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On March 9, the Utah legislature passed HB 204. It says in future presidential years, Utah will hold presidential primaries. The bill does not include details such as how candidates get on the ballot, or when the primary will be, or whether all qualified parties are included. Those will be fleshed out in next year’s legislature session.

Don Peay says the 54 percent of Utah voters — especially Mormon Republicans — who didn't cast their presidential ballots for Donald Trump need to do at least one thing: repent. The former head of the Trump campaign in the Beehive State told the Utah County Republican Women group Monday night, according to Provo's Daily Herald, that "the people who did not get behind Trump probably need to look at themselves in the mirror and say, 'Maybe I need to show a little bit of humility and ask for forgiveness, because I was wrong.' " Peay, a Latter-day Saint and...

John Jack Hillers: Utah Tribes - An Exhibition A rare collection of 116 albumen photographs taken between 1872-187

Dan Love, a controversial law-enforcement agent for the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), is the subject of several investigations into his actions as special-agent-in-charge of BLM activities in Utah and Nevada. Most recently, Congressman Jason Chaffetz alleges that Love may have destroyed files, withheld documents, and coached witnesses in order to avoid a Congressional investigation. Chaffetz asked the Department of Interior (DOI) Inspector General to investigate the allegations. Love is also the focus of a DOI Inspector General report that states he used his position to gain perks at the annual Burning Man Festival in Nevada. The report states that...

Utah lawmakers took the first step Tuesday to get rid of a state law that bans the “advocacy of homosexuality” in schools, a move driven by a court challenge from gay rights groups. The Senate Education Committee voted unanimously in favor of a Republican bill cutting the phrase from sex education law. The National Center for Lesbian Rights and Equality Utah sued last fall, saying the law creates a “chilling culture of silence that stigmatizes LGBTQ students” and exists only to express disapproval of being gay. A number of states have similar laws, but few others are moving to overturn...

A man who prosecutors say had three wives and had them refer to him as "Lord," has been charged with plotting to kill a 14-year-old girl whom he was convicted of sexually abusing. Kain Blackwing, 47, whose current address is listed as the Beaver County Jail in court documents, was charged Thursday with three counts of solicitation for aggravated murder, conspiracy to commit aggravated murder and attempted aggravated murder. All charges are first-degree felonies.

The storm producing torrential rain in coastal Southern California into Friday night will also threaten lives and property in the deserts of Arizona, California and Nevada this weekend. In a sense, the rainfall will be like a fast-moving tropical system. A general 1 to 3 inches of rain will fall with locally higher amounts over the south-facing slopes of the mountains into Saturday night. "Much of this rain may fall in a few hours' time, which is more than enough to cause significant runoff, flash and urban flooding due to the landscape in the region," according to AccuWeather Meteorologist Evan...

Former CIA operative and 2016 third-party presidential candidate Evan McMullin took to Twitter and CNN on Wednesday to defend rogue intelligence agents who break the law to leak classified information, saying President Donald Trump “presents a threat to the country.” In response to President Trump’s tweets earlier Wednesday, in which he alleged that elements of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and National Security Agency were engaged in “Russia”-style political operations, McMullin tweeted:

FULL TITLE: 'I love all my moms': Hundreds of polygamists and their families led by the 'Sister Wives' descend on the steps of Utah Capitol to demand the legal right to plural marriage The family on the TV reality show 'Sister Wives' and several hundred other protesters in polygamous relationships and their supporters said Friday they won't stop fighting for the legal right to plural marriage. Holding signs that read, 'I love all my moms,' and 'If we were gay, we'd be OK,' the group rallied in the rain on the steps of the Utah Capitol on Friday afternoon. The...

Hundreds of jeering, shouting, angry voters, jam-packed in a high school auditorium, lashed GOP Rep. Jason Chaffetz at his town hall meeting in the heart of red-state Utah. Chaffetz was frequently drowned out by boos at Brighton High School, in a Salt Lake City suburb, over the course of Thursday night’s meeting, which he cut short. He was booed when he walked on stage, and he was often booed when he mentioned the name “Trump.” The House Oversight Committee chairman was challenged on Donald Trump’s threat to eliminate Obamacare, his vow to slash support for women’s health by cutting Planned...

Any news story involving Romney running for any office is postworthy by definition for a veteran Romney trollblogger like me. But let’s be real: A freshman senator at age … 71, which is what he’d be on election day 2018? As good as he looks and as healthy as he seems, it’s rare — maybe even unprecedented — for a senator to be popularly elected to a first full term in his 70s. This list notes 12 who were 75 or older when they were first seated, but nine were appointed to fill vacancies and two more were chosen...

A disgraced former English teacher confessed that she had lost sight of her “values” when she had sex with three of her students, but it wasn’t enough to get her out of jail on good behavior. According to the New York Post, Brianne Land Altice was ordered to serve at least two more years in prison after the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole made their ruling on Tuesday. The 37-year-old, who used to teach at David High School in Kaysville, Utah, was slapped with three felony counts of forcible sex abuse in 2015, and was sentenced to 2-30 years...

A convicted felon and key prosecution witness in the criminal case against former Utah Attorney General John Swallow threw out some big names in state and national politics during a court hearing Tuesday. And Swallow’s one-time co-defendant who prosecutors still consider a “co-conspirator,” former Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, made an unexpected appearance in the courtroom. Marc Jenson testified at an evidentiary hearing that Utah House Speaker Greg Hughes, R-Draper, and then U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, attended a “secret” meeting involving the Utah Transit Authority in his Southern California office in 2009. Hughes was a legislator but...

FULL TITLE: Dangerously malnourished 12-year-old boy is rescued from a filthy bathroom, covered in feces where 'his mother had forced him to live for a YEAR' The mother of a 12-year-old boy found dangerously malnourished and locked in a filthy bathroom has been charged with child abuse. Utah woman Brandy Kay Jaynes, 36, was arrested on a second-degree felony charge of aggravated, intentional child abuse early Monday morning. The boy had allegedly been kept in a filthy bathroom at his home in the small southeastern Utah city of Toquerville near the state line with Arizona. Court documents state the boy...

If a tough new proposal in Utah becomes law, just a few drinks — or even a few swigs — could put you over the limit for drunk driving. An effort is underway in the state to lower the legal blood-alcohol concentration for driving to .05 — a first in the nation. Currently, all 50 states have a .08 cap, eschewing suggestions from the National Transportation Safety Board to redefine what constitutes drunk driving.

With a stroke of the pen President Obama has unilaterally declared vast swaths of land in Utah and Nevada as two new national monuments, thus putting them under control of the federal government.

President Obama has created two new national monuments in southeastern Utah and southern Nevada totalling 1.64 million acres, despite intense opposition from American Indians living in the area. Obama created the Bears Ears and Gold Butte national monuments using his powers under the Antiquities Act, adding to the 265 million acres of lands the president has already put under stricter federal regulation. The White House set aside 1.47 million acres of land to create the controversial Bears Ears monument, which has been opposed by local Navajo tribal members despite being supported by tribal officials. “Today’s actions will help protect this...

State and federal agents may have waited nearly three years to pursue financial records about offshore accounts that a prosecutor believes could link a $2 million check from a Utah bank to a reported attempt to bribe a powerful U.S. senator — even though they had access to a copy of the check and key witnesses as early as 2013.

The $2 million cashier's check was drawn at a St. George bank Nov. 5, 2010. From there, it was sent by FedEx to a Los Angeles attorney who represented Ireland-based Full Tilt Poker. Made out to "Mail Media LTD" — a Full Tilt-owned entity used to launder online-gambling funds — the millions then were deposited at Basler Kantonalbank in Switzerland, where Mail Media had an account. And from there, Davis County Attorney Troy Rawlings is investigating whether it went into a Marshall Islands account in the name of Searchlight Holding Inc. to benefit, or even bribe, Harry Reid, the once-powerful...

The state of Utah has denied it has anti-gay school laws as it defends itself from a lawsuit challenging restrictions on talk about homosexuality in the classroom. The case quotes selectively from state law and school rules, which don’t contain the phrase “anti-gay laws,” state attorneys said several times in court documents filed Tuesday. They say the state school board is immune from a lawsuit and ask for the case to be dismissed. The National Center for Lesbian Rights argues the ban on so-called advocacy of homosexuality stigmatizes lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students. …