Free Republic

It’s been a little over a year since Keith Zipprich lost his wife, Jo, to cancer. Jo battled that cancer for many months, as bills stacked up for those many treatments. Keith said Jo’s insurance covered most of the costs, and she was paying other bills up until the time of her death. But about a year after she died, Keith said he was surprised when he, himself, was slapped with a lawsuit from a debt collector trying to collect on one of Jo’s unpaid bills with Uintah Basin Healthcare. “This bill came to me in forms of a lawsuit,”...

When I opened up my newsfeed this morning, I almost immediately spotted a headline from the AP that made me wonder if I was still asleep and experiencing some sort of dystopian dream from an alternate reality. The title was, “China finds an unlikely friend in Utah.” Huh? At first, I assumed that this was yet another story of the Chinese buying up land in rural portions of the United States, such as they’ve done in North Dakota and Oklahoma. But while there may be some of that happening, what China really seems to be buying in Utah is influence....

A Utah State football player is recovering in the hospital after suffering “non-traumatic sudden cardiac arrest” during a spring practice session ... Josh Davis, a redshirt freshman wideout from California, collapsed on the field and was taken to Logan Regional Hospital before later being transported to McKay-Dee Hospital. He was said to be in critical condition but was upgraded to fair condition the following morning. According to the school, he was “taken off life-sustaining medical devices and is breathing on his own.” “Davis received initial critical treatment and was stabilized at Logan Regional Hospital before being transported to McKay-Dee Hospital,...

Someone wants the Bible removed from libraries in the Davis School District. On Dec. 11, 2022, a challenge was filed with district officials asking that the Bible be pulled from the shelves of the district’s schools. The school district doesn’t reveal who challenges books, nor does it ask why. A random check of school districts revealed that they, too, have an array of religious texts in their school libraries such as the Bible, Quran, Torah, the Book of Mormon and the Hindu text Bhagavad Gita, but none reported they had been challenged. Granite School District spokesman Ben Horsley said the...

If you’ve ever taken part in the weekly VIP Gold live chat with HotAir’s Ed Morrissey and myself, you’ve probably heard me utter the phrase “everything is stupid and it’s only getting worse.” I’m sure there are exceptions to that rule, but when it comes to the arguments of anti-gunners, that phrase definitely applies. The latest example? The anti-gun left’s full-throttled freakout over a Second Amendment-themed hoodie that apparently led to some sort of disciplinary action against a Utah high school student; a situation highlighted by Sen. Rand Paul over the weekend in a tweet that appears to have now...

Gov. Spencer Cox (R-Utah) signed a bill banning abortion clinics across the state as Republicans continue their fight to protect the life of unborn babies. The bill, now a statewide law, will require abortion clinics to shut down their doors by 2024 or when their medical licenses expire, whichever comes first. The bill also bans women from having the procedure after 18 weeks of pregnancy. Under the new law, all abortions will be forced to take place in a hospital where the procedure can be monitored by doctors who will adhere to the 18-week rule. "Starting January 1, 2024, inducing...

Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., joined forces with 18 GOP governors to reject President Joe Biden's environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) "agenda," claiming the push is a "direct threat" to the economic freedom of American retirees. Governors in Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming formed the alliance Thursday in what they described as an effort to ensure American retirement funds are not used for "woke" investments. "Yet again, President Biden put his political agenda above the wellbeing and individual freedoms of hardworking Americans,"...

Utah’s Republican Gov. Spencer Cox signed legislation Wednesday that will by next year ban clinics from providing abortions, setting off a rush of confusion among clinics, hospitals and prospective patients in the deeply Republican state. Administrators from hospitals and clinics have not publicly detailed their plans to adapt to the new law, adding a layer of uncertainty on top of fear that, if clinics close, patients may not be able to access care at hospitals because of a variety of staffing and cost concerns. With the law set to start taking effect as early as May 3, both the Planned...

A recent college graduate in Utah was shot several times by police during a traffic stop in early March after officers allegedly saw him reaching for a gun, body camera video shows. Farmington, Utah, police department officers stopped 25-year-old Chase Allan after seeing an illegitimate license plate on the BMW car he was driving at 3:22 p.m. on March 1. Police Chief Eric Johnsen released body camera video relating to the incident on Wednesday. When the police officer told Allan that he was being stopped because there was no registration on the car, Allan said, "I don't need registration and...

During the impeachment trial lawyers for former President, Donald Trump made a claim that the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riot was the work of “Antifa.” A small group who came to engage in violent and menacing behavior hijacked the event for their own purposes. According to publicly available reporting, it is apparent that extremists of various different stripes and political persuasions preplanned and premeditated and attacked on the capitol,” Trump’s lawyer Michael van der Veen said. “One of the first people arrested was the leader of Antifa. Sadly, he was also among the first to be released.” The allegation seemed...

Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that she would support any Republican nominee for 2o24 that the voters picked. McDaniel said, “I will support the voters and who they choose as the nominee. As RNC chair, if I said I wouldn’t support the Republican nominee, I would be removed from office. I would be rightly removed. It would be part of our bylaws, and I would be checked out as RNC chair. Anyone getting on the Republican National Committee debate stage should be able to say, I will support the will of...

A remarkable video out of Utah shows what appears to be a sizeable creature crossing the peak of a snow-covered mountain with ease and some suspect that the peculiar traveler could be Bigfoot. The wild footage was reportedly captured last Wednesday by a witness who was observing the Wasatch Mountain range from the nearby community of Farmington. To his surprise, he noticed and something moving across the mountain's Francis Peak at an elevation of around 9,500 feet, where the terrain was covered with a thick layer of snow, and proceeded to film the strange scene with his cell phone. While...

The current size of Ensign Peak’s holdings remains a tightly held secret. The firm, based in Salt Lake City, was incorporated in 1997. Under SEC rules, it must disclose some types of investments, like U.S.-listed stocks, that it manages directly, which amounted to roughly $40 billion on Sept. 30. The remainder of the portfolio is made up of investments such as fixed-income securities, private companies or funds. Ensign Peak had an estimated $100 billion of holdings in 2019.

A Native American teenager who died while attending a Utah boarding school for at-risk youth had been sick in the weeks beforehand, but staff members had been trained to assume students would lie about being ill and did not try to bring her to the hospital until the day she died, former staff members said in interviews. Taylor Goodridge, 17, collapsed at Diamond Ranch Academy in Hurricane, Utah, on Dec. 20. While an official cause of death has not yet been determined, her family said in a lawsuit that they believe she died of sepsis, a life-threatening condition that arises...

On Saturday, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox signed Senate Bill 16 into law. Under SB0016, sex change operations or “gender-affirming” surgery for minors is banned in the Beehive State. The bill also places limitations on the use of hormone treatments and puberty blockers. Along with banning sex change surgery for minors, the key takeaways from the bill are that the state Department of Health and Human Services will “conduct a systematic review of the medical evidence regarding hormonal transgender treatments and provide recommendations to the Legislature.” The bill also directs the Department of Professional Licensing to create a certification for providing...

“You teach it to a group of seniors at West Jordan High and they don’t tell their parents.” Administrators, educators, and union officials in Utah were caught on video boasting about how they managed to keep teaching critical race theory or LGBTQ concepts to students, despite Utah’s bans on CRT in the classroom ... The Utah legislature passed two resolutions in May 2021 to ban CRT from schools, and the Utah Board of Education then approved similar restrictions in June 2021, ... her team gets around the rules by only telling parents what wokeness they taught kids after the fact,...

People come from all around the world to ski Utah's Little Cottonwood Canyon and its bucket list resort Alta, a fixture in skiing lore since 1939. "Oh my gosh the terrain here is just absolutely massive," says Kate Rath. Rath and fellow skier Ali Scheifley are standing on Alta's razor thin High Traverse, choosing their line, about to plunge down the steep and deep Greeley Bowl. "We're both ripping some new skis today and we're actually very pleased," Scheifley says, beaming. This little powder Narnia exists not even 10 miles up from the Salt Lake valley. These high alpine peaks...

On November 8, 2022, in Utah’s State Representative race, 29th district, the Constitution Party nominee, Kirk Pearson, outpolled his Democratic opponent. The Republican nominee won with 10,832 votes, followed by Pearson with 2,254, and then the Democratic nominee with 2,131.

A 39-year-old Florida man now faces criminal charges in connection with a physical confrontation on a Park City chairlift that was posted on TikTok and garnered millions of views. The man, from Lutz, Florida, was charged Wednesday in Summit County Justice Court with assault, a class B misdemeanor, and disorderly conduct, a class C misdemeanor. Police say the assault occurred on Dec. 26 while two men and a woman were riding a chairlift at Park City Mountain Resort. The Park City-based news website Town Lift reports that the victim is a 52-year-old man who is also from Florida. The confrontation...

A mother in Draper, Utah broke her silence and revealed that her healthy son developed blood clots in his brain nine days after receiving the experimental mRNA Covid vaccine. Nearly a year later, another blood clot formed in his right leg and moved to his lungs. Cherie Romney revealed that her son, Everest, was taken to the ICU with blood clots in his brain back in April 2021, 9 days after receiving the COVID vaccine. Medical records state that the blood clots were an “adverse reaction to the vaccine.” Everest stands 6’9″ and was a basketball player prior to the...