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Daily Briefing 11-7-17

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Good Tuesday morning from Salt Lake City. Today is the 311th day of the year. There are 54 days remaining in 2017.

The clock:

  • The 2017 election is today (11/7/2017)
  • 76 days until the opening day of the 2018 Utah Legislature (1/22/2018)
  • 121 days until the final day of the 2018 Utah Legislature (3/8/2018)
  • 364 days until the 2018 midterm elections (11/6/2018)
  • 1,092 days until the 2020 presidential election (11/3/2020)

Today’s political TL; DR –

  • It’s election day 2017. Here are three questions voters will help answer tonight in the CD3 special election [Utah Policy].
  • In final pre-election campaign finance reports, Democrat Kathie Allen has raised and spent more money than Republican John Curtis in the CD3 special election [Utah Policy].
  • Utah Valley University President Matthew Holland has been called by the LDS Church to be a mission president. His departure scrambles the 2020 gubernatorial field three years out from that election as Holland was thought by many to be a top contender to replace Gov. Gary Herbert at the end of his term [Utah Policy].
  • Lawmakers will have to vote to give themselves a slight pay raise during the 2018 session. They killed a proposal to raise their pay during the 2014 session [Utah Policy].
  • Senate President Wayne Niederhauser says he’s planning on running for another term in 2018. He’s poised to become president of ALEC in 2019 [Utah Policy].
  • Today’s special congressional election could boost turnout in other off-year municipal races [Deseret News].
  • Former Vice President Joe Biden spoke in Salt Lake City on Monday night. He told the crowd he doesn’t know whether he’ll run for president in 2020 [Tribune].
  • Woah! Bank of Utah helped a wealthy Russian oligarch who is under sanction from the United States government secretly register a private jet in America, which usually requires someone to be a U.S. citizen [New York Times].
  • A trove of leaked documents shows former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman is on the board of a previously undisclosed company that was used as a tax haven until U.S. law was changed in 2007 [Tribune].
  • Rep. Bruce Cutler wants to ban tobacco use at and around the State Capitol [Tribune].
  • Former Lt. Gov. Greg Bell is set to become the next chairman of the Utah Transit Authority [Tribune].
  • The Utah Transit Authority is moving to make conflict of interest forms public information. Previously, those documents were available only to internal compliance officers [Tribune].
  • Federal prosecutors drop the criminal case against former UTA board member Terry Diehl just before his trial was expected to start [Deseret News, Tribune].

National headlines:

  • There are gubernatorial races up for grabs in Virgina and New Jersey on Tuesday night [Politico].
  • President Trump signaled he was willing to negotiate with North Korea to defuse rising tensions with Kim Jong Un’s regime [Associated Press].
  • A new poll finds support for President Donald Trump is eroding in many of the counties he won in 2017, but Democrats are not gaining ground in those same places [Wall Street Journal].
  • A federal government shutdown in December is a real possibility [Axios].
  • Lobbyists are rushing to negotiate changes to the GOP tax reform proposal before it moves to the Senate, which could be as early as next week [Politico].
  • Whoops! The non-partisan Tax Policy Center has retracted their analysis of the GOP tax reform proposal because of an error in their model. Previously, the group said the plan would disproportionally benefit the wealthiest Americans [Washington Post].
  • Support for Donald Trump‘s presidential campaign by Russian “troll farms” on social media started just a few weeks after he announced his bid for the White House, which is much earlier than previously thought [Wall Street Journal].
  • An aide to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross kept her spot on the board of a shipping company with ties to the Kremlin [Politico].
  • An error by the U.S. Air Force kept the man who killed 26 people at a church in Texas off a federal database that could have prevented him from buying the guns he used during the massacre [New York Times].
  • The Sutherland Springs church massacre on Sunday claimed the lives of 8 members of one family [San Antonio Express-News].
  • Well worth a read! How Harvey Weinstein tried to block the publication of an explosive story detailing allegations of sexual assault by him [New Yorker].
  • A landscaping dispute is reportedly at the heart of the assault on Sen. Rand Paul by a neighbor over the weekend. Paul had five cracked ribs and bruised lungs following the attack [New York Times].

On this day in history:

  • 1874 -A cartoon by Thomas Nast in Harper’s Weekly is considered the first important use of an elephant as a symbol for the Republican Party.
  • 1893 – Women in the state of Colorado are given the right to vote, the second state to do so.
  • 1908 – Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid are reportedly killed in Bolivia.
  • 1916 – Jeannette Rankin is the first woman elected to Congress.
  • 1917 – October Revolution. Bolsheviks storm the Winter Palace in Russia.
  • 1973 – Congress overrides President Richard Nixon’s veto of the War Powers Resolution which limits presidential power to wage war without congressional approval.
  • 1991 – Magic Johnson announces he is infected with HIV and retires from the NBA.