. People who lost.

And you know who’s been a defendant in a lot of cases lately? The Utah Legislature.

So now the Legislature, which has been losing cases against judges who ruled their laws unconstitutional, would get to formally influence the ratings of those same judges. Ratings that now appear on the ballot when judges are up for retention.

This creates a mechanism to punish judges who rule against the Legislature and reward judges who don’t. Hmm. Crazy.

SB233 was introduced and scheduled for a committee hearing this week, but was not ultimately heard yet.

SB242: Who Runs the Streets? The State (to the sound of Run the World by Beyonce)

SB242 is a state takeover of Salt Lake City’s streets. Despite claims otherwise, it strips the city of real control and requires UDOT approval for major decisions on local roads.

The bill uses vague language about “mitigation” to disguise what is actually a major design mandate. Buried in the text is a requirement for 12-foot lanes – a standard used on freeways, not city streets. While we are very proud of our pioneer handcard turnable streets, twelve-foot lanes are designed for high-speed traffic. They prioritize cars over safety. They make streets more dangerous for pedestrians, cyclists, and transit users. And they lock cities into car-centric design permanently.

That matters because UDOT-managed roads are already the most dangerous in the state. Handing more city streets over to UDOT and UDOT design standards would entrench unsafe infrastructure across Utah’s urban core.

But wait, it gets worse.

SB242 would also require tearing out major recent projects, including the 200 South bus lanes and the 300 West bike lanes. Those lanes are central to Salt Lake’s transit system. They represent the biggest transit upgrade since TRAX. They’re already built. Already in use. Already working. The bill would force the city to rip them out and replace them with wider, faster car lanes.

It would also threaten future bus rapid transit expansion, waste years of planning, waste millions in public investment, and obliterate any remaining trust that local governments have authority over their own infrastructure.

They’re dismantling infrastructure they don’t use and don’t understand, and they’re doing it with the confidence of people who will rarely, if ever, experience the consequences.

If you care about this issue, follow Sweet Streets. They’re working hard on safer streets and have action alerts on this bill. This could be heard in committee as soon as Monday.

HB452: No Guns? No Grant Money.

HB452, introduced by Candice Pierucci, prohibits any private entity that receives $1 million or more in public funding from banning concealed firearms in spaces they own, lease, or operate – if those spaces are open to the public.

Unless a specific state or federal law says otherwise, these entities must allow concealed carry by permit holders. Even though they’re private organizations. Even though it’s their property.

So if you’re a nonprofit, a university, a museum, or a performing arts center that gets state money, oh, you know, a venue that hosts basketball, hockey, and concerts, you no longer get to set your own policies on firearms. The state sets them for you.

HB452 is in House Rules.

SB270: An Eviction Court, Brought to You by an Eviction Attorney

Senate Majority Leader Kurt Cullimore – who formerly (though he might still doing contract work for them) used to run, along with his father, the largest eviction law firm in the state – introduced a bill this week that creates a brand-new “Collections and Housing Court” to handle evictions and debt collection cases statewide.

It shifts power toward landlords and debt collectors – Cullimore Sr.’s clients – while making it harder for tenants and low-income defendants to navigate the system.

The new court would pull eviction and debt cases out of local district courts and centralize them under a single statewide structure. These cases would be handled by a single judge with statewide jurisdiction appointed by the governor. The process would move faster.

And speed just happens to benefit the party with resources and legal representation, not the party scrambling to respond on short notice while trying to figure out how to keep a roof over their head.

This is a massive conflict of interest. Kurt Cullimore’s family makes money on these cases. And now he’s redesigning the court system that processes those evictions in ways that make the process faster, more centralized, and more favorable to repeat institutional players like the landlords and debt collectors they represent.

This bill might create a functional system. Maybe it’s even efficient. But when the person designing the system is benefiting from how it operates, it’s self-dealing.

SB270 is in Senate Rules.

HB495: Fast-Tracking the Death Penalty

HB495 dropped this week, and it’s one of those bills where it’s genuinely hard to come up with a joke because the stakes are so high and the intent is so clear.

This bill overhauls Utah’s death penalty process with one goal: speed over fairness.

Here’s what it does:

• Weakens protections for intellectually disabled defendants by forcing early IQ “pre-screening”

• If a defendant objects to the screening, they waive the right to later claim intellectual disability as a reason they shouldn’t be executed

• If the screening finds an IQ above 75, the defense gets just 10 days to challenge the results with evidence

• Failure to provide that evidence in 10 days precludes any further examination, and the court enters an order saying the death penalty is on the table

• Makes automatic Supreme Court review conditional rather than guaranteed

• Creates steep barriers to raising competency claims later in the process

• Sharply limits ineffective assistance of counsel appeals

Taken together, these changes don’t improve justice. They don’t make the system more accurate. They make it faster and harder to stop.

The goal is to move capital cases quickly to execution with minimal oversight while creating the appearance of “streamlined” due process that could help Utah qualify for faster federal review under the death penalty certification process.

This is what happens when efficiency becomes the priority over getting it right. And in capital cases, getting it wrong is irreversible.

HB495 is in House Rules.

HB471: Papers, Work, and Paperwork

HB471 adds new eligibility requirements for Medicaid and SNAP. Specifically, it adds work requirements and requires citizenship verification for both programs.

And if someone who is not a citizen applies for either program and is discovered during the verification process, the bill requires reporting to ICE. So applying for food assistance or healthcare could result in deportation.

HB471 is in House Rules.

HB479: Signed, Sealed, Delivered (In Person Only)

Because we haven’t had enough voting bills this session, HB479 showed up this week with new restrictions on how ballots can be returned.

The bill requires all ballots to be returned in person – meaning no more mailing your ballot for nearly everyone.

It also limits when and where drop boxes can be located, and mandates that all drop boxes must be fully staffed by election workers at all times.

Utah has one of the highest vote-by-mail participation rates in the country. This bill would make voting significantly harder for people who rely on mail returns, including rural voters, elderly voters, people with disabilities, and anyone who works during the limited hours during which drop boxes could be staffed.

HB479 is in House Rules.

HB488: Sunday School Civics

HB488 changes curriculum requirements for civics education to mandate that schools teach “American exceptionalism documents” including the Bible and the Ten Commandments as historical documents.

Get rid of your textbooks, kids. Just bring your quad.

HB488 is in House Rules.

The Week Three Takeaway

We are in that phase of the session that really sets in during the slower weeks. The simultaneous exhaustion and dread. It’s not the frantic energy of trying to track everything at once. It’s the slow realization that the worst bills are being introduced quietly, almost casually, while most people are looking somewhere else.

And all of it moving at a pace designed not to overwhelm, but to slide past. That the people in charge are pulling every puppet string behind the scenes, and they have a plan.

We’re simmering. It’s when things cook so slowly that you don’t notice until it’s too late and burnt.

We’ve got 26 days left. That’s enough time for them to do more damage. And it’s enough time for us to stop some of it.

If the first week told us how the Legislature wanted to be seen, the second week showed us how it actually intends to govern: quickly, confidently, and with very little concern for backlash (or public input).

The story of this week is not because of one shocking bill, but because of how many big, structural changes started moving at once, how casually they were treated, and how fast leadership pushed them forward. Business as usual.

By the end of week two, we already have bills signed by the Governor. Major structural changes with long-term consequences. They moved with almost no time for – or interest in – meaningful public input, sustained scrutiny, or course correction once concerns were raised.

At this point in previous legislative sessions, we typically see the introduction of 477 bills on average. This year: 750. Last year at this time: 597.

That speed is the story.

As a reminder:

• See our full session guide resource before doing anything

• Bookmark elevateutah.news for bill explainers, trackers, and action alerts

• Follow us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Threads, for daily legislative breakdowns

• Subscribe here for weekly recaps (paid subscribers get a gold star)

• Check the bill tracker for what we support, oppose, and are deeply concerned about

• Come to Our Weekly Hill Talk with Better Utah and Better Boundaries. Wednesdays at Church & State (6–7:30 PM) for live breakdowns and more partner organizations each week

• Email us at hillyeah@elevateutah.news when something looks… suspicious

Power Is the Priority

The clearest throughline of week two is this: anything that limits the Legislature’s power is now the largest problem in the state.

Not federal enforcement agents killing people in Minnesota and kidnapping people at home in Utah, and the nationwide outcry that followed. Not Utahns struggling with housing and grocery bills or mental health systems at the breaking point. Not workers leaving jobs, caregivers burned out, or families priced out of healthcare.

That showed up most clearly, and most aggressively, in the judiciary. Of course.

SB134, the court packing bill, didn’t just advance; it ripped through the process. Legislators were whipped into line by leadership. It passed the Senate and was immediately pushed to the House, where it was pulled from Rules and sent to the Business and Labor Committee, a choice that made a ton of sense for a bill reshaping the judiciary.

When they couldn’t get it onto that committee’s agenda within 24 hours, they moved it again. This time to the House Law Enforcement Committee.

As it turns out, there is a committee designed to handle structural changes to the courts. It’s called the Judiciary Committee. For reasons we don’t know, SB134 never went there. What we do know is that they were looking for any committee that would meet leadership’s accelerated timeline.

When asked why the bill was bouncing between unrelated committees, Rep. Wilcox explained it as “workload balancing.” There was no engagement with the substance of the criticism, no response to concerns raised by judges and legal experts, and no explanation for why a judiciary bill needed to avoid the judiciary process altogether. Just arguing with members of the public and making jokes about how much they hate lawyers.

Then came the final signal of just how preordained this all was.

Less than ONE DAY after final passage, the Governor has already signed SB134 into law. Because it passed with 2/3rds of the Legislature, it will go into effect immediately. That means the Governor can begin appointing judges to the Supreme Court on Monday.

And that long-awaited appeal to the Supreme Court that the Legislature has been sitting on since losing the Prop 4 decision? Our guess is that it might have a different path now.

At every step, the message was the same: the outcome mattered more than the route. The supermajority was prepared to ignore public testimony, professional warnings, and internal concern from the courts themselves to get this done and, most importantly, to do it fast.

Because it was inconvenient for them not to.

Utah’s trial courts are the ones under the most strain, and everyone in the system agrees on that. SB134 does address multiple funding requests that the judiciary has requested for the lower courts. However, if this bill were truly about efficiency, the expansion would have stopped there. It didn’t. The Supreme Court expansion stayed in, even after amendments made clear lawmakers knew that was the controversial part.

And unfortunately, SB134 wasn’t the only massive judicial bill on the move.

Out of nowhere, lawmakers advanced a second, even more extraordinary power grab: the creation of a brand-new “constitutional court.” This new court would siphon off constitutional challenges seeking injunctions away from Utah’s existing judiciary and into a structure with judges selected through a process far more vulnerable to political influence.

That means when the Legislature passes a law that is likely unconstitutional, the case wouldn’t necessarily go before the courts that have historically checked that power. It could be rerouted and heard by judges chosen under an expedited, executive-controlled process.

This is unprecedented. No other state has created a separate court like this under an appointment system. Two states (North Carolina and Tennessee) that hear constitutional questions, but in those states, the judges are elected and directly accountable to voters, not appointed by the Governor and confirmed by the same Legislature whose laws they are being asked to review.

And because we couldn’t help ourselves, we looked at what this kind of constitutional court system actually looks like in practice. That comparison makes the intent of this bill much harder to ignore.

Countries where one party or leader controls constitutional court appointments without supermajority requirements or meaningful opposition input include Putin’s Russia, Orbán’s Hungary, Erdoğan’s Turkey, Chávez’s Venezuela, Bukele’s El Salvador, and…. Hitler’s Germany. In each case, scholars point to judicial capture as the decisive moment in democratic backsliding — the point where power grabs disguised as “legal” and constitutional checks effectively disappear.

“When we look at cases of autocratization across the globe, the capture of constitutional courts is often the decisive moment in the slide towards authoritarian rule.”

By contrast, democratic systems that take constitutional review seriously — like Germany today — require two-thirds supermajorities across multiple legislative bodies precisely because history showed what happens when one party controls constitutional interpretation.

Utah lawmakers are citing democratic examples while building the opposite of their protections.

We’ll be doing a much longer piece on the broader attacks on the judiciary later. But for now, it’s worth saying plainly: this comparison alone should alarm anyone paying attention.

This bill was introduced publicly on Tuesday and rushed through committee on Wednesday, in the very same hearing as the court-packing bill. A giant structural change that did not stop. Did not pass go. Did not have time for anyone to review, let alone read or understand the implications, before accelerating through the process.

When courts don’t rule the way lawmakers want, the solution isn’t to write better laws. It’s to change the system that reviews them. The Legislature lost some big cases. Instead of adjusting policy, they’re adjusting the referee.

That’s not subtle. And by week two, we think they already given up trying to be.

Control, Everywhere All at Once

Week two made clear that this session isn’t just about one kind of control. It’s about stacking systems, building overlapping layers of authority that all move power in the same direction.

Voting bills are just one example. Large omnibus election measures kept advancing, bundling together expanded audits, tighter verification rules, new documentation requirements, and more aggressive voter roll maintenance. None of this is framed as suppression. Lawmakers use safer language: “confidence,” “integrity,” “election administration.”

But the effect is predictable because we’ve seen it before. Each new requirement adds friction. Each audit creates new discretion. Each “cleanup” measure increases the likelihood that eligible voters — especially naturalized citizens, older voters, students, and people who move frequently — get flagged, delayed, or quietly removed.

These systems don’t need to be openly punitive to be effective. They work by exhausting people. By shifting the burden of proof onto voters. By creating just enough uncertainty that some people decide it’s not worth the trouble.

That same logic showed up in sentencing policy.

A bill being run by the Speaker of the House moved to restructure the sentencing commission — the body that sets the guidelines judges rely on when determining criminal penalties. The bill removes all defense attorneys from the commission and replaces them with additional law enforcement members, while being marketed as a “victims’ rights” measure.

But the details tell the real story. The bill adds no new victims’ advocates. It simply concentrates decision-making power even further toward enforcement and prosecution, eliminating the perspectives most directly responsible for safeguarding due process and proportionality.

Defense attorneys were already in the minority. This bill eliminates counterweights entirely.

Again, the pattern matters.

This isn’t about public safety in any meaningful sense. It’s about who gets to define safety, who gets to shape outcomes, and whose voices are treated as obstacles rather than safeguards.

Control, stacked on control, until resistance becomes procedural noise.

Another Session, Same Targets

If week one showed that attacks on trans people would be part of this session, week two showed how completely normalized those attacks have become.

This is now the fifth legislative session in a row where trans Utahns have been targeted with sweeping, restrictive legislation. Five years of bills framed as “protections,” “clarifications,” or “common sense limits.” Five years of testimony from parents, doctors, educators, and trans people themselves explaining, in increasingly exhausted terms, what these laws actually do.

And somehow, each year, lawmakers find new ground to cover. New angles. New mechanisms. More intrusive ways to legislate bodies, families, and daily life.

Multiple bills targeting gender-affirming care, public insurance coverage, housing access, language, and basic participation in life have been introduced, and some moved through committees in rapid succession. The testimony was devastating. The stories were personal. The consequences were clear.

And yet, it was all treated as a procedural inconvenience.

No grappling with the fact that these policies compound harm year after year. No acknowledgment that this volume of legislation, aimed at the same small population, might itself be a problem.

Just: next bill.

There was one exception, though. From House Minority Whip Jen Dailey-Provost, whose statement during the committee meeting had many of us in tears:

“I know that speaking in opposition to this bill is a futile exercise because I can do a vote count. And so I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank everybody here for testifying. For testifying about the things that they care deeply about. I’m distressed that, as long as I’ve been in the legislature – I’m in my eighth session – there seems to be this dogged desire to continue to marginalize one of our most marginalized at-risk populations.

To our transgender community: I stand with you. I always will. And I love you, and I thank you for being here. And I’m really sorry that we have to constantly drag you up here to bear your souls and tell your stories and ask for compassion when I know you’re not going to get it.

I am emotionally exhausted by these bills and by this targeting, and I really wish that we could do better as a legislature and not pass legislation like this. For those reasons and many more, I’ll be voting no.”

When discrimination becomes routine committee work, lawmakers don’t need to escalate the rhetoric to escalate the harm. The cruelty is in the repetition. In the accumulation. In the message that no amount of testimony will ever be enough to slow the process down.

Show Me the Money

Something that rarely gets discussed in depth during legislative sessions is the budget — even though it may be the most consequential thing lawmakers do. Every morning in the early weeks of the session, legislators meet at 8:00 AM in appropriations committee hearings. These meetings shape what survives, what gets cut, and what is quietly scaled back long before the full budget is passed on the final night of session. By the time that last vote happens, most of the real decisions have already been made.

Nowhere is that more true than in the Social Services Appropriations Committee, where funding decisions determine whether people receive care, housing, healthcare, disability services, and basic support — or not.

For hours, state agencies, providers, and advocates lay out the reality of what Utah actually needs. Disability services stretched beyond capacity. Waiting lists are thousands and 20 years long. Medicaid is under constant pressure. Home- and community-based services keep people out of institutions. Behavioral health and crisis response teams are filling gaps that never seem to shrink. Juvenile justice, homelessness services, vaccinations and epidemiology, aging and adult care, Meals on Wheels.

It’s a reminder that when government works, it’s largely invisible, until it’s at risk.

What makes these hearings especially difficult to watch is not just the content, but the imbalance. Over two weeks, we’ve watched countless people stand before a committee and share painful, deeply personal moments of their lives. Parents explaining how transportation is the only thing standing between their autistic child and no services at all. Providers defending travel stipends because without them, they cannot hire or retain staff. Medical examiners explaining why being on scene matters. Family physicians pointing out, again, that basic, preventive care keeps people out of emergency rooms and saves the system money.

It starts to feel less like a modern budgeting process and more like a feudal petition system: people pleading for relief, forced to justify their suffering in public, while those with power decide, often abstractly, who is worthy of care and who is not.

Again and again, agencies are not asked how to improve outcomes, but to defend the very existence of the work they do.

These hearings are happening under the shadow of an already-issued directive. Each appropriations committee has been instructed to cut five percent from its budget, across the board. All of this is a consequence of the Big Beautiful Bill. Federal funding is cut, matches are lessened, and our state departments are left to clean up the mess. Just: find the savings.

At the same time, legislators are proposing yet another income tax cut — for the fifth year in a row. And that bill is moving quickly.

You cannot tell agencies they are barely holding together essential services while also insisting that cutting revenue won’t affect outcomes. Those two stories do not coexist.

What makes this even harder is that nearly everything on the chopping block is cheaper than the alternative.

• Preventive primary care costs less than ER visits and hospitalizations.

• Mental health support costs less than crisis response and jail beds.

• Vaccinations and disease outbreak tracking cost less than a pandemic.

• Home-based services cost less than institutional care.

• Stable housing costs less than emergency shelters and policing.

These aren’t abstract tradeoffs. They’re well-documented, well-understood, and repeated year after year. And yet, the same agencies come back every session, forced to justify why prevention is still cheaper than punishment, to beg the lords and ladies for mercy and support.

A number of organizations are coordinating attendance at social services appropriations meetings because presence matters in these rooms. Here is a Google Form where you can sign up to attend, show support, and make it harder for these stories to be ignored.

And Then, International Politics, Because Clearly They’re Well-Qualified

As if to underline just how untethered the GOP’s priorities have become, Karianne Lisonbee introduced a bill mandating that Utah government materials adopt right-wing Israeli political language and banning the term “West Bank” outright.

The language the bill enforces is explicitly associated with factions in Israeli politics that reject a two-state solution and assert exclusive territorial claims. The term “West Bank,” by contrast, is internationally recognized, used in treaties, diplomacy, and decades of U.S. foreign policy. Utah would be directing its agencies to ignore that consensus – and Palestinian occupation – and substitute an ideological framing instead.

The bill solves no Utah problem. It addresses no constituent need. It improves no service, lowers no costs, and protects no one living here. It does not help families afford housing, fix air quality, expand healthcare access, or stabilize public schools. It has no bearing on state governance whatsoever.

What it does do is send a message. It signals alignment. It signals grievance politics. And it signals that Utah’s Legislature feels perfectly comfortable using state law to wade into one of the most volatile international conflicts in the world — not to promote peace or humanitarian concern or an end to the genocide, but to pick a side rhetorically.

This is what governing without accountability looks like. Time and attention are spent not on the hardest problems facing Utahns, but on ideological theater that carries no local cost for the people voting on it.

Other Updates

• SB65 passed Senate committee. This bill redirects property tax revenue earmarked for public schools into the general fund. Amendment A all over again.

• SB97 passed Senate committee. This bill caps how much municipalities can raise property taxes year over year.

• SB116 passed Senate committee. This bill would automate future income tax cuts when revenue exceeds projections.

• SB194 passed Senate committee. This is the large election omnibus expanding audits and voter roll maintenance requirements.

• HB209 passed the House floor and heads to the Senate. This bill creates a bifurcated voting system that limits voters without documentary proof of citizenship to federal-only ballots while expanding election officials’ authority to investigate and remove voters from the rolls.

• HB16 passed committee. This bill adds new barriers to utility-scale solar development on certain land.

• HB141 passed committee. This bill creates a new tax on international money transfers, disproportionately impacting immigrant families.

• HB179 passed committee, one of many raw milk bills, amid notable stakeholder disagreement around food and agriculture policy.

• HB222 passed committee. This bill grants broad immunity to fossil fuel companies and major polluters from certain civil lawsuits.

• One piece of good news: HB152 failed in committee on a tie vote, stopping it from advancing — for now. This is Trevor Lee’s bill that would have removed the requirements for parents to watch an informational module before exempting their children from vaccine requirements.

The Week Two Takeaway

Each of us had a moment this week (probably more than one, if we’re being honest) where we still had hope. Sitting in a committee room, listening to testimony, watching votes line up, thinking for just a second that the motion to table might pass. That someone would break ranks. That reason would cut through the pressure. That leadership wouldn’t get exactly what it wanted.

And that feeling is brutal. Because it almost never comes true.

But we’re not going to lose that hope. We can’t. If we do, what is any of this for? Why show up? Why testify? Why organize? Why keep watching at all?

But holding onto hope doesn’t mean pretending the other side is confused or that what they’re doing is accidental. The GOP supermajority knows exactly how this building works. They know who needs to be whipped into line. They know which committees to route bills through. They know that if a bill passes with less than two-thirds, it can be challenged by referendum. They know that if one or two members cave publicly, others might follow.

That’s why the pressure is relentless. That’s why the speed matters. That’s why leadership closes ranks so hard and so early.

But as you all know, we believe strongly that hope is not naïveté. It’s a strategy.

And the reason they work so hard to crush it is because they know it still matters.

We’ll keep showing up. We’ll keep watching. We’ll keep naming what’s happening, even when it’s exhausting, even when it hurts to admit how close some of these moments felt, even when it is personal and devastating.

Because let’s all try to still remember that the outcome isn’t inevitable. At least it doesn’t have to be. And they wouldn’t be working this hard if it were.

A new poll from Embold Research shows 64% of Utah voters support Proposition 4, the 2018 anti-gerrymandering initiative that created neutral criteria for redistricting and banned partisan map manipulation. That includes 88% of Democrats, 74% of independents, and here’s the kicker: 55% of registered Republicans.

Even more striking: 57% of voters disapprove of the Legislature repealing Prop 4, including 47% of Republicans.

Meanwhile, the Prop 4 repeal campaign is struggling real hard. Signature gathering slowed and has now even started going backwards in multiple Senate districts as people removed their names. Even a Trump endorsement, more than $4 million, and professional signature-gathering help couldn’t fix the basic problem: they’re trying to sell Utahns something they don’t want to buy.

If you’re a data nerd like us and wondering about how the poll was conducted, what exactly voters were asked, and what it means for the repeal movement, congratulations, you are exactly who this post is for. Welcome to the party, you nerds.

Read more

This moment is heavy in a way that’s hard to describe without sounding dramatic, and yet anything less would be dishonest.

People were killed by the state. Again. Out in the open, in public, captured on video, witnessed by neighbors, mourned by families who will never be the same. There was no trial. No jury. No moment where anyone stopped to ask whether force was necessary, whether restraint was required, or whether a law was even being broken. Armed agents acted. People died. And then the rest of us were left to absorb it.

Many of us spent the weekend in that familiar, sickened rhythm: refreshing the news, reading and watching over and over, trying to understand how this keeps happening and what it says about the country we are living in now.

Protesting. Yelling with your friends, trying to do anything about it. Trying to escape to social media or distractions, only to be met with more videos. Trying to do normal things while carrying the knowledge that the government is executing people, and no one is held accountable.

We won’t claim to have the right words; we’re not sure anyone does right now. But it isn’t just sadness or anger. It’s some kind of disorienting realization that we are watching history harden around us. Seeing the rules and rights we were told mattered, dissolving right in front of our eyes.

And layered on top of that grief is the growing realization that many of the people in power do not seem to feel the weight of this at all. That gap between the gravity most people are carrying and the ease with which leaders continue on makes these moments even more unbearable.

It was in that headspace that a Utah lawmaker, Senator Todd Weiler, responded to public concern about ICE activity with this sentence:

“I’m pretty sure heaven has an immigration policy.”

The comment came last week during a hearing of the Utah Senate Judiciary Committee, where every Republican on the committee is white, American-born. None have characteristics that would put them at risk of being questioned, detained, or disappeared into a federal system they insist is orderly and lawful – a system they are almost certain will never turn on them.

Lawmakers were debating a bill that would have placed limits on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity in “sensitive places” like churches, libraries, and schools. Spaces where people gather to pray, to mourn, to learn, to seek help, and to be safe. The bill also addressed the use of face coverings by ICE agents, a practice that has made accountability nearly impossible in communities already living with fear.

It was a serious bill and it was never going to pass. The hearing was staged by the GOP supermajority, not to seriously consider its merits, but to create a public venue to shut down a fellow legislator who is running for Congress, to demonstrate loyalty to federal enforcement, and to signal whose lives are worthy of protection and whose are not.

During public testimony, a member of the public spoke to the moral contradiction at the center of this debate. They asked how lawmakers who so often invoke Christianity and faith in their public lives could reconcile that identity with support for ICE actions, especially when this legislation would have limited ICE operations in churches and other places of worship.

And then the joke. Heaven has an immigration policy.

Heaven does not carry out raids.
Heaven does not detain children.
Heaven does not shoot observers in the street or through a car window.

Those are human actions. They are carried out by agents of the state, under policies written, defended, and funded by people in power.

Appealing to heaven reframes that violence as ordained rather than chosen. It suggests this suffering is not the result of policy, discretion, or force but of cosmic order. And therefore not something we are entitled to challenge, grieve, or stop.

When the state kills people and a lawmaker answers with “heaven has an immigration policy,” what he is really saying is: do not ask us to take responsibility for the harm we are causing. This is normal. This is settled. This is not up for debate.

But let’s be clear about who bears the violence that these representatives refuse to acknowledge. It falls overwhelmingly on immigrants, on people of color, on families who already live under constant surveillance, suspicion, and threat. It falls on people whose existence is already treated as provisional.

And the pain is compounded by a pattern we have seen over and over again – one that shapes whose suffering we witness and whose we are allowed to ignore. The reason so many people are paying attention, the reason the outrage breaks through, is because the violence disrupted the illusion that state force only falls on “other people.” The fact that Renee Good and Alex Pretti are white does not take away from the horrific acts of violence against them, but they are only two of the nine people killed during ICE operations in the last month – the only two who are white.

Because visibility has never been evenly distributed. And violence did not begin this month.

Tensions around ICE are at an all-time high. There is reporting that a new ICE detention facility is being built in Salt Lake City, on the west side, one of the few areas of the state that is majority-minority. Schools, churches, and community spaces in immigrant and Latino communities are seeing documented drops in participation. Crime, especially domestic violence, is being underreported out of fear that calling for help could lead to deportation instead of protection. Medical care is being delayed or avoided entirely for the same reason.

Countless people died in federal detention or at the hands of ICE in 2025. Families are being torn apart by detentions and deportations. More than 3,800 children have been taken into ICE custody since Trump took office. People have been disappeared into a system with no transparency, no accountability, and no meaningful way back.

It’s just background noise. The cost of enforcement. The price of order. The kind of violence this country has learned to tolerate as long as it happens to the “right” people.

Anyone who knows an immigrant – who loves one, lives alongside one, has shared meals and birthdays and fear with one – would never joke about this. Anyone who has watched the videos of Renee Good or Alex Pretti’s killings, or thought about a terrified child detained alone, would not find this funny. And no one should be asked to relive their trauma to educate people who have shown such a profound lack of interest in understanding it.

The facade of “Utah nice” is gone. The idea that things are done “the Utah way” has collapsed under the weight of what we are watching.

If you believe the state has the right to be the judge, jury, and executioner, then just say that.
If you believe we should only have a single branch of government, then defend that.
If you believe some lives are expendable in service of order, then own that.

But do not invoke heaven to launder what is being done by human hands.

You do not get to appeal upward to avoid looking directly at the people being harmed on the ground.

Because when confronted with state violence, leaders have a choice. They can reckon with it, or they can sanctify it. And when power chooses sanctification over accountability, it is telling you exactly how little the dead are expected to matter.

A government that answers death with theology is telling you it has no intention of stopping the killing.

Abolish ICE. Defund DHS. Put every ICE agent who has committed a crime on trial.

Supporting Minneapolis Communities

For those looking to respond in a tangible way, we’ve included links below to Minneapolis-based organizations providing legal support, mutual aid, and direct assistance to families affected by ICE violence. These are not the only organizations and if you can’t provide money, there are many actions you can take, including contacting your representatives.

Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota

MN Immigrant Rights Action Committee

VEAP - Emergency care packs

Unidos MN

CAPI

Immigrant Defense Project

We are entering Day Five of the Utah Legislative Session. Technically, actually seven because the Legislature counts weekends towards the 45 days, believe it or not.

Week one is when the Legislature shows you its posture. Not the outcomes yet, but the stance. What it’s going to rush, what it’s going to make jokes about, what it’s going to treat as routine and what (or who) it is going to treat as collateral damage.

And we are seeing the same supermajority that has become familiar at this point. The same fixation on control. The same confidence that there will be no real consequences for moving fast, breaking norms, or targeting the same communities over and over again. What’s changed isn’t the agenda, so far, it’s their comfort level. Their ease. Their lack of pretense.

You can see it in what moved quickly, what was laughed off, and you can definitely see it in what was dismissed as an overreaction, even when people were begging for protection in the room.

So, before we get into individual bills, it’s worth grounding ourselves in what week one actually taught us about what is coming ahead.

As a reminder:

• See our full session guide resource before doing anything

• Bookmark elevateutah.news for bill explainers, trackers, and action alerts

• Follow us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Threads, for daily legislative breakdowns

• Subscribe here for weekly recaps (paid subscribers get a gold star)

• Check the bill tracker for what we support, oppose, and are deeply concerned about

• Come to Our Weekly Hill Talk (with Better Utah and Better Boundaries) Wednesdays at Church & State with (6–7:30 PM) for live breakdowns and more partner organizations each week

• Email us at hillyeah@elevateutah.news when something looks… suspicious

What Week One Tells You

You know what I have always said? What’s the best way to kick off session? Four white men in rotating stages of hair loss, solemnly quoting Abraham Lincoln before doing the exact opposite.

The Governor delivers the State of the State. The Senate President and the Speaker of the House outline their visions for their chambers. The Chief Justice gives the State of the Judiciary. There’s a lot of history, a lot of language about responsibility, and a lot of talk about long-term thinking and restraint (huh).

Governor Spencer Cox warned against legislating too much, urged patience over political urgency, and leaned heavily on the idea that good government requires humility, restraint, and respect for institutions (wild contradictions). The Senate President, Stuart Adams, framed the session around responsibility, stability, and Utah’s role as a steady hand in uncertain times. Speaker of the House, Mike Schultz, wrapped those themes in Utah history and legacy, arguing that true leadership means making unpopular choices now in service of future generations.

On paper, the opening speeches asked for patience and trust. The first week of legislative action made clear neither would be reciprocated.

Because while individual speeches make for good clips, the real story is told by the supermajority as a governing body. And in week one, the supermajority controls everything: the Rules Committee (first cut), committee agendas (second cut), bill assignments (where favorites are made clear), and the calendar, because “we ran out of time” is the most effective argument in the building.

If the speeches were the guide, you’d expect early momentum around housing, water, early literacy, or cost-of-living relief. You’d expect fewer bills, slower movement, and an emphasis on problems Utahns actually feel every day.

That’s not what moved.

Instead, the earliest action went to bills that consolidate power, expand enforcement, and narrow who is protected by law.

Week One: What Actually Moved

A few patterns emerged almost immediately.

Courts Moved First (and Fast)

Judicial power bills were among the very first to advance. SB134 proposes expanding Utah’s appellate courts:

• The Utah Supreme Court would grow from five justices to seven.

• The Court of Appeals would expand from seven judges to nine.

• Additional district court judges and staff are added as part of the package.

That last part is important. Utah’s trial courts are under-resourced. Caseloads are heavy. More judges and staff are genuinely needed.

That’s the sweetener.

The problem is where the expansion happens — and why.

The Legislature’s Case

Supporters of SB134 argue that this is about efficiency and workload. More judges, they say, means faster decisions and more eyes on complex issues. They point out that other states have larger appellate courts and insist this is a neutral, administrative update.

If this bill were only about funding trial courts, it would likely be uncontroversial. But it isn’t.

No One Is Asking for This

Leadership from the Utah Supreme Court and the Utah State Bar stated plainly that expanding the Supreme Court would not solve their primary challenges and could actually slow decision-making and complicate case management.

Even more telling, many supporters of the bill testified that they only supported the lower court funding, not the Supreme Court expansion. Amendments were offered that implicitly acknowledged the real issue wasn’t ideology, it was resources.

And yet, the expansion stayed in.

Twice as many people testified against the bill as in favor. The room was full of lawyers, judges, and advocates warning that structural changes to the judiciary should not be rushed, politicized, or retaliatory.

The bill passed anyway. But the vibe in the room from the Senator’s bench was very clear: celebratory, relieved, almost giddy.

Why This Is Retaliation

Context is everything. In recent years, Utah courts have ruled against the Legislature on some of its most aggressive power grabs. Congressional maps. Voter-approved reforms. Constitutional limits the Legislature didn’t like.

SB134 doesn’t come out of a long-term judicial planning process. It comes after losses.

And now, the legislature wants to add more justices in order to get the outcomes they want in the ongoing litigation process.

And it doesn’t exist alone. Alongside SB134 are:

• A constitutional amendment that weakens the judicial nominating commission.

• A bill raising judicial retention elections from a simple majority to a 67 percent threshold.

Taken together, these moves do three things:

• Change who gets on the bench.

• Change how long seats can remain vacant.

• Change how easily judges can be removed.

Why Everyone Should Care

Court packing sounds abstract until you realize what courts are for. They’re the backstop.

They’re where challenges to unconstitutional laws go. They’re where minority rights get enforced. They’re where the Legislature is told “no” when it crosses a line.

Once you politicize the judiciary, that backstop weakens.

This sets a dangerous precedent: if lawmakers don’t like how courts rule, they expand them. If future courts push back again, they expand them again. Judicial independence becomes conditional on legislative approval.

2. Immigration Bills Moved in One Direction Only

Immigration-related legislation arrived in clusters, and the direction was clear.

Bills expanding enforcement, surveillance, and exclusion advanced quickly. Bills that would have created even narrow limits or protections did not.

HB209, which creates a two-tier voting system based on citizenship documentation, passed out of committee on a party-line vote. It expands voter roll investigations and shifts the burden onto voters to prove eligibility on short timelines.

At the same time, SB136 — a bill that would have placed narrow limits on ICE activity in courthouses, churches, and libraries — was killed in committee.

(We have A LOT of thoughts on this committee meeting and so we will have more on that in a separate piece)

3. Early Pressure on the Environment

A couple of environmental bills were some of the fastest moving this first week.

HB16, the bill reshaping how large-scale solar projects are approved, moved quickly. Supporters framed it as a long-overdue correction: farmland should feed people, not panels; rural counties should have more say; developers shouldn’t get a free pass. For some farmers and local officials, those arguments resonate. Land use matters. Incentives matter. And the tension between agricultural preservation and energy development is real.

But the timing and structure of the bill matter just as much as the talking points. HB16 adds new permitting hurdles, layers of approval, and incentive cutoffs that make utility-scale solar significantly harder to build, at a moment when Utah’s population is growing, energy demand is rising, and air quality remains a public health issue. What’s being framed as balance adds friction to the process and friction slows energy development at exactly the moment demand is rising.

HB60 moved alongside it, narrowing who gets to challenge new water rights and stripping out long-standing requirements that the state consider impacts to public welfare, recreation, and natural stream environments. In a vacuum, that might sound procedural. In the context of the Great Salt Lake’s ongoing collapse, it’s anything but.

This is a state already living with the consequences of delayed environmental action: toxic dust, shrinking water supplies, and rising health risks. And yet, the bills that moved first weren’t about accelerating conservation or protecting shared resources. They were about limiting objections, narrowing standing, and making it easier to move forward without answering uncomfortable questions.

Environmental organizations do know of some positive bills this session to help strengthen protections for everything from the Great Salt Lake to air quality. Which is exactly why we have partnered with:

• HEAL Utah

• Grow the Flow

• Save Our Great Salt Lake

• And Stewardship Utah

for our weekly Hill Talk event with our friends at Better Utah and Better Boundaries.

Come this Wednesday (1/28) at 6:00 at Church and State to learn more directly from these partners and find ways to take action right now.

What You Can Actually Do

The next week’s of session will continue to move faster, get louder, and even more insufferable. But just remember, you don’t need to track every bill to matter.

Right now:

• Find a bill or two that you feel strongly about, and reach out to the bill sponsor, the committee chair if it’s been assigned to one, and your representatives.

• Committee hearings matter more than floor votes. Showing up in person or virtually can have a very big impact.

• If you can’t attend in person, share explainers, call offices, and back the groups doing the work.

We’ll keep updating the bill tracker with what we support, oppose, and the pure crazy. We’ll flag action alerts and attempt to keep translating what’s happening in real time.

But don’t let them wear you out. Legislative sessions run on fatigue.

They count on people tuning out, assuming someone else is watching, or deciding it’s all too much to follow. That’s when the worst bills move the fastest.

You don’t have to be an expert. You just have to stay connected.

We’ve still got 38 days left. That’s a long time and also, not nearly enough.

Before we get into it, here’s a reminder of how to follow along this session:

• See our full session guide resource before doing anything

• Bookmark elevateutah.news for bill explainers, trackers, and action alerts

• Follow us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Threads, for daily legislative breakdowns

• Subscribe here for weekly recaps (paid subscribers get a gold star)

• Check the bill tracker for what we support, oppose, and are deeply concerned about

• Come to Hill Talk Wednesdays at Church & State (6–7:30 PM) for live breakdowns + partner orgs

• Email us at hillyeah@elevateutah.news when something looks… suspicious

• Subscribe here for weekly recaps (paid subscribers get a gold star)

  Subscribe now

Lawmakers are back in their suits, lobbyists are already looking for parking, and Todd Weiler’s wife is once again (as she has since 2018) laying out his outfits like it’s the first day of school. Can’t dress himself but we let him make laws. Makes sense.

If you’re hoping this legislative session will be about solving Utah’s actual problems like housing, water, education, and healthcare, you may want to brace yourself.

The 2026 Utah Legislature is shaping up to be less about governing and, once again, more about asserting control: over cities, over bodies, over speech, over movement, over schools, over courts, over what counts as “acceptable” identity, and even over who gets to participate in every day life.

This session continues a pattern we’ve seen accelerate over the last few years: a Republican supermajority that no longer governs like it believes consequences exist. Instead of responding to voter concerns, it increasingly legislates against imagined threats – often imported from national right-wing media ecosystems – and uses state power to punish or preempt anyone who doesn’t fall in line.

Below is a preview of the major concerning bills we’ll be tracking this session. But don’t you worry, this is just the beginning. This email might send you into a deep spiral, but we couldn’t fit all the bills here so we will be updating you about some of the good legislation in future emails.

1. Judicial Independence on the Chopping Block

After repeated losses in court, the Legislature is continuing on its warpath against judicial independence.

SB134 (Appellate Court Amendments - Sen. Chris Wilson) would expand the Utah Supreme Court from five to seven justices and the Court of Appeals from seven to nine judges. Legislative leadership is pitching this as a neutral, administrative fix, citing workload concerns and pointing out that some similarly sized states have larger appellate courts.

Court expansion, on its own, isn’t inherently illegitimate. But context matters. And in this case, the timing, structure, and scope of this bill raise serious red flags.

Judicial leadership has been clear about where the real pressure points are: understaffed trial and juvenile courts, insufficient numbers of law clerks, strained court administration, and a lack of resources for domestic violence cases. Those investments would actually improve access to justice for everyday Utahns. Expanding the appellate courts does not address those needs.

Structural changes to the judiciary should be driven by judicial expertise and long-term planning instead of political frustration with recent court decisions. Taken alongside other bills aimed at weakening judicial independence, SB143 looks less like capacity-building and more like an attempt to reshape the courts to be more compliant.

HJR5 (Judicial Nominations Amendment - Rep: Jason Kyle) proposes a constitutional amendment that allows the governor to ignore the judicial nominating commission entirely, removes deadlines for appointments, and strips the chief justice of the authority to fill vacancies if the governor fails to act.

If passed and approved by voters in November, this would consolidate decisive control over judicial appointments in the governor’s office and allow seats to remain vacant indefinitely if the governor doesn’t like the options.

HB262 (Judicial Election Amendments) is another hit by Representative Jason Kyle. One he proposed last year and is bringing back from the dead. This completes the loop by raising the judicial retention threshold from a simple majority to 67%. That turns retention elections from performance reviews into political loyalty tests, making judges more vulnerable to partisan attacks and pressure.

Taken together, these bills build on the already damaged system:

• Control who gets on the bench

• Control when seats are filled

• Control how easily judges can be removed

2. The Legislature vs. Local Control (Guess Who’s Winning?)

One of the clearest through lines this year is already the Legislature’s growing willingness to override cities, counties, and local decision-makers outright.

The most blatant example is HB196 (Highway Designation Amendments). On its face, it changes how roads can be named. In practice, it does something much bigger and much more nefarious: it allows the Legislature to rename city-owned streets, forces cities and businesses to comply, and strips them of the ability to use alternative names. And then, THEN, it immediately uses that power to rename Salt Lake City’s “Harvey Milk Boulevard” as “Charlie Kirk Boulevard.”

This bill, being run by Trevor Lee, is not only offensive but also incredibly ironic. If we were to make a supercut of every legislator solemnly invoking “local control,” we would be here for three days. But instead of that, we’ll let the team at Equality Utah do the talking:

“Trevor Lee has an unusual and truly bizarre obsession with the LGBT community. And it’s so curious that he wants to memorialize Charlie Kirk on the absolute gayest street in Utah.

“The people of Salt Lake City know the difference between meaningful leadership and culture-war cosplay. Harvey Milk earned his place in history. Trevor Lee, despite his yearning for our attention, isn’t destined for the history books. Frankly, he couldn’t even land his name on a cul-de-sac.”

HB196 isn’t about honoring anyone. It’s about establishing that the Legislature can reach directly into city infrastructure and make symbolic, ideological statements without local consent from the people who actually live there. Local control, but only when it’s to their benefit.

If you think cities should get to decide what their streets are called, Equality Utah has a petition you can sign here.

The Legislature has spent the last few sessions targeting Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County, curiously Utah’s largest and most liberal strongholds. While we haven’t seen direct retaliation for the Salt Lake City Pride flags yet, there are several other local-control bills worth watching:

• SB108 – Online Marketplace Amendments (Sen. Lincoln Fillmore) Cities and counties would be barred from regulating online marketplaces, including short-term rentals like AirBNB and gig platforms.

• HB239 – Local Land Use Amendments (Rep. Jordan Teuscher) Creates a state-authorized commission for planning unincorporated areas in counties of the first class (aka only Salt Lake County) that can steer annexation, block incorporation efforts, and limit local choice.

• HB212 – County Formation Amendments (Rep. Jordan Teuscher) Opens the door to breaking up Salt Lake County, reshaping services, taxes, and political power under the banner of “local control.”

• HB236 – Truth in Taxation Amendments (Rep. Karen Peterson) Tightens the process for raising property taxes, making it harder for local governments to respond to real costs and service needs – likely in response to Salt Lake County raising property taxes this year.

3. Voting, Citizenship, and the Redefinition of Democracy

HB209 (Voting Amendments - Rep Corey Maloy) changes who voting is realistically accessible to in Utah.

This bill creates a two-tier voting system. Voters who provide documentary proof of U.S. citizenship receive a full ballot and can vote in federal, state, and local elections. Voters who do not provide that proof can still register and vote, but only in federal races.

That structure alone will push people out of the process.

For many voters – particularly naturalized citizens, immigrants, elderly voters, people with limited English proficiency, and anyone unfamiliar with election bureaucracy – the message is simple: this may be complicated, risky, and not worth the trouble. When voting becomes conditional and paperwork-heavy, participation drops. This is a well-documented phenomenon.

HB209 also gives election officials new authority to independently review voter rolls and flag voters as “not a citizen” using databases like SAVE and other government records. If you’re flagged, the burden is entirely on you to fix it. Fail to respond in time, and you can be removed from the rolls or forced into provisional voting that won’t count unless you provide proof of citizenship within ten days.

Systems like SAVE are known to be error-prone and slow, especially for naturalized citizens and people whose records don’t perfectly match across agencies. Under HB209, even a mistake by the state can cost someone their vote.

This is where the discrimination becomes obvious. HB209 formalizes a system where some voters move through elections untouched, while others are flagged, scrutinized, and required to repeatedly justify their right to participate.

HB209 doesn’t need to explicitly ban anyone from voting to be effective. It just needs to make voting harder, riskier, and more confusing for the “wrong” people. And in a state where we see nearly zero voter fraud issues every year, the message this sends is perfectly clear to anyone paying attention.

A few other voting and democracy bills to keep in mind:

• HB256 (School District Elections Amendments - Rep. Jason Kyle) would make school board elections partisan, forcing candidates to run with party labels, go through party primaries, and tie midterm vacancies to party affiliation. The result is a system where local school governance becomes a permanent culture-war battleground.

• HB25 (Candidate Petition Amendments - Rep. Lisa Shepherd) changes the candidate nominating petition process by requiring candidates to submit signatures to each voter’s county clerk for verification (instead of one central filing officer), with county clerks certifying totals back to the Lieutenant Governor for multi-county races. It also moves up the signature submission deadline for signature-gathering candidates seeking a qualified political party nomination, from 14 days to 21 days before convention.

4. Legislating Identity Out of Existence

Utah lawmakers are continuing their years-long effort to redefine gender, identity, and family relationships through statute, regardless of medical consensus or lived reality.

HB183 (Sex Designation Amendments - of course, Rep. Trevor Lee) replaces the word “gender” with “sex” throughout Utah law, strips protections tied to gender identity in housing, employment, and crime, severely limits changes to birth certificates, and hardens sex-based rules in schools.

It also includes a particularly alarming provision: schools and some childcare or healthcare providers may not assign an employee who “presents” as a different sex to have face-to-face contact with a child for more than five minutes. This provision is insulting, disgusting, state-sanctioned bigotry.

In custody cases, the bill goes even further, allowing courts to treat a parent’s refusal to support a child’s gender identity as a point in their favor.

This is about using law to enforce conformity and punishing families and individuals who don’t comply with one narrow worldview.

That same impulse shows up in HB114 (Adult-Oriented Performances and Materials Amendments - Rep. Colin Jack), often framed as a “drag show ban.” This bill caught some attention last year but did not make it very far in the Legislative process. It is clearly a priority for Rep. Colin Jack who is bringing back the bill to reshuffle criminal statutes to create new crimes around vaguely defined “pornographic” or “harmful to minors” performances, it also lowers intent standards to include recklessness, and ramps up penalties.

We will also be watching HB95 (Public Employee Gender-specific Language Requirements) from Rep. Nicholeen Peck which protects public employees (including school staff) from being disciplined for using gendered language like names/pronouns based on someone’s birth sex, the parent’s preference, or the employee’s religious/moral belief – AKA public employees have free reign to deadname children, coworkers, bosses, patrons, anyone. Peck ran this bill last year and thankfully, it didn’t make it out of Senate committee, but it got too close to passing for comfort.

5. The State Policing Bodies (Literally and Financially)

Some of the most aggressive bills this session don’t criminalize people outright. They do something quieter and often more effective: they use funding, coverage, and eligibility rules to make certain kinds of healthcare harder or impossible to access.

HB232 (Medicaid Abortion Payment Amendments) from Rep. Nicholeen Peck, would prohibit certain abortion providers, specifically Planned Parenthood, from qualifying as Medicaid providers at all.

While the intent is clearly about abortion services, it would have far reaching consequences by cutting off Medicaid reimbursement for cancer screenings, STI testing, contraception, and general reproductive healthcare for low-income Utahns who rely on those providers. The effect is predictable and intentional: fewer providers, fewer options, and more barriers—especially for people with the least flexibility, time, or money to navigate around them.

That same strategy shows up again in bills targeting trans healthcare.

• HB193 (Transgender Medical Procedures Amendments - Rep. Nicholeen Peck, again) bans any state or local government entity from using public funds to pay for or reimburse gender-affirming care, including hormone therapy and surgeries. This applies broadly to public insurance and publicly funded health programs.

• HB174 (Sex Characteristic Change Treatment Amendments - Rep. Rex Shipp) goes further by strengthening Utah’s existing ban on gender-affirming care for minors. It eliminates earlier carve-outs, forces most youth currently receiving care to taper off treatment within months, and removes the requirement that the state continue reviewing medical evidence. It turns what was framed as a temporary pause into a settled political decision, regardless of medical consensus or individual circumstances.

These bills weaponize access. By controlling who qualifies, what gets covered, and which providers can operate, the state effectively decides whose bodies are worth supporting and whose care is considered optional or unacceptable.

6. Selective Autonomy and Misinformation

Several bills this session weaken public health systems under the banner of “choice,” while quietly removing the guardrails designed to slow misinformation.

Trevor Lee is at it again with HB152 (Educational Vaccine Exemption Amendments). It eliminates the requirement that parents complete an education module or consult with a provider before obtaining a school vaccine exemption. The exemption process remains, but the “pause and learn” step is gone. Parents can now opt out without ever encountering evidence-based information.

And to continue Utah’s legacy of passing legislation right off of RFK Jr.’s vision board:

• HB96 (Ivermectin Amendments - Rep. Trevor Lee), which allows pharmacists to dispense ivermectin without a patient-specific prescription and shields prescribers from liability. Trevor Lee, a real expert in evidence-based policy making, remains deeply committed to solving problems Utah does not have.

• HB179 (Milk Amendments - Rep. Kristen Chevrier), which expands and protects Utah’s raw milk market by loosening state oversight for an extremely dangerous industry.

• HB283 (Raw Milk Amendments - Rep. Mike Kohler) makes it easier to sell and distribute raw milk, while limiting how and where the state can intervene. It creates a new regulatory structure that legitimizes and stabilizes that expanded market, while shifting risk to consumers and post-incident enforcement.

  • Together, these two bills move Utah decisively toward a choice-first, consequence-later approach to raw milk where access is expanded, oversight is constrained, and public health intervention largely happens only after something goes wrong.

• HB156 (Blood Transfusion Amendments - Rep. Kristen Chevrier), our so-named “BYOB: bring your own blood” has been resuscitated after dying a bloody death last session. Rep Kristen Chevrier is committed to forcing hospitals to accommodate “directed blood” transfusions and limiting liability, and tapping into growing misinformation about “blood purity” and vaccination status.

7. Immigration, Surveillance, and Economic Punishment

Several bills this session target undocumented Utahns and mixed-status families through administrative and financial pressure.

HB88 (Public Assistance Amendments - Rep. Trevor Lee) tightens proof-of-legal-status requirements, narrows existing exceptions, increases penalties for errors, and mandates reporting when someone is found ineligible. The practical effect is predictable: people who are legally eligible for benefits may avoid applying out of fear.

HB141 (International Money Transmission Amendments - Rep. Stephanie Gricius) adds a 2% tax on money sent out of the country unless the sender provides specific forms of ID. Utah Driving Privilege Cards don’t count. For all intents and purposes, this is a tax on immigrants sending money to friends or family outside of the U.S.

Speaking of driving privilege cards, HB287 (Immigrant Driving Amendments - Rep. Trevor Lee) repeals Utah’s driving privilege card program entirely and prohibits the Driver License Division from issuing new driving privilege cards. It removes a legal pathway for undocumented Utahns to drive, be insured, and comply with traffic laws. The bill also requires law enforcement to report individuals who are unlawfully present in the United States to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) if they are involved in a motor vehicle accident.

These changes turn routine driving – or even being hit by another car – into an immigration enforcement event. They also make Utah roads less safe by pushing more drivers into uninsured, unlicensed status and discouraging people from calling for help after accidents.

Let’s be super clear about what these bills do: they make everyday life more expensive and risky for specific communities.

8. Turning Schools into Political Infrastructure

Of course, public schools remain a central battlefield, as always. Several bills this session shift schools away from local decision-making and professional judgment and toward centralized control, legal risk, and ideological enforcement.

HB197 (School Materials Amendments - Rep. Nicholeen Peck) dramatically expands Utah’s “sensitive materials” regime. It requires schools to use filters and automated tools to block content, immediately pulls materials upon a “plausible” complaint, and creates a statewide removal trigger once enough districts flag the same material. A single dispute can ripple outward, forcing removals everywhere—regardless of local context (see previous local control section), age appropriateness, or educational value. The bill also opens the door for parents to sue schools and vendors, turning classrooms into legal liabilities.

SB119 (School and Classroom Amendments - Sen. Lincoln Fillmore) pushes state authority even deeper into everyday school operations. It imposes a “personal care independence” requirement before a child can enroll in public school, with limited exemptions, potentially delaying access for young children and families with fewer resources. The bill also directs the state to create Utah-owned curriculum materials aligned with state priorities, centralizing control over what gets taught, even if adoption is technically optional.

But the most effective way the Legislature attacks public education is the oldest one there is: funding. Behind the culture-war bills and classroom micromanagement is a blunt fiscal reality. This session, lawmakers are pushing a sweeping budget cut, ordering every committee to reduce spending by 5%, a total of $295.8 million in education funding alone.

Proposed reductions include funding for school social workers, child sexual abuse prevention, schools for the deaf and blind, arts education, and a long list of services that help students who need more than a textbook and a test.

These cuts will move first through the Public Education Appropriations Subcommittee, then land in Executive Appropriations later in the session.

As a reminder, Utah already ranks last in the nation in per-pupil education funding. There is no excess. There is no cushion. Every cut means fewer adults in buildings, fewer supports for students, and fewer opportunities, especially for kids who rely most on public schools to be stable, safe places.

So while lawmakers argue about books, bathrooms, and buzzwords, the real damage happens quietly, in spreadsheets and subcommittee rooms where public education is starved, then blamed for struggling.

If You Made It This Far

Congratulations. That was grueling to write and somehow even worse to experience in real life. And don’t worry, we’re confident there’s plenty more where this came from.

There will be good bills this session. There always are. We’ll flag them, celebrate them, and bring some actual oxygen into your inbox when lawmakers do something genuinely helpful. This isn’t a doom-only operation.

But here’s the reminder we can’t skip: we have to keep paying attention.

Legislative sessions depend on exhaustion, on people tuning out, on the assumption that no one has the time, energy, or patience to track what’s happening once the headlines fade. That’s when the worst stuff moves the fastest.

You don’t have to watch everything. You don’t have to read every bill. You don’t have to become a Capitol regular. But staying plugged in by showing up when it matters, sharing information, backing organizations doing the work changes outcomes more than people realize.

We’ll keep doing the tracking and attempt to keep translating the chaos. You keep an eye on what affects you, your community, and the people you care about.

45 days begins today. We’ve got you.

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Happy MLK Day! We hope you’re enjoying a peaceful holiday filled with skiing, fresh air, and rest. Oh, wait, just kidding.

Tomorrow, the 2026 Utah Legislative Session starts, so please grab your emotional support water bottle and prepare accordingly.

We are once again entering the annual tradition where 104 lawmakers descend on Capitol Hill to introduce hundreds of bills, most of which you were not consulted on, many of which you will not like, and even a few that might even make you say, “hill yeah!”

In the meantime, we are stocking up on:

• Fresh packs of sticky notes

• Pillows to scream into

• Desks to metaphorically and literally flip

• Fun nicknames for bills that make their contents a little more bearable

But seriously: we’ve spent the last few months trying to get our act together so we can bring you the most accessible, least miserable, and dare we say… fun coverage of the legislative session. Because this system is designed to overwhelm you into disengagement, and frankly, we refuse to let it win.

So before we start throwing bills at you (lovingly and educationally), here’s your quick guide to surviving session with us.

Your 2026 Legislative Survival Kit

Your One-Stop Shop

👉 elevateutah.news 👈
Bookmark it. Tattoo it on your soul. This is where everything lives: explainers, bill breakdowns, receipts, and links to everything else.

Almost Daily Social Media (You’re Welcome)

Follow us on Instagram and TikTok for daily videos breaking down what just happened at the Legislature. Mostly daily. Often, those will be posted late at night. Yes, we are tired already.

We will even be updating Facebook this year. We don’t like it either. Please clap.

YouTube – They Say This is Where The Kids Are At

We launched a YouTube channel because sometimes three minutes on social media simply does not cut it. Do us a big favor and go over there and follow our channel - it’s new, and we need to boost that engagement! There, you can expect to find:

• Longer daily breakdowns

• Weekly recap videos

• Bonus context

• Extended rants

• The worst outtakes we probably should not post, but we will just for you

This Substack (Hi, You’re Here)

Congrats, you are already subscribed and ready to go. Unless you’re reading this because a friend forwarded it to you, welcome. That friend will be blessed for ten years. You should subscribe.

Subscribe now

To save your inbox, we will send weekly session recaps. Paid subscribers will get extra detail, deeper dives, and more behind-the-scenes content.

The Digital Bill Tracker (Our Pride and Joy)

If you’ve seen our whiteboard and sticky notes on social media, imagine that… but online and interactive.

We’ll be tracking:

• The bills we support

• The bills we oppose

• The pure crazy ones

• The bills we are not sure about, but we’re going to try to figure them out

Our categories are very much not objective, not neutral, and not pretending to be. You will see our support. We will not be tracking all 1,000+ bills, because we value our sanity and yours.

For the Data Nerds

If you want charts, graphs, filters, and the ability to doom-scroll responsibly, we’ve got a more detailed interactive bill dashboard where you can dig into everything yourself.

Touch Grass With Us: Hill Talk on Wednesdays

Because reading about the Legislature alone on your couch can only take you so far, every Wednesday during session, we’re taking this show offline and into real life with Hill Talk at Church & State (pun intended). Think of it as group therapy for people who care about Utah politics, but with beer, smarter takes, and significantly more fun than being online.

Each week, we’ll also be joined by a different partner organization working on the issues actually impacted by the bills moving through the Capitol. Because we can’t pretend to be experts in everything. You will get new information, new ways to get involved, and new friends.

No two weeks will be the same, and there will be food and drinks! (And also, Church and State has one of the best ice cream shops in the city, so how can you say no to that?)

The Rules

• Casual, not preachy

• Informative, not wonky

• Smart, but never serious

• You can show up late

• You can just listen

• You can bring a friend who “doesn’t usually follow politics” (we love those people)

When & Where

Wednesdays during the legislative session
Church & State
6 PM - 7:30 PM

RSVP here!

We’ll post the weekly partner orgs and topics ahead of time so you can plan which nights you want to come, but you are always welcome every week.

Leg Session Process & Definitions

Here are the quick and dirty, simple definitions and key things you might need to know.

The Basics

• General Session runs 45 days (January–March). This is when almost everything happens, often very quickly and sometimes on purpose.

• Special Sessions happen whenever lawmakers decide they simply must act immediately. You’ll know one is bad if it’s announced late at night.

Bills 101

• A bill is a proposed law. They’re labeled HB (House Bill) or SB (Senate Bill).

• Most bills get rewritten multiple times. If you’re confused, that’s normal. It’s also the point.

• Not all bills are created equal. Some matter a lot. Some exist solely to make a statement. Some are very technical changes and definition updates.

Committees

• Bills usually start in a committee, which is a small group of lawmakers who decide whether a bill lives, dies, or limps forward.

• Committee hearings are where the public can testify and it really does matter!

Floors & Votes

• If a bill passes committee, it goes to the floor of the House or Senate for a vote.

• Bills must pass both chambers in the same form to move forward. So they go through the same process (Committee → floor → committee → floor → Governor)

Substitutes & Amendments

• Substitute bill = a rewritten version of the original. Sometimes minor. Sometimes a completely different bill.

• Amendments are short changes made during committee or floor debate.

The Governor

• Once passed, bills go to the Governor, who can sign them, veto them, or let them become law without a signature.

• Veto overrides are rare but very much possible considering Republicans’ supermajority control and therefore ⅔ veto override ability.

Why It Feels Bad

• Things move fast by design.

• Confusion favors people who already know the rules.

• Paying attention is an act of resistance.

We’ll flag where each bill is in this process every week and in our daily updates so that you can follow along live.

Need Us?

Questions, tips, or “are you seeing this???” emails can be sent to:
hillyeah@elevateutah.news

What’s Next

Look out tomorrow for our first session email, breaking down some of the early bills to watch.

We’re glad you’re here. We’re grateful you’re paying attention. And we promise to make this as understandable, entertaining, and rage-manageable as possible.

We’ll get through this together.

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Welcome to 2026! It’s been 16 days. Which feels, at the same time, fake and aggressive.

And that means that Utah’s 2026 election cycle is officially underway. Candidate filing closed last week, which means the lists are locked, the doors are shut, and everyone pretending they weren’t running has officially stopped lying. And you might be thinking, elections are basically a year away… why is Elevate telling me about this now?

Well, unfortunately it’s time to lock in because this matters more than you might think.

A few years ago, the Legislature moved candidate filing from March to early January. This was all in a move (we think) for lawmakers to walk into the legislative session knowing exactly who’s trying to take their job. Accountability shows up early, grabs a seat in the gallery, and refuses to be ignored.

When that happens, behavior changes. Votes get more theatrical. Speeches get longer. Some lawmakers suddenly rediscover moderation and bipartisanship. And none of that is accidental.

So yes, some of us are currently staring at the calendar, whispering “five more days until Legislative Session” like it’s a countdown to either Christmas or a natural disaster (which we think accurately describes the Session). And we’re ready. Very ready. We’ve got bill breakdowns. Trackers. Graphs and charts. Tea (the gossip kind). And a Costco-sized stockpile of Red Bull waiting in our office. This is our Super Bowl, and we did not come to play.

But before we dive headfirst into the session, the bills, and the inevitable “point of order” moments, it’s worth zooming out. Because what the candidate filing revealed is not business as usual and it will set the stage for the rest of the year.

This year, that pressure is landing on a Legislature already dealing with internal divisions, leadership drama, and a truly impressive number of contested seats.

So welcome to the octagon!

The Republican Party Is in Disarray

Utah Republicans are heading into this legislative session with a problem they haven’t had to deal with in a long time: they’re fighting each other. Loudly. From all sides. (Get out the popcorn, everybody!).

Across the state, incumbents are staring down primaries, convention battles, and challengers popping up from directions they are absolutely not used to checking. Establishment Republicans are bracing for attacks from their right. Hardliners are scrambling for attention. And personal grudges that used to stay politely buried in caucus meetings are now fully public and extremely online.

That alone would be disruptive. What makes this cycle different is who is getting challenged. And, GOP leadership is no longer insulated.

Speaker of the House Mike Schultz is facing challengers from every party, an unusual situation for someone in the top leadership role:

• Shawn Ferriola (F)

• Dava Ann Neal (R)

• Anna Graff (D)

Meanwhile, Stuart Adams, who has had a bit of a year already and has never had a primary challenge, is dealing with a truly ambitious lineup of five opponents:

• Braden Hess (R)

• Jennifer Garner (R)

• Stephanie Hollist (R)

• Jeffrey Ostler (C)

• Garret Rushforth (D)

Then there’s the subplot nobody asked for, but everyone is watching: sitting Republican House members challenging sitting Republican Senators.

Freshman Rep. Doug Fiefia taking on Sen. Dan McCay is objectively dramatic. These two now have to “work together” during the legislative session while actively trying to end each other’s careers. Can’t wait to see how Doug’s bills fare in the Senate this year (hint: we’d bet not too well).

And it doesn’t stop there.

Jordan Teuscher – the architect of the infamous HB267, the ban on collective bargaining for public sector labor unions, and so much more – is being challenged by:

• Scott Stephenson (R) - Executive Director of the Utah Fraternal Order of Police.

• Jess Birtcher (D)

The head of the largest police union in the state primarying the legislator who has spent years weakening unions is just *chef’s kiss*.

Trevor Lee – who does not need or deserve an introduction – is boxed in from both sides:

• Bob Stevenson (R) - Current Davis County Commissioner, former Layton mayor and city councilor

• Abigail Treasure (D)

Ken Ivory, champion of banning books and the Snakeoil Salesman of Utah, is also dealing with a crowded and serious field:

• Lisa Dean (R)

• Ryan Jackson (R)

• Drew Howells (D)

• Kevin Seal (D)

• Sarah Brough (D)

Brady Brammer, the man who is on a mission to politicize and destroy the judiciary, is facing pressure from every angle:

• Kelly Smith (R) - Cedar Hills City Council member

• Kandee Myers (D)

• Wayne Woodfield (F)

• Seth Stewart (R)

This kind of internal chaos doesn’t stay contained to election season. It bleeds directly into governing. When lawmakers are more focused on surviving their own party (especially a delegate convention) than serving the public, priorities warp fast, and problem-solving takes a back seat to posturing.

And this doesn’t even include the many competitive districts that will surely bring some upsets, surprises, and maybe even some flips. In the meantime, the supermajority is still here. But the unity that made it effective certainly is not.

The Exit Ramp Is Backed Up (That’s Weird?)

Amid all the primary drama and filing-week chaos, there’s another signal that matters just as much: a lot of incumbents quietly decided they were done.

This cycle saw an unusually large wave of incumbents step aside across parties, chambers, and offices. Now, some are retiring, some are running for something else, some are clearly exhausted by a body that has grown louder, harsher, and more internally combative by the year.

In a Legislature built on incumbency advantage, people don’t usually walk away unless something has shifted.

And this isn’t confined to one party or one chamber. The exits span House and Senate seats, urban and suburban districts, and leadership-adjacent roles. That kind of turnover creates volatility, whether anyone wants to admit it or not.

Open seats are where power actually moves. They’re cheaper to compete in, attract more candidates, scramble party hierarchies, weaken leadership’s ability to control outcomes. And they tend to produce legislators who aren’t as beholden to the “this is how we’ve always done it” crowd.

Here are some of the most notable elected officials who are not running for re-election:

State House of Representatives

• Matthew Gwynn (R) – House District 6

  • Nine-term congressman and eight-term state lawmaker and sponsor of the effort to overturn Prop 4, Rob Bishop is back and is running to replace Gwynn. Kerry Wayne (R), Brad Barrowes (R), and James Rich (Forward) have also filed.

• Jill Koford – House District 10

  • Not seeking re-election; running instead for Senate District 5. With former Rep. Rosemary Lesser running to take back HD10, Koford’s move raises obvious questions about whether this was a strategic exit from a difficult House race or an opportunistic bid for an open Senate seat vacated by Sen. Ann Millner. Or both!

• Karen Peterson (R) – House District 13

• Karianne Lisonbee (R) – House District 14

  • Utah’s famous advocate of women controlling their intake of semen, who recently lost her leadership position and has been on a tirade against her fellow caucus members ever since. Her final session, her swan song if you will, is sure to entertain and, likely, horrify.

• Stuart Barlow (R) – House District 17

• Sandra Hollins (D) – House District 21

  • Utah’s first Black female lawmaker.

• Bridger Bolinder (R) – House District 29

• Carol Spackman Moss (D) – House District 34

  • The longest-serving Utah Legislator has decided to retire.

• Cheryl Acton (R) – House District 38

• Doug Fiefia (R) – House District 48

  • Not running for reelection; running against Senator Dan McCay

• Mike Kohler (R) – House District 59

• Tyler Clancy (R) – House District 60

  • Being appointed the state’s homelessness czar at the end of this session.

• Christine Watkins (R) – House District 67

State Senate

• Ann Milner (R) – Senate District 5

• Jerry Stevenson (R) – Senate District 6

• Nate Blouin (D) – Senate District 13

  • Running for Congress

County & Other Offices

• Aimee Winder Newton (R) – Salt Lake County Council District 3

  • Conveniently not running after being embroiled in a scandal relating to the closures of childcare facilities and senior centers in Salt Lake County. Mike Bird (R),Jared Eborn (D), Luke Maynes (D) have filed to replace her.

• Sheldon Stewart (R) – Salt Lake County Council District 5

  • Salt Lake County Republican Party Chair, Chris Null, has filed to replace Stewart, along with Traci Crockett (R), Jared Esselman (R), and Sara Cimmers (D).

• Christina Boggess (R) – Utah State Board of Education

  • In her own words: “I declare, without apology or hesitation, that I will not seek re-election to the Utah State Board of Education. I am done lending my name, my vote, and my silence to a broken, corrupt, and morally bankrupt system that no longer serves the children or families of this state. Instead, I have been forced to watch as even the loudest “conservative” voices fold, trade their votes for favor and money, or abandon every promise they made on the campaign trail. The Republican Party platform means nothing inside those walls. The Word of the Lord means even less. Your concerns—about pornography in libraries, radical gender ideology in classrooms, the erosion of academic excellence, and the assault on parental rights—are mocked, ignored, or drowned out by the shrill demands of special interests and the timid silence of those who fear losing their seat more than losing their soul. I will not play this game any longer. I refuse to be a prop in their theatre of fake reform. My final message to every parent in Utah is blunt and urgent: Get your children out of Utah’s government schools as quickly as possible. Real change is not coming. The system is not broken—it is working exactly as the corrupt intend it to work. Your children’s minds, hearts, and futures are not safe inside it. With unyielding resolve and unwavering love for the families of District 8, Christina Boggess”

  • Now THAT is a mic drop. Bye, Christina 👋

Meanwhile, Someone Did the Homework

While Republicans were busy fighting each other, Democrats spent the filing week doing something far less dramatic and far more consequential: they ran candidates. Everywhere.

For the 2026 cycle, Utah Democrats filed candidates in 88 of 98 races statewide, just over 90 percent coverage. That’s the strongest and broadest Democratic slate Utah has seen in nearly two decades. Not just in Salt Lake County. Not just in the usual swing districts. Urban, suburban, rural, multi-county seats. Legislative races. Education races. Down-ballot races that rarely get attention but shape people’s lives anyway.

And even as proud Blutah truthers, no, Utah did not flip blue overnight. But it does mean we get to see what it means when Democrats actually put up a fight. When Democrats have baseline numbers of how we can perform in places that have been overlooked and unopposed for years. And in a likely Democratic wave year, who knows what could happen?

As Utah Democratic Party Chair, Brian King, put it, Democrats are running “where we have historically been underrepresented and even uncontested.” Uncontested races aren’t neutral. They’re how incumbents drift toward extremism with no consequences.

Just as important: this slate isn’t thin. There are multiple Democratic candidates in dozens of races, including contested primaries for State House, State Senate, and State Board of Education seats. And they are qualified, smart, and ready to run full scale campaigns. I think I’d call that a bench!

So… Yeah. This Is the Year

Let’s zoom out for a second.

In the span of one filing week, Utah politics did three things it almost never does at the same time:

• a bunch of people in power decided to leave,

• a bunch of people in power started fighting each other, and

• a bunch of people who usually don’t get to play showed up anyway.

That’s not a wave (yet). But it is a shift in pressure.

This isn’t about one race or one bill or one party suddenly “winning.” It’s about the fact that the ground is less solid than it was a year ago. And when the ground moves, even a little, everyone adjusts. You can already see it coming.

Lawmakers are walking into session knowing their votes will be replayed back to them. Leadership is trying to project control while quietly counting noses. Open seats are inviting ambition, resurrected politicians, and people who didn’t wait their turn. And Democrats are actually testing the map instead of assuming it hates them.

Huh, that’s pretty interesting.

So yes, while we’re mostly dreading what’s about to happen on Capitol Hill, there’s also something we’re genuinely excited about heading into this session. Not because everything is suddenly going to get better. It probably won’t. But because everything is going to be harder to fake.

Harder to slip nonsense through quietly. Harder to posture without consequences. Harder to pretend no one is paying attention.

Because now, people are watching. We’re watching. You’re watching.

And if this is how the year starts, then the rest of 2026 is going to be interesting in a way Utah politics hasn’t been in a long time.

If you made it this far, thank you. And we will be here covering every bill and every major development during the session.

If this work is useful to you, consider making a donation to support it. Your contribution helps fund our coverage throughout the legislative session (and our Redbull).

Let’s get to work.

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