
Elections and Possible Vetoes
Season 6 Episode 26 | 30mVideo has Closed Captions
The bills Gov. Cox could veto, plus who’s running in the 2022 midterm elections.
With the dust settling on a turbulent legislative session, Governor Cox is already vowing to veto some controversial bills. Could there be more? Plus, our panel evaluates how the 2022 election cycle is taking shape. Lindsay Whitehurst, reporter with the Associated Press; Chris Bleak, partner at RRJ Consulting; and Michelle Quist, columnist for The Salt Lake Tribune join host Jason Perry.
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The Hinckley Report is a local public television program presented by PBS Utah
Funding for The Hinckley Report is made possible in part by Cleone Peterson Eccles Endowment Fund, AARP Utah, and Merit Medical.

Elections and Possible Vetoes
Season 6 Episode 26 | 30mVideo has Closed Captions
With the dust settling on a turbulent legislative session, Governor Cox is already vowing to veto some controversial bills. Could there be more? Plus, our panel evaluates how the 2022 election cycle is taking shape. Lindsay Whitehurst, reporter with the Associated Press; Chris Bleak, partner at RRJ Consulting; and Michelle Quist, columnist for The Salt Lake Tribune join host Jason Perry.
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The Hinckley Report
Hosted by Jason Perry, each week’s guests feature Utah’s top journalists, lawmakers and policy experts.Providing Support for PBS.org
Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship♪♪♪ male announcer: Funding for "The Hinckley Report" is made possible in part by the Cleone Peterson Eccles Endowment Fund.
Jason Perry: Tonight on "The Hinckley Report"... the dust settles following a turbulent end to Utah's legislative session and advocates lobby the governor to exercise his veto power.
The 2022 election cycle takes shape as candidates officially enter the arena and Utahn's anxiously watched the war in Ukraine as its effects reach our state.
♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Jason: Good evening and welcome to "The Hinckley Report."
I'm Jason Perry, Director of the Hinckley Institute of Politics.
Covering the week, we have Michelle Quist, Columnist with the Salt Lake Tribune; Chris Blake, Partner with RRJ Consulting; and Lindsay Whitehurst, Reporter with the Associated Press.
I'm glad to be with you all this evening.
We have a lot to get too, particularly we're starting with the legislative session.
We just had the end on Friday.
A lot happened on that Friday that I want to get to and let me start off some of the stats which I think is interesting because people wonder how many bills are actually up there; 1273 bill files opened, 814 of those were actually introduced, 513 bills actually passed this legislative session, and a few of them, quite a few of them on the very last night of the legislative session.
I want to get to a couple of those because we talked about them on the on the show and Michelle, let's let's start with you on this transgender athlete bill.
This is House Bill 11.
We had a little preview from it last year.
Maybe can give us a little bit of where we ended last legislative session and then what happened a little bit in this one.
Michelle Quist: Last legislative session, it was ended as it did not pass.
They were going to take the time to study, come to a better, you know, negotiation or middle ground.
This year they were proposing instead of an outright ban, they were proposing a kind of a board that would, you know, investigate each person that came in each transgender student that wanted to participate in high school athletics.
They would kind of decide whether they were, you know, at first I mean at one point they had wings stature in there and I think that was removed.
They didn't get--it didn't pass.
Everybody thought it was dead.
The filing deadline for, you know, legislative races past at 5:30, and then all of a sudden Senator Dan McKay comes in with a substitute bill that is an outright rejection of transgender athletes participation in athletics.
Jason: Chris, this is interesting, a couple of parts here I want to get to that Michelle just mentioned.
One about kind of the the change itself.
It seemed like when they wanted that last night legislative session there was sort of a compromise.
Neither side was very happy with it but thought it was maybe going to go.
Talk about sort of the politics of what happened there and why Dan McKay made this change, which instead of this commission was an outright ban.
And then if there is some legal challenge then the commission.
Chris Bleak: Yeah, that's what I was going to note is it does have the two part.
So it's always interesting I think when the legislature's deferring to the court.
It's my understanding that they were doing that because they didn't feel like they could get the votes to support the commission, but yeah, the politics I think are interesting here.
In my mind, a good bill has to have the three parts.
There's policy, there's process, and then there's the politics of it and I'm not sure that they hit on all-- on the right ends there.
I think you know what you see from our governor as he talked immediately about a veto is he's talking about, you know, what is the right policy?
I don't know what that is.
There's I think there's legitimate issues and concerns to be discussed and debated here and not suggesting the commission does that but the governor I think just about is worried and looking at what is the tone we're setting and what is the image of the state.
And so, and that goes into both the politics of that which people are viewing in a different perspective.
And so, yeah interesting challenge and I think we're gonna see a lot more on this bill play out here over the next couple of weeks and months.
Jason: That's true.
Lindsay, talk about what Michelle brought up too, what you heard on the Hill this time.
There was-- there's a lot of speculation, in fact, quite a few news articles that seem to suggest the legislature waited until after the filing deadline.
I wanna talk about that for just a minute to the filing deadline was five o'clock on Friday.
These changes happened after.
What did you hear from legislators, people on the Hill, about that assertion?
Lindsay Whitehurst: Well, I think one thing too to note in the background of all of this as we start this conversation is right now this is a very small group of students that we're talking about.
There's four kids who have been through.
There already is a process if kids wanna participate and it includes a year of hormone therapy.
And so there's only four students who have gone through that process and are playing in these student sports right now.
And there's no-- nothing public anyone saying that they have any kind of competitive advantage.
That's the overarching concern here is that that transgender students could have some kind of competitive advantage in girl sports and the folks that support a ban say that's a small group now in the future that could change.
And there's a lot of conversation to be had around that.
There was a full year of negotiations over this issue, but right now we are talking about a very small group of kids, but for Governor Cox, what he mentioned in his proclaiming he would veto it is that it sends a wider message to a group of students, you don't belong in this very important ritual of American, for American Kids.
You know, sports are an important thing, teamwork, playing together, there's lots of other things.
Besides just competition that are involved in sports and so so there's there's a lot to work out there.
It's a very charged issue right now nationally speaking you know, it's it's something where there's a lot of a lot of discussion and a lot of conversation about this issue, but it is in Utah, especially a very small group of students that we're talking about here and I think I think one thing that this reflects is that you know, we really pride ourselves in Utah, Utah way, having respectful dialogue and coming to some kind of compromise and I think it kind of reflects when you know we have this much more acrimonious national political picture and that does kind of see been into turn it's getting it's getting harder on some of these hot button issues to find something that everybody can live with, you know.
And so, yeah, it'll be a veto from Cox this year.
There will be efforts at a veto override.
Whether those would be successful is very much an open question, but I do think there's a fair chance we could see this come back again next year too.
Jason: Chris, I wanna get to that veto override for just a second.
You were Chief of Staff in the legislature so you know how this works.
People are speculating about whether or not the legislature might try to do would be to override.
Just tell us really quickly how does that work internally.
You've been part of it.
Chris: Yeah, certainly, I mean leadership has as they do in all things in the Utah Legislature, a big hand in how that gets determined.
Ultimately the leadership needs to determine do they have the votes?
They need 20 votes in the Senate and 50 votes in the House in order to override a governor's veto.
And they have to decide can I get to that threshold?
Now neither body made that threshold in the original vote and so it would absolutely take some work from the members of leadership to recruit or find those votes in order to get that override.
You know, I think it's important to note any bill can be vetoed.
You know, we often talk oh, it's got veto override.
It's really just an indicator, can this-- was this bill-- did it have the votes at the beginning?
And this one did not but it's not that far off either and so it's certainly within the realm of possibility in my mind.
Michelle: Even if the veto is overridden this bill is likely unconstitutional.
They know it and the concern here is that it others, I'm using that as a verb, it others a very small group of kids, of students, and what happened, you know, what happens next is really important.
I mean, last year, Florida passed this same type of bill.
This year, Florida passed you can't even say gay in the classroom.
Idaho just you know passed a bill that would criminalize, make a lifetime sentence, for parents of transgender kids.
This is not the way this conversation should be going.
Throughout the session the conversation was there.
The dialogue was there.
And the parties from all sides were coming together.
This last minute, we're going to do it this way, you know, ram it through is just not the way it should have been done.
Jason: What's interesting is the time to suspend on this greatly impacted the number of other bills that were passed.
I want to get to one of those, Lindsay, because this was was a bill that was very controversial going into the last days of the legislative session.
Legislature didn't get to it.
This is House Bill 60 on the vaccine passport bill.
They didn't get to it but maybe give us a little context on this because it really motivated our business community to get involved.
Lindsay: And of course it also motivated some strong feelings from some folks who came up to the Capitol and made those feelings known.
There was one gentleman I believe in a hearing who was actually taken away by troopers, whether he's officially arrested or not I'm not totally sure, but it's the kind of thing that looked a lot like that at the time.
So there are some very strong feelings around this issue I mean.
And that's probably not a surprise to anybody, right?
But especially after the Utah Jazz stopped requiring vaccination, proof of vaccination to come in, it's not something that's terribly widespread in Utah that people are needing to show that vaccination card.
And of course, the business owners, who do have some level of requirement, you know, felt like this is my private business and I should be able to make these decisions on my own.
And so it'll be interesting to see how that plays out.
By next year, I don't know, maybe we'd be in a different place when it comes to the pandemic altogether, but-- Chris: Well, Lindsay made the point earlier about the national politics seeping into this and this is absolutely what we're seeing here.
I think Utah has done a pretty remarkable job as in terms of managing Covid.
A lot of the things you hear about didn't happen.
We didn't define essential employees.
We didn't do a lot of other things that other states had to do.
And if not for the federal vaccine mandates, I don't think we would have seen this bill but this bill was seriously problematic from the perspective of, you know, are we going to get involved in private businesses, decisions they make, the contracts they have.
So I'm happy that it didn't pass, but and hopefully just the air is out of the room now, and-- but it's certainly a concern from the business community perspective in terms of just how to administer this, how to deal with this because there are so many things they have to do in terms of making sure their employees are safe, their customers are safe, and managing those risks.
Michelle: Maybe we're not giving Senator McKay the benefit of the doubt.
Maybe he meant to pass a bill that he knew would be vetoed in order to have this run out of time, so that nobody would have to, you know, put a yes or no on it.
Jason: All the strategy involved in politics.
Okay, I'm gonna get the budget for just a minute because this is a $25 billion dollar budget.
Pretty huge for the state of Utah.
I want to get to a couple of those budget items.
Chris, I want you to describe for just a second.
This $1 billion dollars put into transportation and transit because that is going to be a huge thing for the state.
Chris: Yeah, absolutely, and I think it is-- it's something that has been not well, I don't mean, well reported on it's been talked about but this is such a significant step.
First of all, first of all, $1 billion dollars in cash and we've done big bonds before other things like that but they put $1 billion dollars of cash into transportation.
In addition to that, they included money for active transportation, bike, road trails that people can use, and also 150 million, it's actually like 280 million into transit, double tracking a front runner, and the point of the Mountain Transit line.
The state has never put money in transit project before.
So when we talk about multi modal and really changing the way we think about moving people and goods, the state is making a significant investment and it is unlike anything we've ever seen.
And so, kudos to the state for moving this direction.
We've been working on this for a number of years and this is the fruition of it and I couldn't be more excited about it.
Jason: A tremendous amount of money to education, Lindsay.
This is about a 9% increase.
Lindsay: Right, and I think one kind of small piece of that that's interesting to me as a parent is the full day kindergarten, that conversation.
Not as much money as originally intended did end up going to that but I think that'll-- it'll be interesting to see how that plays out for parents, because it's not an option for everyone to have that full day kindergarten and it's not necessarily something everyone wants to take advantage of but I think it's definitely something that had a lot of conversation.
And early on, what's-- what are we teaching our kids or what options are there for parents?
I think that's-- that was an interesting conversation to watch with the legislature this year.
Jason: Michelle, this conversation goes all the way back to like 2000 when we saw a bill that was for All Day K. So the funding wasn't quite where it was initially planned but talk about what might happen next for this.
Michelle: Well, I like how the data is pushing these bills.
You know, the transportation funding our demographics require it.
We're only growing, you know, the kindergarten bill, more women are working full time, our kids do better if they're in full day kindergarten.
Again, that's not a requirement the kids go to full day, you know, kindergarten, but those families who need it or who want it, you know, the opportunity should be there and it shouldn't depend on what school district, you're in.
And so, I love that the demographics of Utah and that the values of Utah are really driving these legislative decisions.
Jason: One last bill I think is interesting too is we've had the discussion of the state about medical marijuana, Lindsay, this year, we had a discussion about psilocybin mushrooms.
Lindsay: Right, and I was so interested to see the way.
It was a different conversation than when we first started talking about medical marijuana in Utah.
There was a lot of consternation over that, multiple years of conversation in the legislature.
Finally, a ballot initiative before the eventual compromise that allowed medical marijuana in Utah.
And this particular bill, It just studies it.
It doesn't actually allow its usage yet, but it it pretty much sailed through.
I mean, lawmakers are looking at this in a very different way it seems to me.
Michelle: And it did come in under the radar.
There was not a lot of information about it.
I'd like to see the data that's supporting it and who's pushing it and where the money's coming from.
Jason: We'll follow this one closely.
Interesting development, not a lot of conversation though at least in the press so we'll watch that one closely.
Okay, I want to get into, you know, kind of the politics of candidacy 'cause this has been a big week.
Chris, talk about it's kinda this unique situation we had this year.
We don't usually have the filing deadline during the legislative session.
What kind of impact might that have and did it have on the number of people who decided they were going to file this year?
Chris: Yeah, important to note that the filing deadline is now going to move to the first week of January.
So going forward in this session, though that final session going into the election year people are gonna know who's filed against them and what the dynamics are.
And I think that does have the potential for really impacting the way some people react to that.
I don't know the total number of candidates.
I would actually be surprised if it's really that significant of a difference from years past.
In fact, I felt like it was a little bit lower.
There's often candidate challenges, particularly in redistricting, there's a lot of change moving around and people all of a sudden end up in different districts.
And so, I didn't think it was that surprising but there are a couple of candidates that have what looked like significant in party challenges on both sides, the Republicans and the Democrats.
Specifically in the Senate, I'm thinking Senator kitchen has a challenger.
Senator Vickers, Senator Milner, there are gonna be some interesting challenges there.
Yeah, absolutely, and so, you know, but this is the the beauty of the process.
They can go and defend their record, and defend what they're working on, and what they're doing, and let the people decide, and we'll see who comes back up.
Jason: We will.
Michelle, you're a former candidate, I mean talk about what kinda what goes through one's mind when you're doing that filing.
Are people waiting for the session?
If it goes earlier, how does that impact sorta how people vote?
You got people pulling punches because they're worried about challengers?
Michelle: I mean, it's hard to know, I mean, I think it did definitely affect things this year because of the, you know, it was changed midsession, and you know, it was you know.
It was I think it affected things this year.
I am a former candidate, a former failed candidate.
You know, it's hard to decide whether to go in and the the travesty that I see is those spots that aren't opposed.
I think every race should always be opposed.
I think we should have conversations and candidates good enough in this state to have a dialogue with each other about ideas and not about personalities.
Jason: Let's break down a couple of those points because we have some in the House of Representatives, 22, Lindsay, 22 representatives are facing inter party challengers.
In the Senate, 10 senators are facing inter party challengers, including as Chris just mentioned, some pretty high profile members of our legislature, even they are getting challengers.
Talk about that for just a moment because that's a pretty good number and we still have quite a few that don't have challengers at all.
Lindsay: This is the time of year where, like, I don't envy anybody in that process.
I think they're great conversations and I'm really glad that we'll be having them both within parties and with, you know, in between the two parties.
I think some really good things and really good conversations can come out of there but man, it's a lot of work.
It's a lot of work and it's not-- it's not this portion of it especially is not a highly paid thing.
And so, your hats gotta be off to anybody who's getting in that ring at this point in time, right, just to be able to 'cause you put a lot of your own time, a lot of your own money into these races that-- that there is not a massive group of people paying attention to.
More people should be paying attention, but not necessarily a huge number of people are getting in the mix.
So, you gotta respect anybody who's going to go into the ring, who's going to have those conversations, and do that work because that's important.
Michelle: However, the income it really is hard to overcome.
You know, just the idea of it too.
I think the one thing that is still making a difference is the recent change to not have one box at the top that says you know, one party Republican or Democrat.
Think it makes the voter go through each candidate and they still think that's really helping.
Chris: The other election you didn't mention, Jason, is the state board of education.
This is its second cycle as a partisan elected position, and there is a lot of challengers in there.
A couple of folks that didn't run the chair, Mark Huntsman running for the State Legislature, I think Gloria Belknap withdrew from her race, but there's there's actually a lot of energy there, particularly as you think about some of the issues around Covid and how parents have felt.
So there's a lot of energy in those races, and now that it's a partisan election, I think that's gonna be interesting what impact that has as we move forward as well.
Lindsay: That's such a good point because there's so much of the disagreements and conversations we're having as a culture are playing out in schools, at school boards right now, and it's really true what may have at one point been kind of a sleepy arena is not anymore and it's an important one.
Jason: Well, there's so much here.
There are 28 people who have filed for those who stay school board positions and I think it's interesting point too, Michelle, just the last part on this speak.
There was a time when you talk to most people and they'd say, "Who's on your state board?"
They'd say, "I have no idea who that is."
Particularly given the issues that happened over the last couple of years that doesn't seem to be the case anymore.
There is definitely interest in who's making these decisions.
Michelle: Yes, there is interest and there's knowledge of what's going on.
Facebook, you know, has really helped to push out certain people, certain personalities, and the ideas that they are bringing to the board, and people are pushing back against that.
Jason: They are.
Let's talk about the Senate races for a second.
A lot of interesting dynamics.
This is the Mike Lee race.
Let's get into that one for just a moment.
Seven Republican candidates, Chris, filed for that particular race.
We know some of the name.
Some of the names we're starting-- just starting to get to know.
Talk about kind of an insider's perspective on this.
Why is Mike Lee have so many internal challengers?
Chris: Well, I think Mike Lee's high profile and it's a position that the people took, to Michelle's point, that people want to have some conversations about ideas and what Senator Lee has been espousing and pushing.
I-- based on my caucus experience, Senator Lee's probably in pretty good shape.
I'll tell you one of the things that I found interesting, Becky Edwards was much more mentioned at my caucus down in Utah County than I expected to be honest.
And I thought that was interesting.
She had-- she definitely had some supporters.
They didn't necessarily fare well in some of the caucuses that I witnessed and saw, but yeah.
There's gonna be some energy there.
Clearly there's gonna be a primary, I believe Becky already has the signatures and there are others that are aiming for that.
And so this is gonna be drawn out race and Senator Lee is going to have to share his ideas and push what he wants to see accomplished in the direction he wants to go.
And people have the chance to see if that's the direction they want or not.
Michelle: And it's hard to catch the wind of the populace at a caucus meeting now because so few people attend.
I had five people in my precinct, whereas for the past, you know, obviously not 2 years ago 'cause there wasn't one but 4years ago, 6years ago, and 8 years ago, there were 50-60.
Five, we had five, you know, and so I think yeah Senator Lee's supporters showed up but Becky's already on the ballot.
And I think people are disillusioned with politics in general, with the state of national affairs, with some of the statements maybe Senator Lee has said, and you know, people like change and they like a good, they like a good race.
Jason: Well, talk about this good race, Lindsay.
There's an interesting dynamic happening in this race, but I'm not sure I've seen exactly before.
There's Democratic Challenger, Kael Weston but there's this movement from high profile Democrats in the state like Ben McAdams, even like Mayor Jenny Wilson, who are supporting the independent candidate, Evan McMullin.
Lindsay: Right, exactly, that's been interesting to see a couple of very prominent Democrats in Utah.
Ben McAdams came fairly early, it was a while back but that he came and endorsed Evan McMullin and feeling like this is the guy who's going to best represent my values as a moderate Democrat and of course, Jenny Wilson just recently.
And so, there are some folks who even say the Democrats shouldn't run anybody so that this race will be strictly between Mike Lee and Evan McMullin.
And of course, historically independent candidates, it's tough.
It is, you know, when you're not attached to a major party, it's tough to get that traction.
McMullin, of course, is a little bit different because he had this previous run for president where he did quite well in the state of Utah.
He has perhaps a little higher profile, more name recognition than your typical independent.
And and of course Democrats in Utah have, you know, in the minority always have some kind of a little bit different view on things than a typical, typical two party, you know, where it's more of a 50-50 kind of split.
You saw some some self a vowed Democrats registering as Republicans in the past for in a governor's election.
So, the politics of being a Democrat in Utah are always a little interesting, a little bit different, and it'll be interesting to see whether they do end up, you know, getting really lining up behind McMullin in this one.
Chris: I was gonna say, what I have two thoughts here.
One is, sorry to cut you off, Michelle.
One is if the Democrats can get their candidate out of the race, I think it does make it a much more interesting general election race, no question about it.
But I do want to say I don't know who Evan McMullin is and I think he has to do, I mean, he's either going to be defined or he has to define himself because he's a little bit.
He's this enigma of okay, he ran against Trump, he got support because of the dynamics in 2016, but I don't know who the guy is.
I don't even know if he's-- when's the last time he lived here is?
And I'm not saying that to knock on him but he's gotta define himself and there are people that just don't know who he is.
He's almost sort of a figment like oh, he's this perfect candidate because we don't really know who he is.
Michelle: Yeah, this candidacy drives me nuts for two reasons.
I'm a rules follower, like I, you know, I go by the rules and and yeah, the Independent part you know he's going by the rules, but, you know, this is not the system we usually use.
And if anybody's gonna jump out and run as an Independent it should've been a woman, not a white male.
I'm sorry to say it out loud but there are enough regular paths for white males to come and show us why we should vote for them.
And number two, I want the Democrats to do better.
I want them to feel the candidate that Utahns want to vote for.
Jason: Chris, is there any chance the Democrats try to pressure to not have a candidate?
I mean it just seems so odd that this is even-- Chris: Pressuring candidates to get out is usually not a good strategy and I'm not sure what they would used to do that.
You know, so I would suspect that he stays in.
I don't see the reason he gets out and for the same reason Michelle mentioned, I mean, they can't just not feel the candidate for the biggest race of this election cycle.
That's just terrible for them as a party and their viability going forward.
Jason: Absolutely right.
Now we have some of our other congressional districts are up for election too, Lindsay, let's just talk about that for a moment because we have, well all of them have challengers, which is interesting.
The ones who have the most district one, Blake Moore has-- there's six candidates in that race.
Six candidates in district two with Chris Stewart.
Interesting 10 candidates have filed against John Curtis, and just for the thoroughness, four candidates on Burgess Owens.
It's interesting we have so many candidates filing for these races.
Any initial thoughts about what we're seeing right there?
Lindsay: Well, you know, and for a long time that fourth district where Burgess Owens has been, has been the one that is most purple ish.
You know, that's where Ben McAdams was able to win as a Democrat in Utah, which is not a super easy feat.
And it's also interesting because he is perhaps the most far right of all of those congressional folks that we have right now.
And so it's interesting that he's trying to fewest challengers, right?
So apparently that would perhaps be an indication that that people feel like he's not the one they want to go up against.
And so that's not necessarily how you typically think of that district, but it would seem that he's got the easiest path forward so far.
Of course other incumbents like Chris Stewart are quite well established and it's really-- it is really hard to kind of overcome that incumbent right there, right?
Jason: There is one aspect we haven't talked about that I'm curious if you have heard about it from any of the caucuses before we leave this.
A lot of these candidates are going to get signatures.
We see Chris Stewart has not done this when he's been running.
Any of you-- any undercurrents here about retaliation or is that even a thing anymore?
Michelle: No, it-- I mean, it is, you know, by one faction of the State Central Committee on the Republican Party, but they don't ever get anywhere.
Signatures is the thing to stay.
What's interesting is all these incumbents have new constituents too.
I mean, my district changed.
I have a different rep now.
And so, they had to take that into account too, but yeah.
No, I think signatures are here.
Chris: And I agree with Michelle, even more so I think as we go forward because of the filing deadline change, but tying it essentially to when people are declaring that they're getting signatures or beginning this session, and more runway between that and when the convention slash primary happen.
If there are people that don't, I think they're going to get signatures.
I believe it's political malpractice not to.
You should give yourself every option for the people to vote on you.
And so, I think that's-- Michelle: Which is why Senator Lee get signatures.
Even the staunch ones that were against SB 54 get signatures.
Lindsay: You know this is-- we didn't fight over that issue this year in the legislature.
Well how many at least the last two or three sessions, we've been fighting over that.
At some point in this session, I don't remember it being a fight this year.
That's one thing we avoided.
Jason: I wanna end on one note here that happened in Washington D.C. something that our even our delegation was completely united on was some funding to go to Ukraine.
Chris, maybe just give us a little bit on that $13.6 billion in emergency spending to the crisis in Ukraine, just a little about what you're seeing and hearing in Utah with the support here.
Chris: While I'm certainly pleased they did, I think it's important to remember that we had a big battle over funding going to Ukraine just a couple of years ago that led to the impeachment of a president.
And so, it's good to see people rallying towards this cause now.
I think it's been important and I've-- one of the issues that I've cared mostly about is this issue around NATO and making sure that we have a strong defense and that we have a strong line and I'm pleased that it's led to a stronger more unified NATO.
And let's hope that the best for the conflict to resolve, and the people of Ukraine.
Jason: Michelle, it seems to be something that is supported both sides of the aisle.
Michelle: Oh yeah, every and Utahns, Utah the populace supports it.
There's no room here for anyone who thinks that it's okay to go and invade a sovereign country.
Jason: And in our last 20 seconds or so, Lindsay, what you're hearing from people you're interviewing about this, this conflict.
Lindsay: You know, I covered the rally on the steps of the Capitol and it was incredible to see people altogether, all united around a single feeling, chanting no war and things like that and that was a cool moment.
Jason: It was, we're watching this one closely.
I know from D.C. but certainly here at home as well.
Thank you for your insights this evening, very important discussion.
And thank you for watching "The Hinckley Report."
This show is also available as a podcast on PBSUtah.org/HinckleyReport or wherever you get your podcasts.
Thank you for being with us and we'll see you next week.
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