Utah Politics

New Utah GOP Chairman Carson Jorgensen says he thinks the current debate over the teaching of race and racism in Utah’s schools is an important one to have, but he doesn’t want the rhetoric to lead to bad policy. 

“We have to be very specific when we’re talking about critical race theory because it’s become a kind of a byword at this point. A lot of people are labeling things that aren’t CRT as CRT at this point. It’s such a hot-button issue,” Jorgensen said.

Critical race theory is not taught in Utah’s public schools. In June the Utah Board of Education passed rules on how race and equity are addressed in the state. Last month the Utah Republican Party passed a resolution against adding the topic to the curriculum in Utah’s schools. 

Asked about the proposal from Rep. Steve Christiansen, R-West Jordan, who has suggested banning “divisive topics” in Utah’s classrooms as a roundabout way of blocking topics parents might object to, Jorgensen said he disagreed with that approach.

“We need to be careful. Banning anything that’s divisive could lead to math being considered divisive. When you ban something, there has to be a reason behind it,” Jorgensen said. 

America’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic was driven as much by politics as it was by science as policymakers tried to balance public health with economic health. 

Andy Slavitt, who headed up the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services during the Obama administration says 15 months on, many of the choices made by our leaders don’t look so great in hindsight.

“It was a huge public health challenge, and that meant tough decisions and trade-offs. But a lot of what happened came back to politics, which caused us to take a very different approach. And it was to our detriment,” Slavitt said. 

Slavitt is the author of the new book Preventable: The Inside Story of How Leadership Failures, Politics, and Selfishness Doomed the U.S. Coronavirus Response. He’s also the host of the “In the Bubble” podcast which examines the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Earlier this year, Utah lawmakers passed the so-called “pandemic endgame” bill, which ended Utah’s mask mandate on April 10 of this year. They also moved to rein in the power of public health officials.

Despite those maneuvers, the number of cases in Utah is rising again as the delta variant of the virus takes hold. 

“I wish nothing more than a virus would respond to legislation. That would be really nice. We can fool ourselves for some amount of time, but that’s not real political leadership,” Slavitt said. 

Slavitt also details why the Trump administration made the cynical decision to leave the response to the pandemic up to the states, and the real story behind “Operation Warp Speed.”

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Last year, Sen. Mike Lee caused a bit of a firestorm on social media when he published a tweetstorm attacking democracy. 

“Democracy isn’t the objective; liberty, peace, and prosperity are. We want the human condition to flourish,” Lee tweeted. 

Lee’s statement was surprising, but it really shouldn’t be according to Ben Rhodes, former Deputy National Security Advisor under President Barack Obama. 

“There’s always been a definition of America that says anyone can be American. You can come from anywhere, look like anything, believe anything and be equally American. But for certain people, America is rooted in a very exclusive either ethnic framework or Judeo-Christian belief structure,” Rhodes said. 

Rhodes was a guest on the “Utah Politics” podcast this week. He says broad demographic shifts in the country are causing a debate over what it means to be American.

“A democracy in a majority non-white country kind of changes our whole conception of power. We’re really debating our national identity here. And democracy means that people who look different might increasingly be in charge, and that causes some concern,” Rhodes said. 

Rhodes also discusses the rise of authoritarian movements across the globe, which he examines in his new book “After the Fall: Being American in the World We’ve Made.” He also talks about the pullout of American troops from Afghanistan and how working on the 1997 re-election campaign of New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani shifted his whole worldview. 

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A proposed bill to bar transgendered athletes from participating in girl’s sports in Utah will come back for the second time in the 2022 Utah Legislature. 

Drew Armstrong is the co-founder of “Dragon Dads,” a support group for fathers of transgender and non-binary children, is a Utah Republican delegate. Armstrong says the proposal is a solution in search of a problem. 

“I’m frustrated with this because if we ran a bill that said we shouldn’t allow livestock in high school hallways, it would probably affect a larger portion of our student population,” said Armstrong. 

Armstrong, who is the father of a transgendered child, is only half-joking.

“I’ve heard stories about people bringing a cow into the school or something like that. I’ve heard no stories about their being a problem with transgender students playing in sports in high schools or junior high or on the college level in Utah,” says Armstrong. 

Armstrong is our guest on the podcast to discuss the raft of anti-transgender bills that have popped up around the country in recent years. He also talks about the growing visibility of transgender and non-binary people in popular culture, and how he squares being a Utah Republican delegate with the GOP-led efforts to restrict transgender rights. 

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On this week’s episode, we go inside The Salt Lake Tribune and listen in to a conversation between Rep. Blake Moore and the Tribune’s Editorial Board.

Moore spoke with the board earlier this week to discuss a myriad of issues from Hill Air Force Base to public lands and the future of the Republican Party. 

Moore also discussed whether he’s getting any push back from within the House Republican Caucus because he voted in favor of establishing a bipartisan commission to investigate the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. 

“I haven’t been treated differently. I haven’t been forced into anything. I haven’t received a single call,” said Moore. 

“I remember talking to (House Minority Leader) Kevin McCarthy and asked if this would affect me being on the Armed Services Committee, which is super important for me and the district. He said absolutely not. That has nothing to do with it,” added Moore. 

The sight of Sen. Mitt Romney, who was the GOP nominee for president just nine years ago, getting booed by Utah Republicans was “just terrible,” says longtime political pundit Chris Matthews.

“I don’t understand it. He didn’t do anything wrong,” Matthews told the Tribune on this week’s Utah Politics podcast. “He’s been a Republican all his life. He’s tough on taxes. He’s tough on big government. He’s the classic conservative.”

Romney was showered with catcalls by Republican delegates at the state convention last month after he voted twice to remove former President Donald Trump from office in a pair of Senate impeachment trials.

Matthews, the former host of Hardball on MSNBC and author of the new book This Country: My Life in Politics and History, says the GOP has changed so drastically since Romney lost the 2012 election that they’ve come unmoored from what they used to stand for.

“What do they (Republicans) believe in as policy? Are they a party of free trade? No more. Are they a party of fiscal responsibility? No more,” he said.

Mathews blames Trump for leading the GOP astray.

“Trump says those aren’t his concerns. Sometimes I wonder what Trump really cares about. I don’t know what Trump really thinks about anything,” Matthews said.

He began his career in Washington working for the Capitol Police, which gives him a unique perspective on the attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters in January.

“Trump refused to say he lost. That’s the chivalrous, patriotic thing to do, and Trump refused to do it,” Matthews said. “In politics, if you lose, you admit it. It’s a hard night, and you have to do it. That’s a big part of American politics. It’s not in the Constitution, but it’s what you do,” he says.

Matthews also discusses his time working for Utah Sen. Frank Moss, the last Democrat in the U.S. Senate from the Beehive State and his departure from his television show.

The controversy over critical race theory is not confined to Utah. Several other Republican-controlled states are moving to restrict how race and racism are addressed in their K-12 classrooms.

Axios race and justice reporter Russell Contreras joins us this week to discuss how the controversy is playing out in other states.

He says fears that teachers are introducing the concept in their classrooms are mostly unfounded.

“In public schools, very seldom is someone bringing up critical race theory. That’s not the setting,” Contreras said. “They usually keep lessons very simple about diversity. I have never heard of a fifth-grade teacher saying they’re going to talk about critical race theory in a lesson about the American revolution. I’ve never heard of it.”

Contreras says many of the bills to ban critical race theory allow teachers to talk about issues like slavery, but they can’t discuss who was responsible, which affects our understanding of America.

“How can you talk about why Utah was founded without talking about the discrimination of LDS people in the American Midwest and Ohio? They faced violence based on their religious beliefs and had to flee west. Who is responsible for that?” he asks.

Critical race theory is not currently taught in Utah’s schools, and there are no plans to introduce the curriculum anytime soon. So why are so many people worried about it?

The concept looks at American history by examining how racism and racial issues have shaped events and led us to where we are today.

“A lot of people grew up with a pretty narrow view of American history,” says Darlene McDonald of the Utah Black Roundtable. “We learned about Martin Luther King Jr. Maybe we learned a little bit about Malcolm X. But they don’t know about Bloody Sunday or Marcus Garvey or Nat Turner.”

“A lot of people grew up believing the civil rights movement began and ended with the Reverend Dr. King,” she added.

McDonald says there are a lot of things in American history that make people very uncomfortable, and that’s one of the reasons we shy away from confronting them.

“We want to have this idealistic idea of what slavery was,” she says. “People didn’t just show up to work one day. They did not work eight hours, then went home to the family, ate a good meal, went to bed and went back to work the next day. But, that’s what people want to have in their minds of what it was and who the slave owners were.”

Utah is preparing for the once-per-decade process of redrawing political maps. 

This week we take a deep dive into redistricting with Rex Facer, the chairman of Utah’s independent redistricting commission. He discusses the rules and considerations he and the other members of the commission have to consider when they get down to drawing new map proposals later this year. 

“We don’t want to agree beforehand to draw maps that are going to force competitiveness where competitiveness wouldn’t naturally occur,” says Facer. 

“Competitive elections are a good thing because it forces us to have more thoughtful conversations on ideas. But we have to realize that not every place is going to end up with competitive elections,” he adds. 

He also discusses how the delay in census data makes their job more difficult.

Rex Facer on Twitter: @RexFacer

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This week on the “Utah Politics” podcast, we discuss the future of the Republican Party and whether the GOP needs to break up with former President Donald Trump. 

First, we speak with Evan McMullin. The former independent presidential candidate joined with 150 other Republicans to release a “Call for American Renewal,” urging the GOP to focus on issues like democracy, constitutional order and ethical government. 

“It’s time to have a new conversation in America, and it shouldn’t be driven by personalities,” says McMulllin. “It should be driven by principles and ideas. I think Americans wat to get back to ideas and talk less about the personalities.”

Then we’re joined by Rep. Candace Pierucci, R-Riverton, who is one of the youngest members of the Utah Legislature. She says the party needs to find a way to end the divisiveness because there’s room for a wide range of conservative voices in the GOP. 

Evan McMullin on Twitter: @EvanMcMullin

Rep. Candace Pierucci on Facebook

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