If you’ve been following the news, you probably saw this headline last week: “Trump says it’s not possible to pay for daycare and medicaid”. And coincidentally, there’s another headline that’s been dominating local news that echoes that sentiment: Salt Lake County is closing its subsidized daycare programs.

What makes this such a ‘wait, what?’ moment is who is at the helm. Aimee Winder Newton wears two hats: she’s a County Councilwoman and also the Director of the Utah Office of Families for Governor Cox. So, the person officially tasked with looking out for Utah families is also the one holding the scissors aimed at the daycare budget? Yikes.

We all know that Utah is one of the states with the highest birth rates, but also the biggest daycare deserts. Having a lot of kids and then not having many childcare options means that the pinch for families hits extra hard. The county is essentially saying “have more children, but god speed on raising them and living the American Dream.”

After digging into the research, however, we realized something surprising: the County probably shouldn’t be running daycares.

While the closure feels cold and the politics of this decision are decidedly framed as anti-family, the reality is that Salt Lake County’s model—where the government actually operates the facility and employs the teachers—doesn’t really make sense.

Essentially, no one else in the country uses this model because it’s incredibly expensive and inefficient for a county government to manage.

Most successful government assisted programs don’t run the buildings themselves. Instead, they fund seats in existing programs. They act as the bank and the partner, not the landlord and the principal.

So, while the intent of the closure might be fiscally sound, the execution has left parents in the lurch because there wasn’t a better plan ready to go.

A survey done by the Department of Workforce Services Child Care, published in 2020 found we need an additional 99 licensed childcare centers in Salt Lake County along with an extra 454 licensed family programs. Now, almost 6 years later, the County thinks that the need has vanished? The math ain’t mathing.

And, the real rub is that America has done childcare like this successfully before. In the 1930s, Utah had WPA (Works Progress Administration) nurseries funded by the New Deal. During WWII, the Lanham Act practically gave us universal childcare so “Rosie the Riveter” could go to work. These were federal-state-local partnerships that worked because they were grounded in the needs of real people. But, with the end of the war, came the end of the nurseries.

Salt Lake County has one of the highest birth rates in the country and one of the worst childcare deserts. Those two things cannot keep coexisting without the community paying the price.

It seems clear the county shouldn’t be running daycares. But running them, and funding them, are two different things, because funding childcare is how our whole system stays upright. It keeps parents employed, kids learning early, and families out of impossible choices.

Close the facilities if the math demands it. But show up with a funding plan. That is the job after all.

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Research courtesy of P. Longhurst - thanks friend!

We’ve been talking a lot about the changing aesthetic of the moment. We’re seeing a new look everywhere from what we’re wearing to the renovation of the White House to the decimation of the Department of Education. It’s all getting washed in authoritarianism.

But what does that mean in our everyday lives?

Well apparently it’s gas at over $4 a gallon (in Utah our gas prices went up by more than $1.30 in a month!) And housing prices that are out of reach for the majority. It’s the living example of what politicians mean when they say people are “feeling the squeeze”. They mean the middle tier of society.

The working poor have already been squeezed out of the American dream. They’re the ones in the food pantry lines that keep getting longer and searching for social services that are out of government funding. And they’re growing faster than the middle which means the squeeze isn’t stopping, it’s only becoming stronger.

Take, for example, the cost of summer camps. Not only do you have to sign up for summer camp in January of all times, but you then have to wait in a virtual line like you’re applying for a Taylor Swift concert ticket and hope that you get accepted. Now, summer camp being a full contact sport was a little unexpected, but what was really unexpected was the cost. $435 per kid for a week? And now you have to cover 12 weeks of this meaning you’re looking at $5,220 per kid. Now multiply that 2 or 3 times for the average Utah family and it’s $15k just to survive the summer months.

To extrapolate further, you also have rising gas prices, estimated to sit around $4/gallon, increased grocery prices, and not only are you squeezing the lower class to death, you’re squeezing the middle class into sitting around all summer working to pay for childcare.

What was once seen as THE American dream - the summer road trip - is no longer possible. The cost to take your three kids to Disney for 5 days is $222 per person to fly, $474 per night for a hotel in the Pixar Place Hotel, and at minimum $104 for each day pass to Disneyland in California. Times that by 5 for the whole family and you’re looking at $6,080 dollars just to fly there, stay at a hotel, and get into the park. We haven’t even included fees, tips, food, and splurge purchases.

So, now you’re home all summer with your kids, you’re working double time to pay for their summer camp, you’re getting squeezed by the ever increasing cost of gas and lunch, and you don’t have a moment of time off to recharge before heading into the busy fall season.

It feels like you’re getting squeezed from every side with no end in sight. And there’s not much you can do about it. You certainly aren’t getting a raise and that 3% COLA bump from January is getting swallowed by global energy shifts and a lack of local family-first policy guardrails that could have cushioned the blow. Like, you know, a social safety net should.

It’s not just about who is in the Oval Office, it’s about a system that treats the middle class like an infinite ATM. We’re being told to ‘tighten our belts’ by people who haven’t had to check the price of a gallon of milk or a week of childcare in a decade. You can’t even job hop your way into a higher tax bracket because the tech sector - the traditional ladder for many Utah families - is currently seeing record high layoffs. You’re just stuck.

The United States of America has built our entire identity as a country on patriotism, exceptionalism, and on the idea that social mobility for the middle class was not just possible but inevitable. If you work hard, follow the rules, you too can achieve the American dream. Prosperity isn’t just a fat 401k; it’s the richness of friendship and time that disappears when you’re working that Uber side hustle just to afford the gas to get to your main job. We’re trading our joy for survival, and that’s a bad deal for our communities.

When the middle class gets squeezed into survival mode, we lose the breathing room that actually makes a community function. We aren’t just losing the ability to afford Disney, we’re losing the PTA president who has the headspace to organize the carnival and the soccer coach mom who finally has to hang up the whistle because she’s picking up extra shifts to cover the gas to get to work and carpool.

When the people who usually step up are too exhausted to look past their own spreadsheets, the connective tissue of our neighborhoods just snaps. That is the exact moment when the American Dream stops feeling like a promise and starts feeling like a betrayal, creating the perfect vacuum for a strongman to step in and offer a version of order that none of us actually want to live in.

When that promise breaks here, it doesn’t just create poverty. It creates a crisis of American identity. It becomes a betrayal not just of our wallets but of our entire belief system.

And that is exactly the emotional raw material fascism runs on. And why we can’t afford to mess with the middle class.

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Everyone is celebrating in Utah, and for good reason. After a nearly eight year redistricting battle, the congressional maps are locked in place, the lawyers have finally put down their pens, and the last ditch effort to put redistricting back on the ballot, is unofficially dead. (We have to wait until the end of April to write the obituary).

Huzzah!

The timing couldn’t be more perfect. Right now, redistricting is one of the hottest political flashpoints in the country. Texas, California, Missouri, North Carolina, and Virginia are all in the middle of redistricting battles for partisan gain.

Changing voting map boundaries has become a political arms race ahead of the 2026 election at the behest of President Trump, and the casualty is the idea that district lines should reflect voters rather than protect politicians.

Now, there are a million great pieces out there right now about the history of how Utah got here, about the tireless work that drove this victory, and the incredible people who led this effort like the League of Women Voters, Mormon Women for Ethical Government (MWEG), and Better Boundaries. But we intentionally don’t want to add to the sea of historical reviews. In fact, we waited until the coverage died down some before writing about this topic.

Utah’s victory landing in the middle of a national redistricting frenzy is entirely coincidental and a bit unfortunate. Because what happened here was exactly the opposite of a party power grab or partisan retaliation as we’re seeing in other states.

For example, in Texas, Republicans tried to redraw district lines to ensure congressional victories, and California retaliated, by doing the same to “cancel it all out”. As if congressional seats are only used to score majority points, and you know, not actually legislate for the people of their state. It feels gross on both sides doesn’t it? It’s honestly like watching two toddlers have a meltdown in aisle 9 while the rest of us are just trying to get the groceries paid for.

But the story behind the victory is more complicated, and more interesting in our eyes. Because unlike in California or Texas, one side couldn’t do this alone. No amount of political organizing, party registration changes, or door knocking could have moved the needle because of the simple truth that a coalition that looks like the left, is a coalition that loses in Utah.

You can be right on the merits, airtight on the case law, and still get absolutely steamrolled, if the people in charge don’t feel the social pressure of their own neighbors watching them, they’ll just keep right on changing the rules for their own benefit.

And that’s what makes Utah’s redistricting case unique. This was never just political activism or a court battle over redistricting. It was a culture war over accountability.

The legislature seems to have forgotten something important about Mormon women (and women in general really…) It turns out that when you spend your whole life being told to follow the rules and honor your commitments, you develop a pretty low tolerance for watching powerful men do neither.

The state legislature expected deference, but they got accountability. And you can’t really dismiss reform as liberal agitation when the reformers themselves are Relief Society presidents and Young Women leaders, can you?

MWEG and the League of Women Voters showed that you can be faithful, conservative-leaning Utahns, and still believe in the fundamental principle that our democracy should work for everyone.

And as a result, they ended up doing more to advance the Democratic party than the Democratic party itself has been able to do in the last 20 years. And, if we’re being honest, the Republican party has done more to erode its moral standing than any name calling or social media campaigns have been able to do. If we’re going to get anywhere, we have to at least be in the same car. Right now, it feels like the legislature is in the driver’s seat with the doors locked, and the rest of us are running along the sidewalk trying to shout directions through a rolled-up window.

So where else can we find that common ground to fight for our democracy? Because in all seriousness, we have more important things to worry about. Once the rules are fair, we can finally tackle the core issues, like gas prices, that are the real conversations happening around our kitchen counters these days.

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Zero Fingers. Deidre Counted.

“I can count on zero fingers the number of times Sen. Lee has reached out to ask how his bill will affect our state.”

Utah’s Lieutenant Governor Deidre Henderson posted this zinger on Threads in response to Mike Lee tweeting about the Save Act. Followed by,

“POV: That one time your senior senator wrote a joint op-ed with you... before running a bill demanding we throw it all out the window three years later.”

It was devastatingly on point. And, for Utah politics, unusually public. While we raised a glass to Deidre’s online game, it led to the question, are reasonable Republicans making a comeback?

It’s reasonable to be frustrated, Governor Cox assured us, but that’s about as much of a defense as Henderson got from her fellow Republicans. Not a comeback, noted.

Lee responded to Henderson on Twitter(X), saying “Utah has never been the problem, other states are.“ Then, apparently realizing he’d completely backed up Henderson’s point, he posted again to walk it back with “What I meant to say is that it was the federal government, not Utah, that created the particular set of problems making the SAVE America Act necessary.”

What really makes Henderson’s response land here, is that it cuts through the “abstraction” of the bill and constant stream of “married women will lose the vote!” posts. It brings the conversation back to the lived reality of a system that’s actually functioning pretty damn well, and to a version of Republican politics that, at least until recently, was comfortably defended by the mainstream.

If this were just one tiff over elections, we might call it a bad day at the office. But this ‘we don’t need to ask the experts’ energy is showing up everywhere lately. And like your conspiracy theory uncle at Easter dinner, we just really don’t need that kind of energy around our counters.

To bring it closer to home, this past legislative session, Utah’s Republican lawmakers zeroed in on judicial reform, passing legislation to expand the Supreme Court bench (against the wishes of the judiciary), creating a new three-judge constitutional panel (likely unconstitutional), and building in a trigger law that automatically creates a replacement court if the first one gets struck down as unconstitutional (see previous argument about constitutionality).

It was clearly retaliation for their humiliating defeat in the courts over redistricting.

And while lawmakers called it transparency and reform, the Utah State Bar called it legislation that subordinates the judiciary. Former Utah Supreme Court justices raised concerns, but the response was to pass it anyway.

And it doesn’t stop there. Higher Education was in the crosshairs just last year, with the legislature mandating that Utah’s public universities cut $60 million and reallocate programs to “better align” with workforce needs. That “alignment” though, was defined by the legislature, not the institutions. As a result, academic programs were cut, faculty were let go, and the people who run universities were not, by and large, the ones deciding what a university should be for.

The through-line between these three stories isn’t just partisan, but structural. A functioning election system is being discredited, a functioning court system gets described as insufficiently accountable, and the experts in education are being forced to hand over decisions to lawmakers.

In all three instances, the people actually inside those systems (like the lieutenant governor, the state bar, former supreme court justices, university faculty, and students) are saying the same thing Henderson said on Threads: nobody asked us.

You can think of it this way, the legislature is trying to turn the referees into players on their own team. It’s always easier to move the goalposts and add more players to your side than it is to run the entire length of the field, ya know?

There’s a pattern here that’s worth noticing while it’s still subtle. Because this shift doesn’t really exist in isolation.

It shows up looking like accountability, or reform, or alignment, essentially ‘just cleaning things up’. But when you look closely at the pattern, it’s actually about making sure nobody is left to say ‘no’ to the people in charge. Whether it’s how we vote, how our laws are interpreted, or what our kids learn in college, the people who actually run those systems are being told to sit down and be quiet.

The systems aren’t broken. So why are they being described as if they are?

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There’s a pattern to getting dressed that we all share. It’s the ritual of piecing together your outfit to convey exactly what you want for that day, whether it’s the matching workout set that makes you feel strong (and hot), the perfectly tailored power suit, or sometimes, the idgaf-sweats-just-get-the-kids-to-school-on-time.

In Utah, we’re no stranger to a curated aesthetic. Women here have turned it into an art form, and a business. From the OG mommy bloggers to the mega influencers today, we know how to serve a look. And we know what it looks like when an image is being carefully constructed to send a message.

But the meaning of the message matters.

And when you start paying attention to the mood board being put together on a national stage right now, something starts to feel a little familiar in a way that’s hard to shake. The thing is, the cultural patterns appear long before law or policy, and signal a shift in what society normalizes.

Because trends are just patterns wearing the cultural moment’s clothing. So what trends are we seeing?

Well the historical references they’re drawing on are cringe at best, but they aren’t accidental. It’s like when a politician suddenly starts wearing a cowboy hat in every photo op, they’re trying to tell you a story about who they are so you don’t look too closely at what they’re voting for (like the SAVE act - more on that later).

It turns out, there’s actually a checklist of warning signs that appear in cultural shifts, long before it appears in the structures of government. Scholars agree you don’t need all of them to be checked off, but if several are, you’re witnessing the 21st century version of fascism. It won’t look the same as Nazism, Francoism, or Italian Fascism. It’s the 21st-century version, but with better branding.

And in our case, America is clearly creating her own brand of it.

The aesthetic change is usually one of the first things you see. But the checklist is bigger than fashion. It’s about how information starts to feel like theater and how ‘normal’ shifts without you quite clocking when it even happened.

So what are you clocking?

-ATC

* Karoline Leavitt in Briefing Outfit: Photo by Aaron Rupar/x via HuffPost.

Gregory Bovino in Ice Coat: Photo by Octavio Jones/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images via The New York Times.

RFK Jr. and Kid Rock Sauna: Screenshot from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr./X via People Magazine.

Pete Hegseth’s Tattoos: Screenshot from Pete Hegseth/Instagram via AOL.

Vladimir Putin in Icy Lake: Photo by Alexei Druzhinin/Sputnik/AFP - Getty Images via ABC News.

Mount Rushmore Naturalization Ceremony: Photo by Tia Dufour via Department of Homeland Security.

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