Katharine Biele

Hit: Wet Work Even if you're a climate-change denier, you still want clean water and air—and maybe even dirty water, if droughts were to get bad. The recent election put all of this in the crosshairs as progressives worry the second Trump agenda means more coal-fired plants and worsening, drier weather in the West. That sounds bad for the over-used Colorado River. But wait, good sense may prevail. "Elections don't add water to the river," John Entsminger, Nevada's lead Colorado River negotiator, told

Miss: Sort and Deport We saw them coming, and yet America opened its arms to the second coming of Japanese-American internment. This time, though, pretty much any nonwhite residents should watch their backs as Trump's immigration goons approach. In Utah, this includes Gov. Spencer Cox. Sure, he says the state welcomes refugees and legal immigrants, but will it? Not all—in fact very few—undocumented people are criminals. A National Institute of Justice study found "undocumented immigrants are arrested at less than half the rate of native-born U.S. citizens for violent and drug crimes and a quarter the rate... for property crimes." Never mind, crime was a great motivator, much like fear, in this last election, and Cox is riding the wave of disinformation and self-preservation.

Benjamin Wood Dozens of KSL employees, including at least five on-air reporters, were laid off in November.

Hits & Misses

Miss: The Voting Dead Utah can't even win when it's winning. Take our election system, for example. There was righteous indignation over a recent legislative audit that suggested dead people had been voting. Well, it didn't actually say that. It said two—count them, two!—dead people voted. Of course, dead people can't vote, but the audit did find that voter rolls contained 1,400 deceased voters, of which two mailed ballots apparently were cast. Maybe it was a mistake or maybe deliberate, but do the math. Of the 1,400 deceased, 700 were marked as active voters and sent ballots. Two ballots were returned—two out of the more than 2 million total Utah voters. This really worried House Speaker Mike Schultz, R-Hooper, who now says mailed ballots can't be trusted. UVU's Herbert Institute takes exception. They determined that, "Utah's election laws and procedures (make it) exceedingly unlikely that any appreciable level of election fraud could go undetected."

Miss: Drying Out A recent meeting of the Alliance for a Better Utah featured a visiting speaker who admitted he did not know much about the threats to the Great Salt Lake. He's probably not alone. A 2023 BYU report calls the lake "a keystone ecosystem in the Western Hemisphere" and concludes that water conservation is the answer. Now, the urgent message is being called a hoax—even by the governor. A three-part series in

Hits & Misses

Miss: Sore Winners Can we just tell the far right, "OK, you won. Get over it"? Apparently it's not enough that America is skating into an incendiary presidency. Now, the "losers" have to worry about safety, their livelihoods and even their families. The rising militias are just one portent of what's to come. Let's start with Chief Justice John Roberts and his state of the judiciary, in which he whined about threats to the justices and a general disregard for the rule of law. Before you start laughing, know that it's already here. ProPublica recently wrote a piece about "The Militia and the Mole," an insider account of the militia underground. It talked about a dossier on a Utah reporter, which appears to be Bryan Schott. Schott says militia members have stalked his home and threatened him in person, as they will do. He likely won't be the only target. The far right doesn't like being challenged—at all.

Miss: Rock the Vote Mike Schultz, Utah's Speaker of the House, looks forward to having discussions about ballot language and initiatives. Better yet, he and Senate President Stuart Adams vow to "work together to find better ways." Sure they do. Still, Utah's minority Democrats have suggestions. Rep. Angela Romero wants ballot language for constitutional amendments to be written by a neutral party—you know, the way they used to be before Schultz and Adams decided

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