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oom At 12:37 a.m. EDT (10:37 a.m. MDT), a helicopter gently placed NASA’s OSIRIS-REx sample capsule, attached to the end of a 100-foot cable, on the ground outside a hangar on the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range. Two technicians on the ground helped guide the capsule down. Once the helicopter line was detached and the helicopter had departed, the clean room team removed the capsule from its metal transport cradle. They loaded the capsule onto a cart and wheeled it into the hangar where a temporary clean room had been set up. In the hangar, the capsule...

When the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft swings by Earth on Sunday, it is expected to deliver a rare cosmic gift: a pristine sample collected from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu If all goes according to plan, the spacecraft will release a capsule containing an estimated 8.8 ounces of asteroid rocks and soil from space toward a landing zone in the Utah desert. NASA will provide a live stream of the sample delivery beginning at 10 a.m. ET Sunday. The capsule is expected to enter Earth’s atmosphere at 10:42 a.m. ET, traveling about 27,650 miles per hour (44,498 kilometers per hour). It will land...

I knew there was something wrong with Mitt Romney, really wrong, when my mom – a daughter of Pennsylvania’s steel mill country, but a dedicated Republican, told me back in 2012, “I just don’t like him.” Of course, those steel mills are all gone now, moved to China by guys who either were, or looked exactly like, Mitt Romney. Now he’s finally calling it quits as a senator, apparently by popular demand. His departure is cause for celebration. Mitt Romney is a bad person who pretends to be a good person. He is the blow-dried embodiment of everything awful about...

When Mitt Romney announced his retirement from electoral politics on Wednesday after one term in the US Senate, he made no mention of his deep roots in Massachusetts. But those who have known him for decades say they saw unmistakable echoes of his time as governor of the state in his pragmatic streak in the hyper-partisan US Capitol. The Utah Republican, 76, said he was leaving content with his work, noting that in the first two years of the Biden administration, he was at the center of several significant bipartisan pieces of legislation, including the infrastructure bill, a gun safety...

The decision by Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah to forgo his 2024 re-election bid is a classic political Rorschach test. As the standard-bearer for conservatism during his 2012 White House bid against President Barack Obama, the otherwise affable and soft-edged former governor understandably became a lightning rod for Democrats fighting for progressive convictions on issues like health care, the economy and personal freedoms. But today, the nation finds itself confronting the collapse of the Republican Party as an ideological coalition. The shared mission of even establishment conservatives is trending increasingly toward undermining our institutions and holding power by attacking basic...

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) took a shot at former President Donald Trump and criticized him for his lack of “leadership” during his Wednesday announcement that he is not seeking reelection in 2024. Romney criticized Trump for calling “global warming a hoax” in a video statement he released. Romney also said, “neither President Biden nor former President Trump are leading their party to confront” the “critical challenges” facing the country like the “mounting national debt, climate change, and the ambitious authoritarians of Russia and China.”

I WONDER WHY HE'S NOT RUNNING FOR RE-ELECTION

“Frankly, it’s time for a new generation of leaders,” Romney, 76, said in a video posted to X, formerly Twitter.

A pro-Trump candidate won a three-way Republican primary in a special election Tuesday to fill a soon-to-be vacant congressional seat in Utah. Celeste Maloy, a proponent of former President Donald Trump, defeated former state Rep. Becky Edwards, winning 38 percent of the vote in the race for Utah’s 2nd Congressional District. Edwards won 35 percent of the vote, while businessman Bruce Hough had 26 percent. The trio were vying to be the GOP candidate in the race to succeed Rep. Chris Stewart, who is resigning later this month to care for his ailing wife. All three candidates campaigned on the...

SALT LAKE CITY — Celeste Maloy is the projected winner of the Republican primary for Utah's 2nd Congressional District seat. The Associated Press called the race in Maloy's favor at 5:54 p.m. on Wednesday.The race was too close to call late Tuesday night, but Maloy held a narrow lead after strong showings in Washington County and other rural areas in southern Utah. Maloy's lead over Edwards increased to 2,431 votes on Wednesday afternoon after updates from Beaver, Davis, Iron, Kane and Tooele counties.

A distinct urban-rural divide left a Utah special congressional primary race between a Donald Trump critic and supporter too early to call Tuesday in a tight race that will likely produce the replacement for U.S. Rep. Chris Stewart. The GOP special primary to replace Stewart saw Celeste Maloy, who was Stewart’s chief legal counsel and has his endorsement, with a narrow lead over former state lawmaker Becky Edwards late Tuesday. Edwards, a Trump critic, was leading in two urban counties, but Maloy, a Trump supporter, overtook her with strength from rural areas that make up the rest of the sprawling...

A Utah woman who ran a popular parenting advice YouTube channel is facing child abuse charges after her malnourished son escaped from home, officials said. Ruby Franke and her business partner Jodi Nan Hildebrandt were arrested in Ivins, Utah this week. Officials also found Ms Franke's 10-year-old daughter in a malnourished condition at her partner's house. Both women were charged with six counts of child abuse on Friday. The BBC has reached out to Ms Franke and Ms Hildebrandt for comment. Police say Ms Franke's 12-year-old son climbed out of the window and ran to a neighbour's house to ask...

On June 2, the U.S. Department of the Interior blocked oil and gas leasing for the next twenty years within a ten-mile radius of Chaco Canyon — the site of a Puebloan civilization in now-northern New Mexico dating back over a millennium. Despite some support from people within the Pueblo tribes and Navajo Nation which surround the land, the vast majority of Navajo leaders have opposed these drilling restrictions. It’s essential that climate advocates hear them out. Between high-profile cases of extractive industries seizing and polluting Indigenous land and the fact that climate change exacerbates the many environmental and economic...

A woman named Elizabeth Gray recently became a topic of interest on social media when a video of her freaking out at a Costco store went viral. Elizabeth was shopping at Costco, accompanied by a man (most likely a family member), when they both started screaming at a fellow shopper allegedly for not covering their face with a mask. Gray, who was wearing a black mask and donning purple hair was later identified as a candidate for the American Fork City Council in Utah. In the footage that has now surfaced on the internet, she is heard verbally abusing a...

[Editor’s note: Make sure to read Robert Spencer’s masterpiece contributions in Jamie Glazov’s new book: Barack Obama’s True Legacy: How He Transformed America.]How far we have come for the rights of women in America! Exactly how far is clear from a story out of Utah, where one of the denizens of the new multicultural paradise that the Left has so graciously bestowed upon us demonstrated his profound appreciation for the wisdom of his non-American, non-Christian ancestors by expressing his internalization of their beliefs, assumptions and mores: when his girlfriend dared to be so independent as to go to a party...

Republican Utah Rep. Burgess Owens revealed his presidential endorsement for 2024 exclusively to the Daily Caller on Thursday.“Donald Trump delivered record-breaking growth to all communities. As a child born in the segregated south, I witnessed Donald Trump help the black community more than any president in my lifetime. Record growth for black business owners, then to answer this, the Democrats nominated the last segregationist in American politics, Joe Biden,” Owens said in a statement.“Biden declared to the world if you don’t support him, ‘you ain’t black,’ well, once again, I don’t support him. I’m proud to support Donald Trump in...

Utah Sen. Mitt Romney has some work to do if he plans on running for another term next year, but he has a big head start on any potential challengers, according to a new poll. In a hypothetical 2024 Republican Senate primary match-up, 30% of Utah Republicans would vote for Romney. Attorney General Sean Reyes, who is reportedly eyeing a U.S. Senate bid, is the only other potential candidate with double-digit support at 13%. So far, two other candidates are in the race for Romney’s seat, but they only managed marginal support in the poll from Noble Predictive Insights. House...

State governments have historically generated revenue to maintain roads, traffic lights, and the like by adding a tax at the pump. Owing to the federal government-prodded transition to electric vehicles (EVs) to combat something called “climate change,” states stand to lose out on this source of revenue as EVs obviously don’t require gasoline to operate. Utah’s novel solution is to charge a “per-mile fee” for EVs with a government GPS tracker attached to monitor movement. Via the Utah Department of Transportation: "Utah roads are maintained using taxes from gasoline sales. As vehicles become more fuel efficient and the number of...

A clearer picture is emerging of the 75-year-old Utah man shot dead by the FBI after they tried to serve a search warrant hours before Joe Biden arrived in the state on a re-election campaign swing. But questions are also being asked as to whether Craig Robertson was a “credible threat”, as the FBI claims, or as neighbors in Provo, Utah, have described to local media as a man harboring anti-government views who walked with a cane and liked to bluster and tell big stories, especially on social media. Robertson had posted threats against the president, including asking whether Utah...

A Utah man who assaulted a man and his son at their family tire shop in 2018 shouting he hated Mexicans was sentenced to 20 years in prison Tuesday. Alan Dale Covington, 55, was convicted by a Salt Lake City jury in February 2020 of the hate crime of assaulting three men, members of the Lopez family who ran a local tire shop, because he believed they were Mexican, according to the Justice Department. His prison term will be followed by five years of supervised release.