Utah Black Roundtable - UBR

04/04/2025

White supremacy unmasked.

What we are seeing proces that being an elected official is where the real power is in getting done what you want done. And WHO gave them the power? The people who gave them the position.

It all starts with a vote.

03/30/2025

Saying Utahns are “tired of culture war bills that don’t solve the problems they intend to fix,” Utah Gov. Spencer Cox will allow a bill aimed at banning many flags — including pride or LGBTQ+ flags — from schools and all government buildings to become law without his signature.

Cox explained his reasoning in a letter to legislative leaders issued with just over an hour to spare before his midnight deadline Thursday to sign or veto bills passed by the 2025 Utah Legislature.

“HB77 has been one of the most divisive bills of the session, and I am deeply disappointed that it did not land in a better place,” wrote Cox, who also explained he agreed with the intent behind the legislation. “My understanding is that there was a deal on a compromise that would have removed problematic portions of the bill while retaining others that would support political neutrality in the classroom. Sadly the sponsors did not move that deal forward.”

Supporters of HB77, sponsored by Rep. Trevor Lee, R-Layton, argued it was meant to promote “political neutrality” in government spaces. But critics argued a broad ban that extended to all government properties would invite free speech litigation while also leaving some Utahns, especially the LGBTQ+ community, feeling unwelcome and erased.

03/24/2025

03/24/2025

Studies show that Black women are the most educated group among White women, Asian women, and White men, BUT when Black women are hired they are called "DEI Hires" and neither White women nor White men are.

03/21/2025

Six weeks after President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning transgender people from the military, the Utah National Guard has begun encouraging transgender service members to leave the state force, a memo and email obtained by The Salt Lake Tribune indicate.

A spokesperson for Gov. Spencer Cox, who is the commander in chief of the guard, did not respond to multiple questions sent...

Phase 1, the email says, is “Voluntary separation for individuals with a current or prior diagnosis of gender dysphoria.” The attached memo included blank spaces for soldiers to fill out to request their discharge.

The next phase, scheduled to begin after March 26, will be “involuntary separation”Army personnel and employees were instructed in the email to “take no action to identify Soldiers subject to this guidance until 26 March 2025, to include the use of medical records, periodic health assessments, ad hoc physical assessments, or any other diagnostic mechanism, unless otherwise directed.”

03/21/2025

Among the Utah buildings listed as “non-core assets” that have been “designated for disposal” are the Wallace F. Bennett Federal Building in downtown Salt Lake City, an Internal Revenue Service center in Ogden and a facility on Tabernacle Street in St. George.
..over 600 employees from 24 federal agencies work in the Bennett building. It was renovated in 2001.
..the James V. Hansen Federal Building on 25th Street in Ogden ... almost a dozen federal agencies, including the IRS, Social Security Administration and U.S. Department of Agriculture have offices there.

A report from the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute at the University of Utah estimates that, between July 2023 and June 2024, Utah had nearly 57,000 federal employees. Among them were nearly 20,000 civilian defense employees and nearly 16,000 military employees.

Most federal employees in the state — 61.8% — worked for the Department of Defense, primarily at Hill Air Force Base. The rest were primarily employed by the IRS, the U.S. Postal Service and the Department of Veteran Affairs.

03/19/2025

A lot of parents tell their children that can achieve anything if they work hard and apply themselves. But that doesn't account for luck, which is a huge factor that many highly successful people have said they owe their careers to, points out Anthony Mackie, star of the 2025 movie "Captain America: Brave New World."

"We are lying to our kids," Mackie, 46, said in a recent interview with The Pivot Podcast. "We tell [them] … if they do right and they make the good grades and they go to the programs, they will become successful. 'If you work hard enough, your work will [pay off].' And that's not true."Work matters, but so do 'luck' and 'timing'.

In many cases, "success is given [and] not earned," Mackie continued.a person also needs "luck" and good "timing" to run a highly lucrative company, particularly in the fast-moving tech industry.

Put simply, being in the right place at the right time, and having connections, can be as important as having the skills and experience.

03/18/2025

VERY INTERESTING that Gov. Cox did an opinion piece in a Washington newspaper rather than a paper in the state where he's the governor. Says a lot about who his targeted audience was. Anyway, here's snippets from the article:

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox supports President Donald Trump’s recent cuts to the Department of Education and said he backs the president’s plan to dismantle the federal department entirely.

He announced his position in an opinion piece published Monday in the Washington Examiner, a conservative news outlet based in Washington, D.C.

“If we’re serious about improving education, it’s time for a thoughtful, commonsense discussion about winding down the department altogether,” Cox wrote. “That’s why it’s encouraging to see President Donald Trump and newly confirmed Secretary of Education Linda McMahon reducing the role of the Department of Education and returning power where it belongs: to states and local communities.”

One of the primary roles of the Department of Education is to provide federal funding to public schools, especially through Title programs such as Title I. This program gives extra funding to schools with a high number of economically disadvantaged students.

Sarah Reale, a member of the Utah State Board of Education, called the governor’s remarks “ironic.”

While he and others argue that slashing the department will cut bureaucracy and time-consuming funding requirements, she said Cox has “signed dozens of bills into law that, on a state level, have added layers of bureaucracy, removed local flexibility and governance and created additional red tape for [schools] through various state monitoring requirements.”

Read full article on Salt Lake Tribune website.

03/12/2025

The United States was added Sunday to the CIVICUS Monitor Watchlist, a research tool that publicizes the status of freedoms and threats to civil liberties worldwide.

“The Trump Administration seems hellbent on dismantling the system of checks and balances which are the pillars of a democratic society,” said Mandeep Tiwana, Interim Co-Secretary General of CIVICUS, in a press release. “Restrictive Executive Orders, unjustifiable institutional cutbacks, and intimidation tactics through threatening pronouncements by senior officials in the Administration are creating an atmosphere to chill democratic dissent, a cherished American ideal.”

03/07/2025

Utah’s new state auditor, Tina Cannon, the first woman to hold the office, is accusing Senate President Stuart Adams of “bullying” her out of her Capitol office space — making her the only official elected statewide without a presence in the building.

“It is just a huge bullying tactic over, oh, the first Republican woman elected statewide, oh, then push her right out of the Capitol,” Cannon said in an interview Thursday night. “That’s exactly what it’s about.”

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White Women, it doesn't matter that you stood with those White Men cause they're coming for you too!

02/26/2025

Retired judges. The Utah State Bar. Courts administrators. Academic experts who study judicial retention systems across the country. All of them warned against upending Utah’s current and nationally revered judicial retention process.

More than a dozen people urged lawmakers to stop HB512 in its tracks during the bill’s first committee hearing Monday, warning it could inject politics into a system that’s supposed to be nonpartisan, lead judges to be beholden to public opinion rather than facts, and even violate separation of powers between the state’s three branches of government.

And yet, after listening to all of these warnings, the House Judiciary Committee voted 7-2 to endorse HB512 and advance it to the House floor. Only the committee’s two Democrats — Reps Veronica Mauga, D-Salt Lake City, and Grant Miller, D-Salt Lake City — voted against it.

The bill’s sponsor, House Majority Whip Karianne Lisonbee, R-Clearfield, framed her bill as an effort to give voters more information about how to vote in judicial retention elections.

So Lisonbee wants to create a new committee called the Legislative Committee on Judicial Performance, made up solely of nine legislators appointed by the House speaker and Senate president, and only two of whom would be required to be from a different political party. That committee would be free to hold public hearings to evaluate judges based on no set standard.

If the legislative committee votes to recommend — or not recommend — a judge for retention, that recommendation would then be printed next to the judge’s name on the ballot. It would also be printed in the voter information pamphlet.

Lisonbee said it would be up to the committee’s discretion whether they review a judge or not.

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If they only eant to review certain judges, does that mean they only want to tell us which judges to vote out?

? ? 🤔 ? ?