All posts tagged "Utah"

A former Utah mail carrier dumped about 300 primary ballots in a church dumpster to "lighten his workload," federal prosecutors said.

According to a detention filing, former Utah postman Damon Matai Seei was charged with a single count of secretion, destruction, and delay of mail.

Prosecutors say Seei was covering a colleague's route in Eagle Mountain, Utah, on June 3 when he was "entrusted with delivering mail to at least 300 persons" in the area. That mail included advertisements and hundreds of ballots meant for voters in the state's June 23 primary election....

President Donald Trump's Department of Justice dropped a threat for election officials on Tuesday, prompting a red state's top election official to reject the demand, Democracy Docket reported.

Republican Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson called out the federal agency for its attacks on election officials in multiple states after the DOJ warned that the leaders could face criminal prosecution over potential noncitizen voting. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon sent the letters to Michigan, Nevada, and Utah, saying that these states had five days to prove how they plan to "comply with federal voter eligibility laws."

"Got another love letter this morning from the DOJ sprinkled throughout with threats of criminal prosecution," Henderson wrote in a post on Threads. ...

Former "South Park" writer Toby Morton had a surprise over the weekend for Mr. Wonderful — aka Kevin O'Leary — announcing plans to troll the Canadian businessman.

The MAGA "Shark Tank" star has financially backed the development of a large-scale, 9-gigawatt data center located on a 40,000-acre parcel of land in Utah, which has prompted outrage from locals and leaders in the state.

"Kevin O’Leary is backing a massive AI data center near the Great Salt Lake, powered by natural gas and fast tracked by state officials. Scientists warn it could increase emissions, strain resources, and further impact an ecosystem already in decline," Morton wrote in a post on Instagram....

A secret deal to fund an ICE detention center has been uncovered by state lawmakers in Utah who were left furious at the hushed negotiations.

The Hill reported ICE secretly paid $145 million for a detention center, and the deal was so quiet that even Utah lawmakers didn't know it was happening. The center was proposed as an 830,000-square-foot Salt Lake City warehouse. Councilmember Eva Lopez Chavez told the outlet that the Utah congressional delegation learned of the center's plans by reading about them in the paper.

The deal would have taxpayers effectively fund the construction of the detention center, a plan that Republican U.S. Sen. John Curtis described as "shortsighted." Fellow state lawmakers were horrified by the proposal for an Immigration and Customs Enforcement center in Salt Lake City. ...

A Republican governor joining late MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk's "American Comeback Tour" was booed by a crowd of his own party's supporters Tuesday night.

The audience booed when Gov. Spencer Cox (UT) walked on stage and joined a panel of Republican, Latter-day Saint politicians at Utah State University, just two hours north of where Kirk was killed on Sept. 10, The Salt Lake Tribune reported.

In the hours after Kirk's killing, Cox condemned violence and political division, drawing bipartisan praise....

With the closure of a nearby Planned Parenthood clinic at the beginning of May, students from Utah State University in Logan, Utah, face a “scary” situation in terms of accessing health care, prompting the creation of a carpool to drive patients on two-hour round trips to a clinic 50 miles away, community members told Raw Story.

Bridget Ackroyd, a USU senior, said Logan was “secluded” and “in its own little bubble,” with no public transit to reach Ogden, the closest Planned Parenthood clinic that remains open.

The loss of the Logan clinic hurts students who "might be in family situations where they are not able to charge something like an STI test to their health insurance, but they still want to make sure that they're healthy and safe," Ackroyd said....