Situational Analysis | June 22, 2021

Welcome to another hot day in June. It's Tuesday the 22nd and that means it's National Chocolate Eclair Day. Sounds like a good reason to use your air-conditioned kitchen.

Be in the Know

1. NCAA can't limit education-related benefits. The Supreme Court sided with a lower court's determination that current limits violate antitrust laws. Justice Kavanaugh is his concurrence, wrote that “traditions alone cannot justify the NCAA’s decision to build a massive money-raising enterprise on the backs of student athletes who are not fairly compensated.”

2. NYC mayoral primary is today. They will be using ranked-choice voting and can choose up to 5 candidates. Polling in RCV races is notoriously difficult, but according to NPR, the current frontrunner is Eric Adams, a former NYPD captain and current president of the Brooklyn borough. Fun fact: if Brooklyn were its own city, it would be one of the largest in the country.

3. Herriman High School Mustangs win the National Rugby Championship in Kansas City, Missouri. Congrats!! 

4. Senate showdown in DC today as a procedural vote on allowing the For the People Act on voting rights to come to the Senate floor. It is expected to fail as Dems don't have the votes to overcome a GOP filibuster. 

Utah Headlines

General

• After 4 drownings in 4 days, Utah aquatics community shares message (Fox13)
• Employees are still burnt out from the pandemic (Utah Business)
• ‘We won’t stop fighting for love’: Cedar City’s LGBTQ+ community deems ‘Pride Week’ a success (St. George News)
• Longtime Timpanogos ranger comes down from the cave after working there every summer since 1968 (Daily Herald)

Politics

• Speaker: Special session on fireworks restrictions 'not necessary' (KUTV)
• Utahns split over Critical Race Theory, teaching about racism (UTPOL Underground)
• USU data law expert named to state privacy commission (Cache Valley Daily)
• Utah explores new avenues to fund roads: If you drive more, you’ll pay more (Salt Lake Tribune)

COVID Corner

• 160 new cases, no new deaths
• As COVID variants circulate in Utah, experts say contact tracing is critical (ABC4)
• US hitting encouraging milestones as COVID-19 death fall below 300 per day for the 1st time since March 2020 (KUTV)
• Some vaccinated Utahns still contract COVID-19. Here’s what you need to know about these ‘breakthrough cases.’ (Salt Lake Tribune)
• Watchdog: Nursing home deaths up 32% in 2020 amid pandemic (AP)
• Colombia's COVID-19 deaths pass 100,000 in unrelenting third wave (Reuters)

Drought/Wildfires/Heat

• All of Utah may be moved to the most extreme fire restrictions (Fox13)
• Nine wildfires continue to burn across Utah. Crews are working to contain blazes in seven counties. (Salt Lake Tribune)
• Backpacker dies on trail in Grand Canyon due to excessive heat (KUTV)
• National forest in Arizona to fully close due to fire danger (Fox13)

Economic Development

• Delta to hire over 1,000 new pilots by next summer as travel demand rebounds (ABC4)
• Tyson Foods looking to fill 500 jobs in Utah (ABC4)

Education

• Summit STEAM Week allowed students to explore, discover, have fun at home (Draper Journal)
• President Astrid Tuminez: Here's how Utah is bridging the gap from college to employment (Deseret News)
• USU professors share a brief history of Juneteenth and the end of the institution of chattel slavery in the US (Utah State)
• Hybrid learning here to stay, but it’s teachers who make the difference, survey shows (Deseret News)

Elections

• On Message with Marty Carpenter: Take out the trash (UTPOL Underground)
• Draper Ranked-Choice election to be administered by Salt Lake County (Draper Journal)

Energy

• Energy regulators say the West's power grid isn't ready for the state to shut down coal plants (KUER)

Environment

• DWR pleads — don't ditch fish or reptiles (Richfield Reaper)
• Study of wildland urban interface can help policy making (Cottonwood Heights Journal)

Family

• We’re parents of Black children. Ending racism starts with education (Deseret News)

Health

• Washington has no hope of fixing our health care system. We live in a nation where almost all positive change begins far outside of the political realm (Deseret News)
• The new Alzheimer's drug could cost the government as much as it spends on NASA (New York Times)

National Headlines

General

• We’re all feeling a little fried at work and home. But there are ways to stay sharp and recharge without quitting your job. (New York Times)

Politics

• Kyrsten Sinema: We have more to lose than gain by ending the filibuster (Washington Post)

Economy

• Retail workers are quitting at record rates for higher-paying work: ‘My life isn’t worth a dead-end job’ (Washington Post)

Elections

• New poll: DeSantis tops Trump in 2024 presidential straw poll at the Western Conservative Summit (The Hill)

Infrastructure

• Senate’s bipartisan infrastructure deal nears its big reveal (Politico)

International

• Taliban fighters took control of another key district in Afghanistan on Monday, as the Pentagon reaffirmed the U.S. troop withdrawal was still on pace to conclude by early September. (NBC)
• Unintended consequences: After putting Tasmanian devils on an island to protect them from a contagious facial cancer in 2012, they've now killed all 3000 breeding pairs of little penguins on the island. ðŸ˜¥ (The Hill)

Business Headlines

• The world’s biggest sovereign wealth fund is trying to reconcile a sustainable-investing mantra with the billions it owns in companies that source cocoa from regions that use child labor (Bloomberg)
• GameStop raises more than $1 billion in latest share offer (Reuters)
• EU opens antitrust probe into Google's use of ad tech (Wall Street Journal)
• Factories struggle to fill jobs as other industries raise pay (Wall Street Journal)
• Dow stages nearly 590-point comeback after worst week since October (Washington Post)

Policy News

Salt Lake Chamber, Utah Department of Health and Ivory Homes call on Utahns to “Bring It Home” with a new flash campaign

Utahns 18 and older were encouraged to get vaccinated with the kick-off of a “flash campaign” this morning in Magna City.  The goal of the statewide initiative is to achieve a 70% vaccination rate by July 4, Independence Day. The event, hosted by Clark Ivory and Ivory Homes included Derek Miller, president and CEO of the Salt Lake Chamber and Downtown Alliance, Richard Saunders from the Office of the Governor and former Executive Director of the Utah Department of Health, and Magna City Mayor Dan Peay. Read More

Sen. Romney, colleagues call for public hearing before Senate votes on war powers

U.S. Senators Mitt Romney (R-UT), Mike Rounds (R-SD), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Ron Johnson (R-WI), and Bill Hagerty (R-TN) sent a letter to Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez (D-NJ) requesting a public hearing with the Secretaries of State and Defense, as well as outside experts, and a classified member briefing before the committee decides to consider legislation to repeal the 2002 and 1991 authorizations for use of military force against Iraq. Read More

Utah Inland Port Authority names Brad Andrews VP of Business Development

Utah Inland Port Authority (UIPA) announced the hiring of Brad Andrews as its new Vice President of Business Development and executive team member.

Named an Entrepreneur of the Year by Northfront Business Alliance in 2010, Andrews has been a principal in several entrepreneurial ventures in biotech, healthcare services, and consumer products. He also has served as an advisor to start-up and emerging companies.

“The chance to combine my entrepreneur experience with the incredible opportunity at the Utah Inland Port was too irresistible,” Andrews said. Read More

Romney, Kelly, Curtis introduce legislation to improve wildfire policy

U.S. Senators Mitt Romney (R-UT) and Mark Kelly (D-AZ) today introduced the Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission Act of 2021, bipartisan and bicameral legislation to establish a commission of federal and non-federal stakeholders—including city and county level representation—to study and recommend fire prevention, mitigation, management, and rehabilitation policies for forests and grasslands. Representative John Curtis (R-UT) plans to introduce companion legislation in the House this week. Read More

Number of the Day

Deep Dive: New polling shows one-third of voters believe election audits to be legitimate and one-third believe Biden only won due to fraud.

By Holly Richardson

A new poll from Monmouth University show that most Americans (71%) feel that in-person early voting should be made easier. Half feel vote-by-mail should be made easier and 39% say it should be made harder. A full 80% say that voters should be required to show ID when voting. Broken down by partisan affiliation, 89% of Democrats say early voting should be easier, while 58% of independents and 56% of Republicans think it should be. Support for requiring photo ID is 91% for Republicans, 87% for independents and 62% among Democrats. Dems are the only group that thinks vote-by-mail should be easier, with 84% support. Only 40% of independents and 26% of Republicans agree with this. 

More than two-thirds (69%) support establishing national guidelines to allow vote-by-mail and in-person early voting for federal elections, with 92% of Dems supporting, 63% of independents and 51% of GOP voters.

"One-third (32%) of Americans continue to believe that Joe Biden’s victory in 2020 was due to voter fraud – a number that has not budged since the November election. When all Republican identifiers and leaners are combined, the number who believe Biden won only because of voter fraud has been fairly stable (63% now, 64% in March, 69% in January, and 66% in November). Furthermore, 14% of the American public say they will never accept Biden as president, including 3 in 10 (29%) Republicans and Republican leaners."

Finally, 57% of Americans see the ongoing audits of the 2020 election as "primarily partisan efforts to undermine valid election results." One-third overall see the audits as legitimate but 61% of Republican and Republican-leaning see them as legit. Among all other Americans, only 14% see them as legitimate. Almost 4 in 10 believe these audit efforts will have long-term impacts: 63% of those believe they will weaken our democracy and 64% believe the audits will strengthen it. 

Upcoming

• Ready to Welcome: States Lay the Foundation. World Refugee Day virtual Summit – June 22 @10:00 MDT. Register here
• Fire in the West - Appreciating the Inevitable with USU Research Landscapes – June 22 @11:30 Register here
• Zions Bank Community Speaker Series: LGBTQIA+ panel â€“ June 22 @ noon. Register here
• Utah Democratic Party Organizing Convention  – June 26
• Securing the American Dream: A conversation with Tim Scott presented by the Hatch Foundation – Aug 11 @ noon. Register here
• Utah Foundation Annual Luncheon with Shaylyn Romney Garrett – Sept 23 @ 12 pm. Register here

On This Day In History

From History.com

• 1611 - Henry Hudson and 8 others are set adrift by mutineers. They are never seen again.
• 1775 - Congress issues Continental currency
• 1906 - Anne Spencer Morrow (Lindbergh) is born. She wife of Charles Lindbergh, she was the mama of kidnapped and murdered baby Charlie. She was also the first woman in the US to earn a glider pilot's license and earned the Hubbard Gold Medal from the National Geographic Society in 1934 for over 40,000 miles of exploration flying. In addition, she was a best-selling author.
• 1944 - FDR signs the GI Bill, a bill that helped millions of returning American soldiers. White soldiers, that is. The bill was drafted in a way that excluded Black veterans.

Wise Words

"I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness, and the willingness to remain vulnerable.”
-Anne Morrow Lindbergh in Gifts from the Sea

Lighter Side

“Tokyo residents will be allowed to go to the Games but will not be allowed to cheer and they have to go straight home after. Whoever came up with these rules should win the gold medal for buzzkill.”

— JIMMY KIMMEL

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