In this episode of Around the Counter with Molly & Friends, host Molly Jones sits down with Dr. Jacob Rugh, a sociology professor at Brigham Young University and expert on demographics and voting patterns, to untangle the surprising political reality underlying the state of Utah. While national media often paints Utah as an immovable red stronghold, Dr. Rugh unpacks compelling data proving that Utah has actually experienced a larger blue swing than any other state over the last one to two decades. Driven by a powerful combination of rising education among women, shifting trends among younger LDS voters, and a growing resistance to the divisive rhetoric of the MAGA movement, the state’s political landscape is quietly undergoing a profound transformation.

Listeners will discover the concrete mechanics behind building a successful anti-MAGA 50% plus one coalition, which requires a strategic alignment of base Democrats, independent voters, and classic “Romney Republicans” who routinely split their tickets. Dr. Rugh dives into hyper-local precinct data, revealing massive political shifts in places like Provo’s “Tree Streets” neighborhood and the heavily LDS general authority hub of Salt Lake City’s Eagle Gate, to illustrate how high-information voters are actively moving away from traditional party lines. Moving past standard partisan gridlock, the conversation centers on the kitchen-table issues that matter most to Utah families, including affordable housing supply, preserving public education funds, and maintaining a humane approach to local immigration policy.

This episode provides an essential, data-driven roadmap for anyone looking to understand where Utah’s electorate is heading and how a commitment to civic harmony can reshape local policy.

Key Takeaways

* Utah’s Record-Breaking Blue Swing: Since the elections of 2004 and 2012, Utah has shifted leftward more than any other state in the country, culminating in the 2024 presidential election where the Democratic ticket achieved its highest vote share in the state since 1964.

* The Romney-Harris Ticket-Splitters: Approximately 15% to 20% of Utah voters are traditional, classic Republicans who reject extreme MAGA rhetoric; their habit of ticket-splitting is the primary engine driving political change across the Wasatch Front.

* Shifting Demographics Among LDS Voters: Data tracking BYU alumni and returned missionaries indicates a significant generational decline in Republican affiliation—dropping from 58% to roughly 30% over recent decades—with highly educated LDS women leading the departure from the party.

* A Strategic Three-Part Coalition: Winning a pro-democracy majority in Utah requires candidates to successfully mobilize the reliable 15% Democratic base, inspire and turn out younger unaffiliated voters, and directly appeal to soft, anti-MAGA Republicans through value-based messaging.

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This week on Around the Counter, host Molly Jones sits down with art historian and archivist Rebekah Duckett to peel back the layers of history, race, and gender in Latter-day Saint (LDS) art. Moving beyond the surface of familiar paintings, the conversation explores the hidden power dynamics of art patronage, the evolution of historical scriptural narratives, and how early Eurocentric visual traditions continue to shape modern perceptions. From analyzing the distinct artistic approaches of Minerva Teichert and Arnold Friberg to revealing how historical archives handle sensitive materials, this episode looks closely at Utah’s cultural and religious legacy.

And fear not! We didn’t forget Mormon women in the media landscape. We talk about everyone from Ballerina Farm to The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. Rebekah applies an academic framework to explain how traditional lifestyle markers are being commodified online and how long-standing cultural expectations of performance influence today’s top digital creators.

Whether you are deeply familiar with Utah history or simply curious about how art and media intersect with modern identity, this episode offers a refreshing, civil, and deeply educational look at the visual stories that shape our communities.

Key Takeaways

* The Power of Art and Interpretation: Traditional LDS art often serves a didactic, illustrative purpose to defend scriptural historicity, but contemporary artists are increasingly playing with abstract forms to encourage personal interpretation and engagement with historical texts.

* The Complexity of the Archival Record: Archivists do more than organize boxes; they act as gatekeepers of history who must navigate changing linguistic standards, manage copyright and digital privacy, and thoughtfully contextualize sensitive historical documents for future generations.

* Mormonism as an Ethnicity: Viewing Mormonism through an academic lens as an ethnicity comprising specific language patterns, rituals, and cultural markers helps explain the global fascination with modern lifestyle influencers.

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“Democrats suck at messaging.”

You hear it over and over. And plenty of smart people have written plenty of smart pieces about how Democrats could lean into the memes more, fight dirtier, and find the next John Fetterman before the next John Fetterman finds himself (because yikes).

The national party often seems terrified of upsetting anyone already sitting at the table, which makes it pretty hard to invite new neighbors in. And that’s all fair - to a degree.

But “Democrats are bad at messaging” is starting to sound tired and lazy. It’s the explanation everyone reaches for because it’s comfortable and easy. It doesn’t require you to ask whether the thing being communicated was ever going to work in the first place. It just requires a better writer, a sharper meme, a younger candidate, and surely, definitely…maybe…this time it’ll land.

But then you look at the whole BRAT girl summer, Harris campaign meme (theme?) and you’ve got to realize that’s not it. Brat girl summer was the fun, viral pop vibes everyone was asking for, but a message built for gay men on Fire Island in Brat-themed crop tops isn’t going to work for the entire country.

The thing Democrats are trying to say is not the same thing everywhere, on purpose, and that’s not automatically a flaw. It’s what it means to be a part of a coalition. And that’s really what it means to be a ‘big tent party’.

Like with every coalition, there’s a baseline that holds the party together. For Democrats it’s the simple belief that you don’t get to tell another person who they can love. You don’t get to tell a woman what she does with her own body. You don’t get to decide who counts as a full person and who doesn’t. That’s it. That’s the floor. If you can’t agree to those basic principles, you’re not a democrat.

But what that floor is defending against changes by zip code, and that’s why one message everywhere, doesn’t resonate.

In Brooklyn, the threat reads as corporate landlords, immigration raids, an economy rigged for people who already have everything.

In Utah or Idaho or Colorado, the same underlying value: leave people alone tolive their own lives, shows up in defending a woman’s medical decision from her own legislature, or a kid’s right to exist without his state weighing in on who he is.

It’s the same floor, but a completely different opponent. A party that insists on saying it the same way in both places isn’t being principled. It’s being illegible in at least one of them, possibly both, and that’s exactly why you heard people asking what Democrats even stand for in 2024. When you try to be everything for everyone all at once - you are beige. Or greige. Both of which serve no one.

That brings us to today, where the national conversation right now is all about the media’s favorite alliterative criticism, that Dems are in disarray once again, as progressives battle it out with moderates.

Take a look at what happened this month. In deep blue New York, three DSA-backed candidates swept their House primaries this June. Brad Lander crushed a sitting congressman, about 66 to 34. Claire Valdez took an open seat outright. Darializa Avila Chevalier squeezed out the sitting chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus by less than four points. MS NOW called the night a political earthquake, echoing what Politico called a sledgehammer to the Democratic establishment.

Look at Utah, the same week, in the one Democratic-leaning district the state’s ever had, Ben McAdams won his primary outright, a clean majority over three progressive challengers combined, running as someone who “insisted that he’s only moderate in tone,” not moderate in substance.

Completely different room, completely different volume, completely different result, same values. They’re all running to codify Roe. They’re all running against how ICE is being used right now, even if they don’t all agree on what should replace it. And hand a gun owner like McAdams and a democratic socialist like Valdez the same bill requiring background checks on every sale? They’ll both sign it.

What all of this is doing is taking a result that makes total sense in its own room and asking it to mean something in every other room of the house. The national conversation loves to tell you that a big tent means everyone has to sing the exact same song at the exact same volume. We encourage you to think of a big tent party like a chaotic family reunion. The cousins from New York are going to bring a completely different vibe than the aunts from Sandy, and that is exactly how it’s supposed to be.

The real lesson here, because the mainstream media has it all wrong, is that New York didn’t repudiate Utah and Utah didn’t repudiate New York. Lander and McAdams aren’t on opposite ends of one fight. They’re two coalitions inside the same big tent, each one doing exactly what a big tent is supposed to do.

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Pull up a stool and join the conversation as we pull back the curtain on the recent, earth-shaking Utah primary elections. In this episode, we sit down Around the Counter with Travis Suite and Piper Christian from Stewardship Utah to unpack a political landscape in sudden upheaval. From the shocking ouster of long-term legislative heavyweights like Senate President Stuart Adams and Representative Trevor Lee, to an open grassroots rebellion against a massive tech data center in Box Elder County, Utah voters sent a resounding message: they are tired of backroom deals, ideological echo chambers, and politicians who have stopped listening to their own communities.

You will discover exactly how a dedicated, bipartisan coalition successfully chipped away at major polluters like US Magnesium, proving that environmental protection isn’t a partisan battleground but a kitchen-table reality tied directly to local prosperity, property values, and public health. Whether you are a seasoned political wonk or just someone wondering why a multi-millionaire celebrity is trying to out-consume your local water supply, this episode breaks down the complex mechanics of Capitol Hill into clear, honest, and actionable insights. Listen in to find out how everyday Utahns are reclaiming their political power and how you can get off your phone screen and step onto a neighborhood doorstep to protect the land, air, and water we all share.

Key Takeaways

* The Incumbent Shakeup: While top-of-the-ticket congressional incumbents successfully defended their seats using massive campaign war chests, down-ballot races saw shocking upsets as voters pushed back against political insulation and ineffective “messaging bills.”

* The Data Center Backlash: The controversial approval of a massive tech data center in Box Elder County, poised to consume astronomical amounts of energy and water, served as a direct catalyst for the electoral defeats of Senate President Stuart Adams and local county commissioners.

* Bipartisan Environmental Wins: Stewardship Utah proved that long-term, incremental organizing and relationship-building across the aisle can yield monumental victories, including the eventual state buyout and closure of heavy polluter US Magnesium.

* Reclaiming the Grassroots: Local residents are pushing past paralyzing climate anxiety by organizing tangible neighborhood efforts, such as the Box Elder Accountability Referendum (BEAR), proving that “neighborism” can successfully challenge concentrated political power.

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Seven states share one river, and they’ve been stuck in the same codependent, can’t-live-together-can’t-break-up situationship for a hundred years. And the divorce negotiations are about to start.

In 1922, seven western states sat down at a table and divided up water rights between themselves. The Upper Basin are the headwaters crowd which is made up of Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, and New Mexico, the ones who live where the snow falls and the river is actually born. And the Lower Basin, Arizona, Nevada, and California, are the thirsty high-maintenance neighbors with the green lawns, the fountains, Las Vegas, and golf courses in the desert. (Mexico’s way down at the end of the group chat, technically owed a cut, but always the last to hear anything.)

And like most failing marriages, the relationship was built on a lie. The 1922 Colorado River Compact was signed during the wettest stretch the river had seen in years, and the states promised each other about 16 million acre-feet a year. The river actually brings home more like 12 or 13 acre-feet. They’ve been living beyond their means since 1922 and calling it normal.

You’d think living closest to the water is the good seat but it’s actually the worst one. The deal requires the Upper Basin to let half of the river flow past to the Lower Basin every year. So the headwaters states, standing right next to the river, are legally on the hook to send it downstream first and live on the leftovers. And nobody can even agree on who’s overdrawn. The whole thing is measured at a single gauge near the Utah line, averaged over ten years, with each side keeping its own books. And, to complicate matters, the Lower Basin spent decades not counting the water that evaporates out of its own reservoirs.

For a hundred years they’ve made it work anyway, because nobody used their full share and there was always slack in the system. But now, the river’s running low, everyone finally wants exactly what they were promised, and those promises add up to more water than exists.

Which brings us to the collapse of couples therapy. The truce that’s kept everyone civil since 2007 expires this year, and the Lower Basin stopped negotiating, lawyered up, and filed its own plan without the others. The feds are standing in the doorway threatening to divide everything themselves, and hanging over all of it is the one weapon nobody’s dared touch in a century.

The Prenup Nobody Wants to Enforce

It’s called a compact call and you can think of it like the downstream spouse finally calling a terrifying lawyer to legally enforce the exact terms of the prenup. For a hundred years the Lower Basin has had the right to stand up and say you promised us half this river, you’re not delivering, a court is going to make you. Nobody has ever actually pulled it. It’s so radioactive that seven states have spent a century doing almost anything to avoid it, because once it’s invoked, it almost certainly lands at the Supreme Court, and a process nobody can predict starts deciding whose taps get shut off.

Whoever started using the water earliest has a claim that’s nearly bulletproof. Whoever showed up latest gets cut off first. And Utah is the late comer.

The untouchable rights belong to 1800s ranchers and old California farm empires. Utah did most of its Colorado River growing up much later, a lot of it after 1922 when the Compact itself became the senior claim standing in front of you.

The pipeline, the data centers, the new subdivisions, and a big share of the Wasatch Front’s tap water, are all some of the newest, most junior rights in the whole basin. And the last in line is the first to be cut.

Lake Powell was built to be the savings account that kept anyone from ever needing to make this call, but as it drains toward the bottom, the cushion goes, and the trigger gets easier to reach. Utah’s own negotiator has said the risk is high.

So why not just fix the broken document at the center of all this? Because reopening the Compact would take all seven states and an act of Congress agreeing at once, and not one state will gamble its share at that table. Easier to leave the foundation frozen and fight over the layer above it.

That layer is what’s actually on the table in 2026. It’s not the Compact itself, but the operating rules stacked on top of it which equates to a roughly 20-year deal governing how much water moves through the system. And Utah’s entire say in it comes down to one appointed person, Colorado River Commissioner Gene Shawcroft, working through the Colorado River Authority of Utah. If the states can’t agree, the Secretary of the Interior writes the terms for them.

While all of this is going on, our local politicians are beating their chests on social media about state sovereignty and neighborhood growth, but the irony is that they have quietly funneled all of our collective leverage into a single unelected bureaucrat sitting across a table from California lawyers. Surely that can’t be good for the state with the least amount of seniority at the table.

So what happens to us kids in the divorce?

More than most Utahns realize. Through the Central Utah Project, it’s piped over the mountains to the Wasatch Front, where a big chunk of Salt Lake and Utah County drinks river water they assume fell as snow on the peaks they can see.

Washington County is betting on the same blind spot. The Lake Powell Pipeline. The long-promised second source that’s supposed to keep St. George growing and assumes Utah’s “undeveloped” share of the river is just sitting there, waiting to be claimed. It’s the same logic as a kid spending an inheritance that hasn’t cleared probate yet.

We don’t actually have a seat at the table where this gets decided. We have a seat at the table where Utah’s position gets decided. The Legislature funds the litigation and writes the water law. The congressional delegation signs off on any of the pieces that touch federal law, and the Authority holds meetings that are technically public even when the actual dealmaking isn’t. Then all of that gets handed to one appointed person, who walks into a room with six other states and the federal government and tries not to lose.

We don’t get a vote in the divorce. But the custody arrangement isn’t final, and the one thing still being written is how much Utah asks for going forward, and that number gets written in one of those “quiet rooms” we’re telling you to watch.

In this episode of Around the Counter with Molly and Friends, host Molly Jones sits down with Chad Hopkins, the owner and master brewer of Hopkins Brewing, to unpack the harsh realities facing small businesses in Salt Lake City’s Sugarhouse neighborhood. As a lifelong resident who watched the area transform from an independent, localized hub into a heavily corporate landscape, Hopkins provides an authentic, ground-level perspective on surviving back-to-back crises. From the isolating scramble of the COVID-19 pandemic where he downsized from thirty employees to two, to losing an estimated $500,000 during the city’s disruptive 2100 South infrastructure construction, Hopkins embodies the gritty resilience required to keep a local establishment alive.

The conversation dives deep into the unintended consequences of local government policy, exposing the massive disconnect between bureaucratic victory laps and the financial bleeding of mom and pop shops. While the city celebrates on-time sewer upgrades and minor mitigation grants, local business owners are left navigating poorly communicated sidewalk closures, design oversights that eliminate parking, and soaring property taxes passed down through rigid triple net leases. Driven by curiosity and a passion for his community, Hopkins shares how he stepped outside his comfort zone to create viral traffic and parking update videos, injecting a sense of joyful neighborism into a miserable situation.

Key Takeaways

* The Reality of Urban Construction: While Salt Lake City celebrated completing the 2100 South sewer and infrastructure project ahead of schedule, the disruption caused severe economic hardship for local businesses, forcing Hopkins Brewing to absorb a $500,000 drop in year-over-year sales.

* The Policy-to-Business Disconnect: Local mitigation grants ranging from $500 to $3,000 were vastly inadequate to cover structural losses; for instance, uncommunicated sidewalk closures cost Hopkins, highlighting a lack of coordination between city planners, construction crews, and frontline merchants.

* The Triple Net Lease Trap: Surviving major construction brings no financial relief for small business owners; rising city and county property taxes are automatically passed down to tenants through triple net commercial leases, even when a business is only breaking even.

* The Power of “Neighborism”: To counteract the pervasive public narrative that Sugarhouse was entirely inaccessible and lacking parking, Hopkins overcame his introverted nature to produce funny, community-focused logistical videos that successfully drew customers back to the neighborhood.

* Community as the Ultimate Safety Net: True neighborhood prosperity relies on local collaboration rather than corporate landlords or top-down government policy; small businesses must actively uplift each other through joint events, cross-promotions, and a shared commitment to keeping the community’s unique culture intact.

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Where the Lake Dust Gets Decided

The winds last week picked up across the valley, and in addition to blowing over your patio umbrella, they blew a lot of dust across the valley too.

A post from KSL meteorologist Matt Johnson showed a satellite time lapse of dust plumes. And on the same day, a camera on top of the Natural History Museum caught another view of the clouds coating the valley.

You probably have heard by now, the evaporating lakebed holds arsenic, lithium, and a long list of metals that have built up over centuries in a lake that has no outlet. When it’s underwater, it stays put. Exposed, it goes airborne. Every playa reading of arsenic the researchers took ran about ten times the level the EPA considers safe for everyday exposure (playa being what scientists call the dry lake bed.)

And it doesn’t just get into our lungs. A 2026 study found the dust does damage when it ends up in the stomach too, and children under six take in the most, because they swallow more dust relative to their size.

And of course, all that toxic dust doesn’t settle evenly across the valley. The west-side neighborhoods closest to the water breathe the most of it, which is why Daniel Tuutau, who chairs the Poplar Grove Community Council, calls it a ticking time bomb.

So with a drying lake bed due to near constant drought conditions, and mining companies itching to extract that lithium, who gets to decide what we do?

Let’s start by throwing out the “who’s in charge” question, and instead ask who can say yes. To do that, we need to understand all the players and interests at hand.

The People Sitting at the Counter

Let’s start with the mining companies that are seeking the right to draw water from the lake.

The incumbent is Compass Minerals, which has worked the lake’s north arm for more than fifty years out of a 55,000-acre complex of solar evaporation ponds. These evaporation ponds do the most damage to the lake water levels.

When lithium got valuable, Compass wanted in too, but had to suspended its lithium plans under pressure from state leaders. It hasn’t left Utah, though. The ponds are still running, and Compass hasn’t given up on lithium either. Compass is a reminder that extraction of precious minerals here has always cost the lake.

Now, we have newcomer Lilac Solutions, an Oakland startup working through a subsidiary called Waterleaf Resources. They claim they can run the lake’s heavy brine through a fancy ion-exchange filter, strip out the lithium, and put almost all the water right back. No massive evaporation ponds, no shrinking shoreline. If that sounds a bit like the magical promises we hear from data centers, you’re on the right track.

They ran a tiny pilot project, got a gold star from the state, and even signed a ten-year deal to sell the lithium. But they’re missing the actual golden ticket: a water right to pull 225,000 acre-feet a year, about 73 billion gallons, from the lake. To put that in perspective, 73 billion gallons is enough to fill more than a hundred thousand Olympic swimming pools every single year. Lilac swears every drop goes back into the lake, and that promise, and whether those in charge believe it, will determine their future.

And then across the counter are the people who already gave up their share. The farmers and the cities hold the oldest, most senior water rights in the system. In Utah water law, that means they get their water first. They’re also the ones who have spent recent years cutting back to send more down to the lake.

The extractors hold some of the most junior rights of anyone, but just keep on pumping and evaporating.

And then there is the lake itself, which has no water rights, no attorney, and no chair at the counter. The only thing speaking for it is a set of rules the Legislature hastily wrote in the last few years, and the handful of state employees who decide whether to hold anyone accountable to them.

Follow the Money (Water)

Every claim we just walked through, Lilac’s 73 billion gallons, the farmers’ senior water rights, the lake’s missing seat, gets settled at a water-right hearing in front of the State Engineer, and a lease review at the Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands.

And that’s the door handle we are looking for to be able to map power. This isn’t a flashy meeting. It’s like the Box Elder County Commission, where no one really shows up, because they don’t know that’s where to show up.

The question it is actually settling isn’t about lithium but whether to let a company take the water before it has proven it will give it back. Getting that wrong means draining a lake to mine the very thing already poisoning the people who live beside it.

Those officials aren’t freelancing, though. They answer to the rules, and the rules came from a Legislature that spent four years and roughly a billion dollars saying the lake comes first. But only after west-side residents like Tuutau pushed. The Legislature funded a string of dust monitors, with the first ten going in by July, and that is a real win while also a real tell. A monitor just measures the poison. It doesn’t stop it. It will tell Daniel Tuutau exactly what he is breathing on a cloudy afternoon, and it will not keep the lake from drying.

SO…What’s Next?

The public hearing on Lilac’s water right happened back in 2023, and the comment window is obviously closed. This is how a quiet room stays quiet.

But there’s good news too. The decision itself is still open. The state engineer has not ruled on the 225,000 acre-foot request, and two every day Utahns have already filed protests on the record, asking the obvious question of why a private company gets billions of gallons when farmers, the LDS Church, and cities gave up their share. And in that room, the powers that be are still deciding.

The State Engineer is still listening, and a protest movement like the Box Elder Data Center can happen here too. That’s where the power is mapped to now.

With one caveat. Earlier this year the Legislature passed HB 60, which stripped out the language that let the state engineer weigh impacts to recreation, wildlife and the environment, and narrows what she is even allowed to count as the public’s welfare.

They literally narrowed the legal definition of ‘the public’s welfare’ so you can’t bring those things up. It’s an incredible piece of political theater in a quiet room: spend four years and a billion dollars telling voters the lake is our top priority, and then pass a law making it illegal for the state engineer to protect the birds, the air, or the water when a corporation (or the House Speaker) comes knocking.

And that’s the whole point of a power map. You do not need to out-argue a mining company about ion exchange. You need to know that the lake is decided in an office no one thinks about and during the legislative session.

The government funded dust monitors will keep telling us exactly what we are breathing on a cloudy afternoon, but a monitor just measures the poison, it doesn’t stop it. Whether the dust keeps blowing is a decision that is still being worked out by regular people who refuse to stay home.

The Box Elder data center protest proved that when we look for the small, unglamorous rules, like water rights applications, we can actually move the needle. The opening to save the lake might be shrinking like Alice on the wrong side of the caterpillar’s mushroom, but it is still there. We just have to remember that we are allowed in that quiet room, and we need to walk through the door before they lock it from the inside.

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The Quiet Pattern We Can’t Unsee.

If you’ve been following Around the Counter over the past few months, you’ve probably noticed the pattern. If a developer wants to build something controversial, the city or county gets bypassed. A local hospital gets hollowed out and the state shrugs. The People pass a ballot initiative and the legislature guts it.

And it’s probably left you asking, is anyone actually in charge? And if so, who are they? Because it sure feels like a lot of decisions get made while the buck keeps getting passed.

So, let’s start by throwing out the question “who’s in charge” because it has no clear answer, and it won’t help us see what’s going on. There’s no org chart with one name at the top to point to, no Oz behind the curtain to blame.

Just because no one person is in charge doesn’t mean it’s absolute chaos. It’s a method, and it’s always the same play: relocate the decision to the room with the fewest people watching.

Look at the Box Elder data center. That’s the exact kind of project that should mean a rowdy county commission meeting full of lawn signs and intense public comment. Instead, the decision skipped the local folks entirely and went straight to MIDA, a quietly powerful state authority chaired by the Senate President himself that can magically erase a county’s veto power. It almost sailed right through without a single neighbor knowing about it.

That is the whole trick. And it’s repeated over and over.

If you watch how this same play unfolds across different headlines that we’ve been tracking, the outfit changes but the script stays identical. Take the Steward hospital implosion. Where did the decision get made about who controls the care in your town? Certainly not in any meeting you could have walked into. It got made through a quiet run of acquisitions, a clinic here, an insurer there, until one system owns the doctors, the building, and the plan that pays for both. Who is watching that room? No single regulator, because no single regulator owns the whole picture.

Each agency sees its own slice and signs off, and the slices add up to something none of them ever voted on. The lever is harder to find here, which is exactly the point.

It keeps working for boring reasons, which is the best camouflage a quiet room has. The meeting is a Tuesday at two in the afternoon. The agenda runs four hundred pages and posts the Friday before. The room isn’t hidden. It’s just dull, and inconvenient enough, that nobody notices.

So where does that leave the everyday people? Finding the room is only the first half. The second half is what turns watching into leverage. And that’s a tool called power Mapping.

Once you’ve found the room, you stop asking who’s in charge and start asking who, exactly, can say yes. Then you map who that person actually listens to. Is it the donors or the voters? Whose calls do they actually take? Next, you find one of those people in the chain who you can reach personally. That chain, from your kitchen counter to someone the decision-maker can’t afford to ignore, is the lever. It’s also the answer to the question we opened with. You were never going to find a single villain to yell at. But you can find a friendly face, and a path to the decision maker’s ear.

Stay with us, because next week, we’ll walk through a live Utah decision mapped all the way through. For now the take-home is smaller. It’s knowing the quiet room has a door, the door has a person, and the person has people they answer to. Once you can see that, you will never read “the authority approved” the same way ever again.

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What happens when an elite athlete steps away from the solitary pursuit of mountain peaks to embrace the collective responsibility of community and climate activism? In this episode of Around the Counter with Molly & Friends, host Molly Jones sits down with her brother, world-class ultramarathon runner and climate activist Dakota Jones. As Dakota prepares to transition from full-time racing to leading the Green Racing Project at Vermont’s Craftsbury Outdoor Center, the siblings pull up a stool to unpack a conversation that completely strips away the romanticized, “lone wolf” mythology of the American West.

Dakota explains why the outdoorsy identity can sometimes act as a distraction from real civic utility. He challenges listeners to rethink our relationship with the natural world, arguing that true sustainability isn’t about isolating ourselves in a pristine wilderness, but rather about leaning into our social contract with broader America. From his firsthand experiences testifying on Capitol Hill for the Great Salt Lake to his partnership with sustainable brands like Nnormal, Dakota shares a grounded, vulnerable blueprint for turning individual anxiety about the future into collective, joyful action. It’s all about how we can stop being isolated individuals and start becoming a community.

Key Takeaways

* The Illusion of the Solitary Wilderness: The classic mythology of the American West celebrates rugged independence, but separating “pristine nature” from human society fractures how we view our resources and ignores the indigenous history of the land where wilderness was simply “home.”

* The Privilege of the Outdoors: Training for and competing in 100-mile ultramarathons is a position of immense privilege; acknowledging this privilege means using it to fulfill our social contract and pass opportunities on to others, rather than merely apologizing for it.

* Systemic Failure vs. Systemic Corruption: True civic utility requires working within political systems even when they feel broken. Dakota’s experience testifying on Capitol Hill taught him that the underlying democratic framework isn’t necessarily the problem—the failure lies in human corruption and the corporate capture of the political process.

* The Power of Collective Action (”Stop Being an Individual”): True sustainability and individual impact cannot be achieved in a vacuum. Echoing climate writer Bill McKibben, the most effective thing an individual can do for the environment is to stop acting alone and start building a collective, localized community.

* Vulnerability as a Blueprint for Hope: Facing a vast and daunting future brings natural anxiety, but moving forward is like surviving the low points of a 100-mile race. By being brave enough to publicly voice our fears and hope, we invite others to step out of isolation and join the cause.

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Three Men walk into a bar…

Or in this case, a debate on religious morality.

Utah’s Governor, the U.S. Defense Secretary, and the Pope, all stepped up to a microphone in the past week, and told the rest of us what counts as faithful, what counts as Christian, and what counts as moral.

And while they weren’t talking to each other exactly, when you put their statements on the counter side by side, it leaves you wondering who gets to define fidelity, and morality, and what does it all mean anyway?

A ‘Moral and Religious People’

That’s what John Adams once wrote about the Constitution of the United States. Saying it was crafted for “a moral and religious people.“ And it’s that quote that Governor Spencer Cox invoked to declare June “Fidelity Month”, which Cox defines as “dedication to faith, family and country.”

Cox has been workshopping this declaration for about five years now. He made history in 2021 as the first Utah Governor to declare a pride month in Utah. By 2023 we got a Pride Month that managed to completely omit any mention of LGBTQ people, which then morphed into a vague month of “bridge building” in 2024. After total silence last year, we have officially arrived at Fidelity Month for 2026.

So what’s the deal with ‘Fidelity’ month? Well, it’s not based on scripture, or the state constitution. Instead it leans on survey data from a 2023 WSJ poll, showing that a majority of Americans “no longer esteem values like faith, family, patriotism, or community involvement”, and uses that as the reason that Utah must recommit to them. (Though that poll’s dramatic findings have since been questioned. When Gallup kept its survey methods consistent, it didn’t find the same collapse.)

If your commitment to a value depends on where the numbers landed this quarter, that isn’t conviction is it? It’s more like market research. The whole point of a value is that it holds when the polling doesn’t! The irony writes itself. Even the audiophiles wouldn’t file that under high fidelity. (Bonus points if you get the John Cusack reference.)

Who Counts? John Adams didn’t say, but Pete Hegseth has IDEAS

Defense Secretary Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, who routinely hosts prayer services at the Pentagon, rails against the “Godless left” in the name of Western Christian values, and talks about America as a Christian nation in its DNA. Last week decided to reclassify Latter-day Saints as a non-Christian sect in the military’s religion system.

Sen. Mike Lee called it “repugnant” and phoned Trump directly. Oh, to be a fly on the wall for that conversation. Hegseth then reversed this decision within days. Way to offend one of your major voting blocks, guys…

It’s tempting to leave that as the punchline, but that would ignore what is a pretty large piece of state history. And it matters especially here in Utah.

Latter-day Saints know exactly what it feels like to have someone else’s majority decide they don’t qualify. It’s baked into their founding story. They were people driven out of Missouri and Illinois by their neighbors, and a faith whose Christianity other Christians have been disputing ever since. The Pentagon’s dropdown menu is just the bureaucratic version of a very old argument.

You’d think a warning against letting the majority decide “who counts” would land harder here than almost anywhere else.

The Whims of the Majority

The third man to enter the conversation this week was Pope Leo XIV. You know, the actual head of the world’s largest Christian institution. He was in Madrid this week, telling Spain’s parliament that a just society is built on “the inviolable dignity of the human person” and that you don’t get to hand that dignity over to “the whims of the majority.”

Which is pretty funny considering Cox and Hegseth are the people waving faith and family around this June, and doing the exact thing the Pope warned against. Cox picked June’s values off a poll. The Pentagon decided who counted as Christian, then un-decided three days later when Trump got an angry phone call. That’s not conviction standing firm against the crowd. Nor fidelity to any values. That’s just plain old pivoting to throw red meat to the base when they boo you off the primary stage.

Now, Pope Leo hasn’t changed any doctrine around LGBTQIA+ folks. Asked this spring about blessing same-sex couples, he said the church’s unity “should not revolve around sexual matters,” and that justice and equality matter more. So he’s not exactly a beacon of Pride, but he also hasn’t spent his June erasing anybody’s hard fought rights in an effort to be more liked by people who don’t actually like him.

Fidelity is Pride, Pride is Fidelity

If fidelity is truly defined as faithfulness and loyalty, then Pride month is its purest expression. Pride is a fierce loyalty to our collective humanity - however that humanity looks.

And, to downtown Salt Lake this last weekend, it looks like a man holding a “Free Dad Hugs” sign. It looks like a teenager seeing, maybe for the first time, a crowd of strangers cheering for their exact self. It looks like the kind of joy that doesn’t perform, it just spills out, contagious, onto the street, past the barriers and the counter-protesters and straight into something that feels like belonging.

While the governor, the secretary, and the Pope spend June pontificating from behind their microphones, a whole community of faithful humans showed up on the pavement this weekend to actually live them. That is acceptance in its purest form, and you do not need a dropdown menu or a quarterly survey to recognize it.

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