Happy 4th! America’s founding belief is that everyone is created equal and everyone has the right to live freely. Patriotism - real patriotism - has always been the struggle to make that belief a reality in the face of humanity’s darker impulse to deprive others of life and

When you have an entire political movement like MAGA who has sneering contempt for experts who have spent decades in a profession - like weather forecasters - and the need for govt to use those experts to save lives, the results of that too often are that many people die.

It is almost impossible to carry the torch of truth through a crowd without singeing somebody's beard. -Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

I don't know if defunding various relevant agencies had any direct impact on the disaster unfolding in TX but regardless it's an extraordinary example of why it is absolutely ludicrous that the Trump administration & Republicans so blindly & bluntly diminished science & expertise

This is fantastic reporting Jacob Z. Hess. deseret.com/politics/2025/…

Huh. It’s almost as if government provides helpful, maybe even essential, services. Whocouldaknowd? Seriously, this is what the blind contempt for government services from MAGA and DOGE gets us.

"A current EPA employee confided with me anonymously that the result will surely be that more people get sick and die." "'There’s no way that couldn’t happen,' she tells me. 'There’s just no way, scientifically, that there won’t be an increase.'" Story: rollingstone.com/politics/polit…

More than 75,000 adults and children are now estimated to have died because of the effective shutdown of PEPFAR that began less than six months ago. A program Bush 43 started that evangelicals once supported and now have turned their backs on. By Peter Wehner

From May: “Our worst nightmare is that weather forecast offices will be so understaffed that there will be needless loss of life.”

Autocratic playbook unfolding in my hometown.

Not surprised Burgess Owens thinks Donald Trump is a business genius. They have each declared bankruptcy six times. Birds of a feather … #incompetence

There’s one thing about the megabill Trump and the Utah Congressional delegation just jammed through that hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves: dramatically increased funding to prey on immigrants. This thread explains.

The midterm election is 16 months away but the battle lines are drawn: Both parties agree that Trump's megabill will be THE defining issue of the 2026 election. Our latest reporting on how Democrats and Republicans are strategizing around it. nbcnews.com/politics/2026-…

This doesn’t make life better for the American people.

Good job Senator John Curtis! reuters.com/legal/governme…

From housing to healthcare, Utahns deserve real answers and real representation. Join us July 11 for a conversation with leaders who are actually listening. RSVP at the link in our bio.

Tom Nichols: "Donald Trump ran, in order of importance, for three reasons: stay out of prison, get revenge on his enemies, enrich himself and the people around him by every means possible. Everything else is just window dressing."

This round of budget cuts in Medicaid far exceeds any other cut the United States has made in its social safety net. The Trump law will remove more than 11 million people from the rolls, compared with about three million under the Reagan cuts. nytimes.com/2025/07/08/opi…