Good Wednesday morning from Salt Lake City. Today is the 249th day of the year. There are 116 days remaining in 2017.
The clock:
- 41 days until ballots for the 2017 general election are mailed to voters (10/17/2017)
- 62 days until the 2017 election (11/7/2017)
- 138 days until the opening day of the 2018 Utah Legislature (1/22/2018)
- 183 days until the final day of the 2018 Utah Legislature (3/8/2018)
- 426 days until the 2018 midterm elections (11/6/2018)
- 1,154 days until the 2020 presidential election (11/3/2020)
Today’s political TL; DR –
- The organizers of “Our Schools Now” say they’ve just begun gathering signatures, but they’re confident they’ll meet the threshold for getting their initiative on the ballot in 2018 [Utah Policy].
- Here are reactions from around Utah to President Donald Trump‘s decision to end the DACA program [Utah Policy].
- Utah legislators and immigration advocates blast Trump’s decision to scrap DACA, which shielded the children of undocumented immigrants from deportation. They’re hopeful Congress can act to protect those “Dreamers” who are impacted by Trump’s decision [Deseret News, Tribune].
- The decision to end DACA could have an adverse effect on Utah’s economy [Deseret News].
- Salt Lake City Council members are upset that they may be on the hook for more money than originally thought to build infrastructure around the new state prison [Deseret News].
- A judge ruled that the state does not have to pay former Attorney General Mark Shurtleff‘s $1.1 million in legal fees stemming from an unsuccessful case against him for public corruption [Deseret News, Tribune].
- Gov. Gary Herbert will join a bi-partisan group of governors in Washington, D.C. to discuss health insurance solutions [Deseret News].
- A coalition of Utah journalists is asking a judge to keep a scheduled Wednesday hearing about former Salt Lake County Recorder Gary Ott open to the public [Deseret News].
National headlines:
- President Trump ordered the end of the Obama-era DACA program, calling on Congress to find a legislative fix [New York Times].
- Republicans are worried ending DACA could lead to blowback against the GOP by Latino voters [The Hill].
- President Donald Trump says he will revisit his DACA decision if Congress is unable to pass legislation in the next six months [The Hill].
- The White House wants to tie Hurricane Harvey relief funds to an increase in the debt limit, but some members of Congress are pushing back against that plan [Politico].
- President Donald Trump wants the Senate to make one last effort to repeal Obamacare [Politico].
- The House Intelligence Committee has issued subpoenas to the Justice Department seeking documents related to a dossier alleging Russia gathered compromising material on President Donald Trump [Reuters].
- A bi-partisan group of lawmakers is plotting to force President Donald Trump to condemn the violence caused by neo-Nazi’s and white supremacists in Charlottesville last month [Politico].
- Russian President Vladimir Putin says the situation in North Korea may be “impossible” to resolve [CNN].
- Hillary Clinton‘s new memoir show she takes some of the blame for her stunning loss in November, but she says Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, and James Comey also deserve a fair share of blame [CNN].
- Hurricane Irma, now a dangerous Category 5 storm, made landfall in Barbuda and is now steaming across the Caribbean and is posing a serious threat to Florida and other parts of the Southeast [Weather.com].
- Long read worth your time. How an elite CNN reporting team published a flawed story about President Donald Trump and Russia. In the aftermath, three members resigned, and the group has been warned against reporting on the Trump/Russia story [New York Times].
On this day in history:
- 1522 – The Victoria, the only surviving ship of Ferdinand Magellan’s expedition, returns to Spain, becoming the first ship to circumnavigate the world.
- 1620 – The Pilgrims sail from Plymouth, England, on the Mayflower.
- 1870 – Louisa Ann Swain of Laramie, Wyoming becomes the first woman in the United States to cast a vote legally in a general election.
- 1901 – President William McKinley was shot and mortally wounded by anarchist Leon Czolgosz in Buffalo, New York. Mckinley died eight days later.
- 1972 – Nine Israeli athletes taken hostage at the Munich Olympic Games by a Palestinian terror group died at the hands of their kidnappers during a failed rescue attempt.