Protect the freedoms of public employees across Utah by voting NO on H.B. 285.

H.B. 285 creates big government intrusion on private matters, threatens individual agency, and takes away paycheck freedom.  It needlessly increases government red tape and places financial burdens on teachers, firefighters, nurses, police officers, and other public servants.

Utah Headlines

Legislative session

• Lawmakers are unified over sports subsidies, but Utahns understand money isn’t free (Deseret News)
• Housing costs: Here's how Utah lawmakers want to increase first-time homeownership in the state (Deseret News)
• Homelessness relief plan slashed as Utah lawmakers weigh billions for baseball and hockey (Salt Lake Tribune)

Business and Labor

• Kevin Franke issues statement on Utah life coaching bill (Deseret News)
• Utah Senate passes NHL arena bill (Fox13)
• Battle brewing between Utah builders, cities over home inspections (KSL TV)

Government Operations

• Why Utah should reject the ranked choice voting pilot program (Deseret News)
• Why ranked choice voting needs to stay (Deseret News)
• Sen. Mike Kennedy: How the Utah Senate is enhancing privacy for students in sports (Deseret News)

Education

• Bill that would remove competency test requirement for teachers looks ready to pass (KSL Newsradio)
• ACLU, Utah Library Association, others send letter urging Cox to veto sensitive materials bill (KSL)
• Utah lawmaker/former university president proposes new way to serve — and earn money for college (Deseret News)

Health and Human Services

•  Utah lawmakers want to repeal abortion clinic ban hoping it will speed up trigger law case (Daily Herald)
• Utah wants to cut the red tape slowing up the help needed for behavioral health care (KUER)

Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice

• Crime victims' rights bill passes in Utah House (Fox13)

Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment

• Solar bill aims to protect Utah consumers amid fraud complaints (Deseret News)
• Hikers, campers could be required to wear hunter orange in certain areas under bill before Utah lawmakers (ABC4)
• Critics worry legislative measure will delay closing Utah’s coal fired-power plants (Deseret News)
• Could a bill to study Utah Lake end up supporting a reservoir in the Great Salt Lake? (Salt Lake Tribune)

Revenue and Taxation

• Utah lawmakers scrap raising hotel tax for MLB stadium (Deseret News)
• Utah House passes MLB stadium bill; Smith releases rendering of potential NBA/NHL arena (KSL)
• Utah Senate passes bill for potential downtown hockey arena (Deseret News)

Transportation

• Opinion: Off-road advocates are not the oppressed (Salt Lake Tribune)

Other Utah News

Political news

• Utah to become largest no-kill state in country, Gov. Cox declares (Deseret News)
• Judge sides with KSL, orders release of Utah attorney general’s calendar (KSL TV)
• Utah A.G. Sean Reyes’ official calendars must be available to the public, judge rules. The ruling by 3rd District Judge Patrick Corum comes as the Legislature is quickly changing the law, enabling themselves and other elected officials to keep their calendars secret. (Salt Lake Tribune)
• Sweet sounds of summer concerts may be coming to end in Sugarhouse (Fox13)
• Battle lines drawn over future of Tremonton war memorial (Fox13)

Election news

• Happening today: Nikki Haley speaking at UVU's Noorda Center ahead of Super Tuesday (KUTV)
• A week before Super Tuesday, Utah Republicans frustrated over ‘confusing’ caucus (Deseret News)
• Opinion: I’ve voted for Trump in the past, but this year I’ll vote for Haley (Deseret News)
• LDS leaders stress candidates’ ‘integrity’ over party in advance of Utah caucuses (Salt Lake Tribune)

Utah news

• 3 keys to BYU’s stunning 76-68 win over No. 7 Kansas at Phog Allen Fieldhouse (Deseret News)
  
• West Davis Highway gets high marks after 7 weeks; noise still an issue for some (KSL Newsradio) 
• UDOT talks about challenge of keeping I-15 clear near Point of the Mountain during storms (KUTV)

Business

•  Utah students launch women's hygiene products in Target nationwide (Fox13)

Crime/Courts

• Staff member at American Fork care facility accused of sexually abusing disabled resident (KSL)
• Investigators seeking more DNA evidence in massive Orem house arson case (KSL TV)
• Roy man admits to multiple child sex abuse charges; police say there could be more victims (KUTV)
• Report: Ogden daycare failed to protect children from sex abuse that led to worker arrest (KUTV)

Education

• Several states, including Utah, working to reduce cellphone distractions in classrooms (AP)
• Weber State University to offer class on Taylor Swift this fall (KSL Newsradio)
• From Birmingham Jail to a BYU standing ovation, Freeman Hrabowski III still influences young people (Deseret News)
• Fears of witch hunts over Utah ban on trans athletes in girls’ sports (Washington Post)

Environment

• Biden administration taps $366M to fund clean energy for Native American tribes and rural areas (AP)
• ‘Very, very treacherous’: Lake Mead ranks as country’s deadliest national park (St. George News)
• How bad is the Western megadrought? Scientists look at tree rings to find context from history (KUER)

Family

• 'This is not sustainable': How the child care crisis impacts Utah (KSL)

Health

• The Y chromosome is disappearing. Here’s what it means for men (Deseret News)
• Universal health coverage in Utah? One economist makes an argument for it (Salt Lake Tribune)

Housing

• The increasing strain of home ownership in the U.S. (Deseret News)

National Headlines

General

• Andy Reid expected to make history — again — as NFL’s highest-paid coach (Deseret News)
  
• 🐷 These genetically modified pigs could soon be on our dinner plates (Deseret News)
• What would you do with a billion dollars? Ruth Gottesman used her billion-dollar inheritance to pay all tuition, in perpetuity, at a medical school in the Bronx (Deseret News)
• US Army is slashing thousands of posts in major revamp to prepare for future wars (AP)

Political news

• Biden, Republican Johnson hold 'intense' Ukraine talks at White House (Reuters)
• As spending talks intensify, Johnson's bind grows tighter (New York Times)
• ‘Star witness’ testifies his claims about Fani Willis were only ‘speculation’ (Washington Post)

Election news

• Trump, Biden win Michigan primaries but Democrats mount Gaza protest vote (Reuters)
• Trump tried to ignore Haley. He barely lasted a day. (Politico)

Ukraine 🇺🇦

• Ukraine withdraws from two villages near Avdiivka (Reuters)
• Germany and Poland say they’re not sending troops to Ukraine as the Kremlin warns of a wider war (AP)
• Zelensky’s increasingly blunt comments about Trump (Washington Post)

Israel 🇮🇱

•  Israel presses on with settlement plans despite US criticism (Reuters)
• Back From War, Reserve Soldiers Set Their Sights on Israel’s Politics as Usual (New York Times)

World news

• Two mayoral hopefuls of a Mexican city are shot dead within hours of each other (AP)
• Newborns in Japan are at a new low, while fewer couples marry (AP)

Tweet of the Day #1

Number of the Day

Tweet of the Day

Upcoming

• Mar. 1 — Legislative session ends 
• Mar. 5 — Caucus night
• Mar. 20 — Utah Foundation Annual Lunch, 11:45 am-1:30 pm; Grand America, Purchase tickets here
• Apr. 20 — United Utah Partyconvention
• Apr. 27 — State GOP and Democratic Conventions

On This Day In History 

• 1525 - Cuauhtémoc, the last Aztec Emperor, is tortured and killed by Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés
• 1708 - A slave revolt in Long Island results in seven White deaths. Two Black male slaves and an Indian slave were hanged and a Black woman was burned alive.
• 1784 - John Wesley charters first Methodist Church in US.
• 1827 - Baltimore, Maryland merchants chartered the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, the first railroad in America to offer commercial service to both people and freight. 
• 1850 - The University of Utah opens in Salt Lake City. 
• 1859 - The Arkansas legislature requires free Blacks to choose between exile and enslavement.
• 1909 - First National Women’s Day is observed in the United States.
• 1935 - Dr. Wallace Carothers develops the synthetic polymer nylon.
• 1953 - James Watson, Francis Crick and Rosalind Franklin discover the double-helix structure of DNA. Watson and Crick get the credit and win a Nobel prize.
• 1983 - The final episode of M*A*S*H airs, concluding an 11 season run. A whopping 77% of the television-viewing audience tuned in. I know I did. Did you?
• 1987 - Gorbachev calls for nuclear weapons treaty.
• 1989 - Philip Emeagwali, a Nigerian-American computer scientist, is awarded the Gordon Bell Prize (computing's Nobel Prize) for solving one of the most difficult problems in the computing field. 
• 1993 - ATF raids the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas.
• 2009 - Paul Harvey dies at age 90. And that’s the rest of the story. 
• 2012 - Discovery of the largest prehistoric penguin, Kairuku grebneffi, at nearly 5ft tall

Quote of the Day

"My focus is not on solving nature's deeper mysteries. It is on using nature's deeper mysteries to solve important societal problems."

—Philip Emeagwali

On the Punny Side

Today I started an argument with my wife while riding in an elevator.

I was wrong on so many levels.

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