Situational Analysis | July 5, 2022

Today is Tuesday and it is both National Hawaii Day and National Workaholics Day. Does Hawaii have workaholics??

Be in the Know

• Senator Mitt Romney penned a piece for The Atlantic this weekend saying America is in denial. "I have witnessed time and again—in myself and in others—a powerful impulse to believe what we hope to be the case. We don’t need to cut back on watering, because the drought is just part of a cycle that will reverse. With economic growth, the debt will take care of itself. January 6 was a false-flag operation....The only cure for wishful thinking is leadership," he writes, the kind of leadership that comes from all of us. A return of Donald Trump would feed "our national malady of denial, deceit, and distrust, probably rendering it incurable."
• Celebrating America's birthday went well in most places (like Provo's Grand Parade) but tragedy also struck in Kaysville when 8-year-old Macie Hill was hit and killed while performing in the parade and in Illinois, where a gunman opened fire on a parade, killing 6 and wounding 26. The gunman was later apprehended without incident.

Rapid Roundup

• Clifford Alexander Jr., first Black secretary of Army, dies at 88, a long-missing Alexander Hamilton letter put on public display in Massachusetts, a top secret D-Day map of Omaha Beach goes to Library of Congress and Model T's roll through Utah during cross-country tour.

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Utah Headlines

General

• Logan is No. 1 in the country for small business success, new report says (Deseret News)
• Matthew Holland: Our founding affection. A ‘spirit of amity’ and ‘mutual deference’ were essential to producing the Constitution. Such a spirit remains vital to maintaining constitutional order. (Deseret News)
• Suspected fireworks fire forces evacuations, cancellation of Independence Day events in Centerville (Salt Lake Tribune)
• Thomas Lee retires from Utah's Supreme Court, but still has big plans (KSL)
• 'Our history matters:' Mural featuring 4 prominent Black Utah women unveiled (KSL)
• Utah's health and human services departments merge into one mega-agency (Fox13)

Politics

• Have Utah’s Senate seats hardened into a ‘concrete ceiling’ that women will never break? (KUER)
• Some pastors worry that worshippers love America more than God (Deseret News)
• Charles M. Blow: If this country is to be saved, it will be women who do the saving (Salt Lake Tribune)
• New Utah mayor meets young constituents where they are: on wheels
  Midvale’s Marcus Stevenson hosts a “Skate With the Mayor” event. “When I’m stressed,” he says, “hopping on a skateboard and riding somewhere is just a freeing feeling.” (Salt Lake Tribune)
• Sen. Mike Lee on his primary victory and moving forward to the general election (ABC4)
• The IUP Panel on the primary election results (ABC4)

Economy

• 30 states now have a minimum wage north of $7.25. Utah isn’t one of them (Deseret News)
• Pandemic has eased, jobs are back — why are Utah food pantries still busy? One word: inflation. (Salt Lake Tribune)
• Property taxes set to go up for hundreds of thousands of water users in the Salt Lake Valley (Salt Lake Tribune)

Environment

• As building booms on the Wasatch Back, a groundwater disaster looms (Salt Lake Tribune)
• The BLM seeks public input after construction damaged some of Mill Canyon’s dinosaur tracks (KUER)
• Congress funds efforts to map wildlife migration patterns (UPR)
• Besides recreation, Bear Lake is an economic gem; can it keeps its luster? (Salt Lake Tribune)

Health

• Utah files lawsuit against Smith’s, Walgreens, Rite-Aid for for “improperly distributing pain medications.” (ABC4)
• A federal judge in West Virginia has ruled in favor of the drug distributors in a long-awaited decision Monday in the first lawsuit to go to trial over the U.S. opioid addiction epidemic. (KUTV)
• What Porn Does to Teen Brains—and How to Keep It Off Their Devices (Wall Street Journal)

Housing

• Stuck between rent hikes and high home prices, this Utah family is scraping by to afford a home (Deseret News)

National Headlines

General

• Brittney Griner sends letter to President Biden pleading for his help (AP)
• Consumers’ inflation psychology is stoking anxiety at the Fed (Wall Street Journal)
• Gunfire that killed Palestinian-American journalist likely came from Israeli military positions, U.S. says (Politico)
• Jayland Walker, an unarmed Black man, suffered at least 60 wounds in fatal police shooting, Akron police chief says, as authorities release bodycam footage (CNN)

Politics

• The Supreme Court came together on religion this term. Then, it fell apart (Deseret News)
• The Supreme Court is the most conservative in 90 years (NPR)
• Election deniers are spreading misinformation nationwide. Here are 4 things to know (NPR)
• Republican states are trying to use federal covid aid to cut taxes (Washington Post)
• Veterans of Carter-era inflation warn that Biden has few tools to tame prices. President Biden and Democrats face political peril as costs keep rising and midterm elections loom. (New York Times)
• Trump troubles open path for Senate GOP White House hopefuls (The Hill)
• Cassidy Hutchinson testimony prompts reassessment of Trump legal culpability (The Hill)
• Despite rebukes, Trump’s legal brigade is thriving. Their claims were dismissed as baseless, but many attorneys have never faced discipline and have found new business as go-to MAGA lawyers. (Politico)

Ukraine 🇺🇦 

• Russia shells Ukraine's Donetsk after seizing Luhansk region (Reuters)
• Lessons of Russia’s War in Ukraine: You Can’t Hide and Weapons Stockpiles Are Essential. U.S., its allies study Europe’s biggest conflict in decades; ‘You can’t cyber your way across a river’ (Wall Street Journal)
• ‘Get the Stretcher!’ Life and Death on Ukraine’s Front Line (New York Times)

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Upcoming

• Hatch Center Webinar: Preserving Judicial Integrity — July 14, 11:00 am, MDT. Register here
• ULCT Annual Convention - Oct 5-7, Salt Palace Convention Center, Register here
• General election â€“ Nov 8

On This Day In History

• 1687 - Isaac Newton's great work Principia published by Royal Society in England, outlining his laws of motion and universal gravitation
• 1801 - David Farragut, American admiral ("Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!"), born in Campbell's Station, Tennessee 
• 1852 - Frederick Douglass, fugitive slave, delivers his 'What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?' speech to the Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society in Rochester, condemns the celebration as hypocritical sham
• 1865 - The Salvation Army is formed.
• 1899 - Anna Hedgeman is born. A civil rights activist and educator, she was the first African American woman to serve in the cabinet of the New York mayor (1954-58), and helped plan the 1963 March on Washington
• 1946 - The bikini is introduced. The name of the daring two piece swimsuit is inspired by a news-making U.S. atomic test that took place off the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean earlier that week.
• 1950 -  Private Kenneth Shadrick becomes the first identified American soldier killed in the Korean War
• 1975 - Arthur Ashe becomes the first Black man to win Wimbledon.
• 1996 - Dolly the sheep becomes the first mammal successfully cloned from an adult cell.
• 2003 - The World Health Organization declares SARS contained. Technically the SARS-CoV coronavirus, it first appeared in China in 2002. The disease spread to 29 countries, resulting in 774 deaths before it was stopped.

Wise Words

“True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost.”

— Arthur Ashe

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