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The project, which residents were informed of just last week, is expected to more than double Utah’s electricity usage, hike its carbon footprint by 50%, and potentially drain more water from the depleted Great Salt Lake.
County commissioners in Box Elder County, Utah, were deluged with chants of "Shame! Shame! Shame!" from a crowd of hundreds on Monday night as they voted unanimously to move forward with a sprawling "hyperscale" artificial intelligence data center project that many residents fear will cause energy prices to soar and imperil water access.
The project, known by state officials as "Stratos," was proposed by the celebrity venture capitalist Kevin O'Leary and has been rushed along by Utah's Military Installation Development Authority, which recently approved a gigantic energy tax break for the program to help "lure" the billionaire "Shark Tank" investor.
The development, dubbed "Wonder Valley" after O'Leary's "Mr. Wonderful" TV persona, would span more than 40,000 acres of northern Utah—more than two and a half times the size of Manhattan—and would consume more than twice the electricity currently used by the entire state if approved, according to Axios.
CBS 2 KUTV called it "the biggest thing in the region since the completion of the first transcontinental railroad." And yet Utahns say they've been given little information about the plan and few opportunities to voice their concerns.
Residents were given short notice before Box Elder commissioners gathered at the county fairgrounds on Monday for a "special" meeting to vote on the project, but an estimated 500 still showed up to voice their displeasure.
They raised fears that they'd have to endure the same dramatic energy price spikes as other states with high concentrations of data centers. Residential utility costs have jumped 13-20% year over year in Virginia, Illinois, Ohio, and New Jersey, a trend attributed to the rollout of data centers in these states.
The developers of the Utah project have emphasized that it will be powered by an on-site natural gas plant, which they claim would limit the impact on utility bills.
However, that still leaves the massive environmental concern, especially since natural gas is almost entirely made of methane, one of the worst planet-heating pollutants.
Kevin Perry, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Utah, has said that the estimated nine gigawatts of power the center would require, "would increase the carbon dioxide emissions for the state of Utah by more than 50%," meaning "there’s a huge climate footprint associated with that proposal.”
Environmental advocates also warn that the facility will further drain water from the Great Salt Lake amid an already severe drought.
The Salt Lake Tribune has found that Utah's dozens of other data centers consume wildly different amounts of water depending on the technology they use.
The developers of the Box Elder facility have claimed the project will use "zero water turbine" technology that allows it to recycle water, resulting in "net zero" consumption.
But Samantha Hawkins, the communications director for Grow the Flow Utah, a group dedicated to protecting the Great Salt Lake, said it's impossible to know if the developers are telling the truth when they say their facility is designed to limit water usage.
"So far, there’s no publicly available hydrologic analysis or independent review to support those claims," she said, "and there haven’t been any manufacturers, technologies, or contracts cited in relation to the 'zero water turbine' technology."
Even if the centers limit water use, they still need to remain cool, which the Tribune said often requires more energy.
Many of the Utahns who showed up to protest Monday's vote felt they were being kept in the dark about the facility's potential harms and that the plans for the facility, which were not made public until last week, were being kept from them.
“I’m outraged," said Colleen Flanagan, a resident of Sandy who spoke with Fox 13 Salt Lake. "I am absolutely angry that there was no studies done—it just came up out of the community. Nobody knew about it."
Mitchell Tousley, who drove more than an hour from Draper to protest the decision, said, "A project of this scale just absolutely requires public input, and there really hasn’t been."
Deals to build these facilities have often been made in secret, with contract details hidden from the public by nondisclosure agreements that stifle dissent until the project has already been approved. Despite this, these projects have often drawn fearsome backlash from the communities where they are planned. In some cases—like in Virginia late last month, where a 2,100-acre center was set to be built—it has led developers to pull out.
But the commissioners in Box Elder County, who said they'd reviewed more than 2,500 public comments on the proposal, appeared unmoved by the outpouring of public concern on Monday night. They said water and air quality issues were not factors in their vote and that the water rights were held by the private landowners.
As the crowd jeered, with chants of "cowards" and "people over profits," Commissioner Boyd Bingham, a Republican, shouted them down.
“For hell’s sakes, grow up,” he yelled. “This is beyond a joke.” The commissioners then left the room and addressed the crowd via a virtual meeting.
In a video response to Monday night's protest, O'Leary said: "I’m the only developer of data centers on Earth that graduated from environmental studies. I'm pretty aware of what these concerns are. They are around air, water use, heat, noise pollution. So sustainability is at the heart of what we do in terms of all these proposals."
He claimed without evidence that 90% of the opponents of the data center project were "being bused in" from out of state. He also claimed that the facility would be powered in part by "solar, wind, and batteries," when it is actually powered entirely by natural gas.
Opponents continue to characterize Stratos as a billionaire vanity project to loot Utah's vast natural resources with little consideration for how it will affect residents.
Utah State University physics professor Robert Davies told Fox 13 that the Great Salt Lake "is occupied by amazing living systems" and that "projects like this go into environments like this and scrape the living systems right off the face of the Earth.”
He said, “This is a private enterprise that is coming in to extract from our natural wealth and pipe it out of the state… and leave us with a few crumbs.”
“The Trump administration knowingly and unlawfully locked up an innocent person for four months in a concentration camp-like prison," said one attorney for the plaintiff.
A Utah law firm said Tuesday that it plans to sue the US government for its allegedly unlawful detention and deportation of a Venezuelan immigrant who was sent to a maximum security prison in El Salvador known for its torture and abuse of inmates.
“Our client is a young Venezuelan man who came into the US legally to escape threats of violence by the Venezuelan government against his family for their opposition to the Maduro regime," said Brent Ward, an attorney at Parker & McConkie, referring to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who was kidnapped by US forces during a January invasion of his country.
Ward said that the client—identified by the pseudonym "Johnny Hernandez"—is seeking $56 million in damages and "has no criminal record either in the US or in Venezuela."
A man entered the U.S. legally, had no criminal record, and was still sent to one of the world's most dangerous prisons for four months. Parker & McConkie is pursuing $56 million in justice on his behalf.www.parkerandmcconkie.com/blog/parker-...#CivilRights #JusticeForJohnny #Immigration #CECOT
Hernandez was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers and subsequently deported to the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) in Tecoluca, central El Salvador, where he allegedly suffered torture and other abuse.
“The Trump administration knowingly and unlawfully locked up an innocent person for four months in a concentration camp-like prison where he suffered torture, shooting, beatings, and solitary confinement," Ward stated. "When the US government knowingly and purposefully violates the law by detaining and deporting innocent individuals on false charges and is not held responsible, the individual rights of not just legal immigrants but all Americans are placed in jeopardy."
"Our client suffered catastrophic injuries in CECOT from which he will never fully recover," the lawyer said. "Failing to demand accountability now places all Americans in jeopardy in the future.”
The impending lawsuit comes as ICE proposes to literally warehouse up to 10,000 arrested immigrants in a "megacenter" in Salt Lake City, Utah. Opponents have compared the 833,000-square foot facility to a concentration camp akin to the Topaz War Relocation Center, a harsh, desolate desert prison where Japanese Americans and Japanese people living in the Western US were forcibly interned during World War II.
The case also follows last week's filing of a lawsuit by Neiyerver Adrián León Rengel, one of the Venezuelans sent to CECOT. Like Hernandez, León Rengel—who is seeking $1.3 million in damages—was in the US legally when he was arrested by federal immigration authorities.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) recently said on the one-year anniversary of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation of Salvadorans, Venezuelans, and others that, of the 9,000 Salvadorans expelled from the US since the beginning of last year, “only 10.5% had a conviction in the United States for a violent or potentially violent crime.”
The Salvadoran investigative journalism outlet El Faro—which, along with its staff, has been the target of sweeping government persecution—last year published a report on CECOT, citing one former prisoner who said that inmates are “committing suicide out of desperation.”
At least one deported Salvadoran—longtime Maryland resident Kilmar Ábrego García—was wrongfully expelled due to what the Trump administration called an “administrative error.”
The Trump administration deported hundreds of Venezuelans to CECOT under a multimillion-dollar agreement between the Trump administration and the government of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele.
While Trump claimed—often without evidence—that the Venezuelan deportees were members of the Tren de Aragua gang, only about 3% of them had violent criminal convictions in the United States, and Department of Homeland Security records show that the Trump administration knew it.
In July 2025, El Salvador released 252 Venezuelans imprisoned at CECOT and sent them to Venezuela in a prisoner swap that saw Maduro's government free 10 US citizens and permanent residents whom it jailed. Many of the repatriated Venezuelans said they suffered torture, sexual assault, severe beatings, and other abuse at CECOT.
Last December, Judge James Boasberg of the US District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the Trump administration broke the law by deporting the Venezuelans without due process.
"This wild landscape is quintessential southern Utah redrock country with its stunning geology, irreplaceable cultural resources, unique fossils, and wide-open spaces. All of that is at risk if this attack succeeds."
Republican US Sen. Mike Lee, a leading proponent of selling off the country's public lands, moved Wednesday to begin the process expediting an attack on the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in his home state of Utah, drawing outrage from conservationists who vowed to pull out all the stops to protect the national treasure.
Lee kick-started the process by entering a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) opinion into the congressional record. Last month, the GAO determined that a Biden-era management plan aimed at shielding Grand Staircase-Escalante constitutes a rule under the Congressional Review Act (CRA), which gives lawmakers a limited time to undo federal rules after they are finalized.
In the coming days, Lee and his allies are expected to introduce a resolution of disapproval under the CRA in an effort to roll back the monument management plan. CRA resolutions are privileged and not subject to the Senate's 60-vote filibuster, meaning Republicans could pass the measure without any Democratic support.
Rep. Celeste Maloy (R-Utah), who requested the GAO opinion, is leading the House effort to repeal the Grand Staircase-Escalante management plan.
Tom Delehanty, senior attorney with Earthjustice’s Rocky Mountain office, said in a statement Thursday that "the fate of our public lands, including our precious national monuments, should not be left to a handful of politicians who want to turn them over to industry."
"While this may be the first CRA attack on a national monument, it will not be the last if members of Congress on both sides of the aisle don’t stand up to oppose it," Delehanty warned. "Sen. Lee’s use of this arcane law would throw out years of planning by local officials, Tribes, and communities, setting a dangerous precedent on public land protection. Anyone who values our public lands and national monuments should take note.”
The legal director of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, Steve Bloch, said the GOP's escalating attack on Grand Staircase-Escalante "is a call to action for Americans from across the nation."
"This wild landscape is quintessential southern Utah redrock country with its stunning geology, irreplaceable cultural resources, unique fossils, and wide-open spaces," said Bloch. "All of that is at risk if this attack succeeds and the monument management plan is undone. We intend to move heaven and earth to stop that from happening.”
But the Washington Postreported last year that the Trump administration has considered assailing the national monument yet again as part of a broader push to open the nation's public lands to commercial activity and industry exploitation.
Dan Ritzman, Sierra Club’s director of conservation, said Thursday that congressional Republicans' use of the CRA to gut protections for Grand Staircase-Escalante is "unprecedented" and "unlawful."
"Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument is one of this country’s most treasured public landscapes, and the public has been involved from advocating for its protection to organizing its long-term management," said Ritzman. "Overturning this plan erases years of public engagement and Tribal consultation, and threatens certainty for everyone who uses and enjoys this iconic landscape.”
"Some days I can't even go outside because the air is so polluted," said one plaintiff. "I get headaches, feel dizzy when it’s too hot, and sometimes I can't even see down my own street because of smoke from wildfires."
Following the Utah Supreme Court's dismissal of a youth-led constitutional climate lawsuit earlier this year, 10 young Utahns on Monday launched a new case intended to block state permits for coal, gas, and oil development.
Backed by Our Children's Trust—a legal group behind various youth climate suits, including Juliana v. United States and Held v. State of Montana—the plaintiffs are suing the Utah Board of Oil, Gas, and Mining; the Division of Oil, Gas, and Mining; and the director of the latter, Mick Thomas, in state court.
"Plaintiffs bring this action to protect their fundamental rights to life, health, and safety that defendants are violating by permitting fossil fuel development, when doing so is harmful, unnecessary, and more expensive than clean, renewable forms of energy," says the complaint.
"Due to localized air and climate pollution caused by defendants' permitting activities, plaintiffs live in some of the worst air quality of any state in the nation and face climate disruptions, including elevated temperatures and deadly heatwaves, frequent and severe wildfires and smoke, exceptional drought, exacerbated medical conditions, and increased health risks," the filing continues.
"Defendants' fossil fuel permitting challenged here is unconstitutional because it harms the health and safety of plaintiffs, interferes with their healthy development, and takes years off of their lives," the document adds.
When the Utah Supreme Court upheld the dismissal of the earlier lawsuit in March, Our Children's Trust called it a "partial win" because, as lead attorney Andrew Welle explained at the time, "the decision opens a clear path forward for continuing our challenge to the state's actions in promoting fossil fuel development."
🚨Ten Utah youth filed a constitutional climate lawsuit against their state for issuing fossil fuel permits that endanger their health, lives, and safety. Learn more: bit.ly/49LVqA0
The lead plaintiff for both cases is Natalie Roberts, an 18-year-old who lives in Salt Lake City. In April, the American Lung Association's annual State of the Air report gave the state capital's metro area an "F" grade for both ground-level ozone (smog) and particle (soot) pollution.
"Both ozone and particle pollution can cause premature death and other serious health effects such as asthma attacks, heart attacks and strokes, preterm births, and impaired cognitive functioning later in life. Particle pollution can also cause lung cancer," said Nick Torres, advocacy director for the American Lung Association, in a statement when the report was released.
"Unfortunately, too many people in the Salt Lake City metro area are living with unhealthy levels of ozone and particle pollution," Torres continued. "This air pollution is causing kids to have asthma attacks, making people who work outdoors sick and unable to work, and leading to low birth weight in babies. We urge Utah policymakers to take action to improve our air quality, and we are calling on everyone to support the incredibly important work of the US Environmental Protection Agency."
Roberts, in a Monday statement, shared her experiences with her city's polluted air and increasingly hot temperatures.
"Some days I can't even go outside because the air is so polluted," the teenager said. "I get headaches, feel dizzy when it's too hot, and sometimes I can't even see down my own street because of smoke from wildfires. I worry every day about my health, my future, and what kind of world I'll live in if the state keeps approving these fossil fuel permits. We're fighting for our lives and asking the court to protect us before it's too late."
The complaint details similar experiences by other plaintiffs. When 21-year-old Park City resident Sedona Murdock "is exposed to dangerous air quality, she experiences pain in her chest and lungs, difficulty breathing, and coughing, and it can trigger life-threatening asthma attacks," it says. "Sedona experiences stress and anxiety because of the harms to her health that she has already suffered."
Otis W. and Lev W., brothers from Salt Lake City who are respectively 16 and 13, "experience painful headaches from bad air quality and have often had days where their schools have not allowed them or their peers to go outside," according to the filing. "Increasingly intense rain events have resulted in flooding and water intrusion in Otis and Lev's home, threatening their shelter and presenting a risk of dangerous mold growth."
"Decreased snowfall, snowpack, precipitation, and warming temperatures are diminishing water sources that provide water for Otis and Lev's family and community, threatening their water security," the complaint says. "Several trees in Otis and Lev's yard that provided shade for their home have already died from increased heat and drought conditions, making their home hotter and increasing the dangers to them of rising temperatures and heatwaves."
The document also points out how the pair and other youth plaintiffs have had to alter or abandon beloved outdoor activities, from team sports such as soccer to camping, hiking, mountain biking, rafting, running, and skiing, because of the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency.
"The state cannot continue issuing fossil fuel permits that put children's lives and health in jeopardy," said Welle, the lead attorney. "This case is about holding Utah accountable to its constitutional obligations to protect youth from serious harm caused by air pollution, climate impacts, and unsafe fossil fuel development. The court now has what it says it needs to hear and decide this case and prevent further harm to these young people and ensure the state governs responsibly."
The GOP "should evaluate whether Trump’s push to ignite a redistricting arms race may have made it easier for a blue wave to wipe out more Republicans than if they had left their maps alone," wrote one analyst.
President Donald Trump's push for mid-decade redistricting to prevent Republicans from losing control of the US House of Representatives appears to be on the verge of backfiring.
The latest blow to Trump's nationwide redistricting efforts came in Utah, where District Court Judge Dianna Gibson shot down a proposed map drawn by Utah Republicans because it failed to abide by a 2018 ballot measure that restricted partisan gerrymandering in the state.
As reported by NBC News, Gibson instead approved a map that created "a solidly Democratic seat ahead of next year's midterm elections," thus giving Democrats a likely net gain of one seat in the US House.
Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin hailed Gibson's ruling and vowed that Democrats weren't finished fighting Trump's efforts to rig next year's elections in his favor.
"Utah Republicans gerrymandered the maps because they knew they were losing power in the state," he said. "Republicans doubled down when they chose to submit another gerrymandered map, but today, they were once again thwarted by impartial Courts. Democrats will continue to fight for fair maps in Utah, regardless of what Donald Trump and Utah Republicans try next. Every seat counts, and Democrats everywhere are fired up and ready to take back the House in the midterms in 2026."
Dave Wasserman, a senior elections analyst at Cook Political Report, wrote in a post on X that the Democrats' Utah victory, along with California voters' approval of newly gerrymandered maps and reported plans to redraw maps in Virginia, have "pushed the mid-decade redistricting war closer to a draw."
In a lengthy analysis published in Bloomberg on Tuesday, columnist Mary Ellen Klas argued that Republicans should take a deep breath before going all-in on Trump's unprecedented mid-decade redistricting crusade, which began in Texas and subsequently spread to Missouri and North Carolina.
The issue, Klas explained, is that Republicans in those states have carved out more GOP-friendly districts based on assumptions that Republican gains among Latino voters and young men would hold in 2026. As last week's sweeping Democratic victories showed, however, the GOP now appears to be hemorrhaging support among these two demographics.
"In New Jersey, 68% of Latino voters broke for Democrat Mikie Sherrill," wrote Klas. "So did 56% of men under the age of 30. In Virginia, 67% of Latino voters went for Democrat Abigail Spanberger. So did 57% of men under 30. Many of these voters had voted for Trump last year. The exit polls show that both Sherrill and Spanberger won 7% of Trump’s 2024 voters, with Sherrill getting a whopping 18% of Trump’s Hispanic support in the state."
If those trends hold over the next year, it could wipe out advantages the GOP had hoped to gain with its Texas gerrymander, which assumed that Latino voters who swung to Trump in the state would remain loyal partisan soldiers.
"Republicans are hardly going to admit it, but they should evaluate whether Trump’s push to ignite a redistricting arms race may have made it easier for a blue wave to wipe out more Republicans than if they had left their maps alone," argued Klass.
In fact, some Republican strategists are already fretting about Trump's gerrymandering plan, as one anonymous GOP insider toldNBC News that if the endgame of the plan was "to net one seat across the country, then it will not have been worth it."
A second anonymous GOP insider told NBC that there was "some concern" about whether Texas Republicans may have made themselves more vulnerable to a blue wave next year.
"In Texas, I do think there is some sense those seats will be ours, but nothing is guaranteed, so some concern there," they said.
"He wasn't a Groyper. He also wasn't Antifa," said journalist Ken Klippenstein, who obtained Tyler Robinson's Discord messages and spoke with a childhood friend of the 22-year-old suspect.
Independent journalist Ken Klippenstein on Tuesday challenged conflicting narratives circulating about Tyler Robinson by obtaining online chats and speaking with a childhood friend of the 22-year-old man accused of assassinating far-right activist Charlie Kirk.
Republican US President Donald Trump "and company portray the alleged Utah shooter as left-wing and liberals portray him as right-wing," Klippenstein wrote. "The federal conclusion will inevitably be that he was a so-called nihilist violent extremist (NVE); meanwhile, the crackdown has already begun, as I reported yesterday. The country is practically ready to go to war."
While Kirk's fatal shooting last week during a Turning Point USA event at Utah Valley University has been widely condemned as political violence, the unnamed childhood friend told Klippenstein: “I think the main thing that’s caused so much confusion is that he was always generally apolitical for the most part... That's the big thing, he just never really talked politics, which is why it's so frustrating.”
“Everyone who knew him liked him and he was always nice, a little quiet and kept to himself mostly but wasn't a recluse,” the friend said, describing Robinson as a fan of the outdoors, video games—including Helldivers 2, the apparent source of some inscriptions on bullet casings found by authorities—and guns.
“Obviously he's okay with gay and trans people having a right to exist, but also believes in the Second Amendment,” according to the friend, who said that Robinson is bisexual and his family didn't know he was in a relationship with his transgender roommate.
Republican Utah Governor Spencer Cox and Federal Bureau of Investigation Deputy Director Dan Bongino have publicly identified his roommate and romantic partner as Lance Twiggs—and said that Twiggs is cooperating with authorities and did not know of Robinson's alleged plan to kill Kirk.
Robinson—who ultimately ended authorities' manhunt for the shooter by turning himself in—appeared virtually for his first court hearing on Tuesday. He faces multiple charges, including aggravated murder, and prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.
As Newsweekreported Tuesday, prosecutors have allegedly obtained text messages in which Robinson admits to Twiggs that he killed Kirk and discusses having to leave behind a rifle, later retrieved by authorities. Robinson reportedly told his parents that he targeted the Turning Point USA leader because "there is too much evil and the guy spreads too much hate."
In the wake of Kirk's death, many of his critics have also acknowledged his incendiary commentary on a range of topics. Right-wing figures and officials, including key members of President Donald Trump's administration, have responded by launching what Congressman Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) called “the biggest assault on the First Amendment in our country’s modern history.”
As Klippenstein wrote:
The federal government, the Washington crowd, and corporate media (based in Washington and New York) see the country in wholly partisan terms, Republican versus Democrat, Red versus Blue, old media versus social media, liberal versus conservative, right versus left, straight versus gay, and on and on. Charlie Kirk’s assassination (in Utah!) should remind us of the actual diversity of the nation, and of the cost of polarization that demonizes the other side.
No one in Robinson’s group is cheering or justifying the murder in any of the messages I reviewed. They’re just struggling to understand what their friend did. But Washington has become obsessed with the Discord chat, convinced it’s some kind of headquarters for the murder and cauldron of radicalization and conspiracy. Today FBI Director [Kash] Patel vowed to investigate “anyone and everyone in that Discord chat.”
What I see is a bunch of young people shocked, horrified, and searching for answers, like the rest of the country.
At least one person on Capitol Hill quickly took note of the reporting. Sharing it on the social media platform X, Congressman Sean Casten (D-Ill.) said: "This is very interesting. The more that comes out the more this doesn't fit into any tidy narrative other than a young man who made a bad choice with a gun."
Journalist Roger Sollenberger wrote: "This is the most valuable and insightful reporting yet on Tyler Robinson—citing current actual friends and messages from a Discord group he was in. And it underscores how stupid and irresponsible the rush has been to assign him to a political aisle."
Appearing before the US Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, Patel said the FBI is interviewing more than 20 people who were part of a Discord group with Robinson.
Responding on X, Klippenstein said: "The members of Tyler Robinson's Discord are just as shocked and traumatized by what happened as anyone. That the FBI is treating them like conspirators is so cruel it's stomach-turning."
"We have been fighting to hold together an unsustainable infrastructure as the landscape shifts around us and an onslaught of attacks continues," said the head of Planned Parenthood North Central States.
On the heels of Planned Parenthood announcing clinic closures in the Midwest last month, The Guardianpublished a Monday analysis showing that the reproductive healthcare provider has closed or disclosed plans to shutter at least 20 locations across seven states since the beginning of the year "amid immense financial and political turbulence."
"The Planned Parenthood network, which operates nearly 600 clinics through a web of independent regional affiliates and is overseen by the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, is facing a number of threats from the Trump administration," the newspaper reported, detailing closures in Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Utah, and Vermont.
In a May statement, Planned Parenthood North Central States (PPNCS) detailed cost-saving closures, consolidation, and layoffs impacting eight health centers in Iowa and Minnesota, and stressed that "dangerous attacks on care continue."
"My heart hurts as we announce the closure of health centers and the departure of trusted and talented colleagues, but our patients come first—always," said Ruth Richardson, president and CEO of PPNCS. "We have been fighting to hold together an unsustainable infrastructure as the landscape shifts around us and an onslaught of attacks continues."
Since the U.S. Supreme Court empowered abortion opponents by reversing Roe v. Wade with the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision in 2022, those attacks have included the freezing of Title X funds and Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives voting last month to advance a reconciliation package that would defund Planned Parenthood.
In response to the House's May vote, Jessica Barquist, Kayla Montgomery, and Lisa Margulies, vice presidents of public affairs at Planned Parenthood of Northern New England (PPNNE), said, "To be clear, 'defunding' Planned Parenthood and taking away health insurance from millions will do nothing to lower healthcare costs, address challenges in our healthcare system, or save lives."
"Taking healthcare away from people struggling to deal with rising costs and preventing people from using their health insurance at their trusted provider is cruel," they continued. "We know what happens when people lose access to care: they skip cancer screenings, delay STI testing, miss birth control appointments. These delays lead to worsened health outcomes and more costly emergency care down the line."
In addition to warning of "catastrophic" consequences for patients, the trio highlighted that "analysis from the Congressional Budget Office finds 'defunding' Planned Parenthood would cost $300 million and is the only provision in the healthcare portion of the bill that would increase the deficit."
PPNNE in April announced the closure of a Vermont health center, citing "serious financial hardship." Nicole Clegg, president and CEO of the regional group, said at the time that the decision was "very difficult" and "PPNNE attempted many different investments and organizational changes to tackle the complexities of delivering care in St. Johnsbury, but the challenges persisted."
That same month, Planned Parenthood Association of Utah (PPAU) said that it had to restructure due to the Trump administration's attacks, "including the recent withholding of $2.8 million in Title X funding."
"The painful decisions to close Logan and St. George health centers, reduce PPAU's staff, and increase service fees are forced on us by the Trump administration," declared PPAU interim CEO Sarah Stoesz. "We believe that by consolidating our healthcare delivery and expanding telehealth, we will be in a better position to continue serving those who rely on us for healthcare."
Planned Parenthood of Michigan (PPMI) also revealed in April that it "is reducing its brick-and-mortar footprint and reorganizing operations statewide," which includes closing three health centers in Jackson, Petoskey, and Marquette; consolidating two clinics in Ann Arbor; and expanding its telehealth offerings.
PPMI president and CEO Paula Thornton Greear said at the time that "the Trump administration and its anti-abortion allies have made clear their intention to defund Planned Parenthood and attack access to sexual and reproductive healthcare nationwide," and "these necessary changes strengthen PPMI's ability to adapt quickly in a challenging political landscape."
The Guardian noted that PPMI "was not among the Planned Parenthood affiliates that saw their Title X funding frozen," and "did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the clinic closures and the role of Title X in those closures."
According to the newspaper:
Planned Parenthood’s financial woes have raised eyebrows for some advocates of abortion rights and reproductive health. The organization has weathered severalcrises, including allegations of mismanagement, in the years since Roe collapsed—but as the face of U.S. abortion access it continued to rake in donations. (Most abortions in the US are in fact performed by small "independent" clinics, which are grappling with their own financial turmoil.) As of June 2023, the Planned Parenthood network had about $3 billion in assets, according to its 2024 report.
In March, Planned Parenthood of Greater New York (PPGNY) announced it would put its property that houses the Manhattan Health Center up for sale as part of an "ongoing strategy to ensure future, long-term patient access for underserved communities throughout New York state."
Just two days after U.S. President Donald Trump returned to office in January—following a campaign in which the Republican tried to downplay how much voters care about reproductive rights while also bragging about his role in reversing Roe—Planned Parenthood of Illinois (PPIL) said it would close four health centers, downsize administrative staff, and boost telehealth.
Illinois, a blue state surrounded by red ones, saw an influx of "abortion refugees" post-Dobbs. PPIL interim president and CEO Tonya Tucker said in January that "we made plans for the patient surge, however, rising care costs and lower reimbursement rates from insurers is jeopardizing PPIL's sustainability."
"Unfortunately, this is the reality many other Planned Parenthood affiliates are facing in the rapidly evolving healthcare environment," Tucker added. "We are making the difficult decisions today so we can continue providing care tomorrow and well into the future."
Other recent reporting has also highlighted how reproductive healthcare providers, particularly those that offer abortion, are struggling to stay open, even in places where politicians haven't passed laws that make it harder to end pregnancies.
"At least 17 clinics closed last year in states where abortion remains legal," NPRreported last month, citing the Guttmacher Institute. "Experts say the closures indicate that financial and operational challenges, rather than future legal bans, may be the biggest threats to abortion access in states whose laws still protect it."
"The Trump administration will treat this decision as an invitation to ignore environmental concerns as it tries to promote fossil fuels, kill off renewable energy, and destroy sensible pollution regulations."
In a 8-0 ruling on Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court not only reversed a block on a proposed oil train in Utah but also narrowed a landmark federal environmental law, sparking intense alarm about what the ruling will mean for communities and all living things across the country.
"Today's decision undermines decades of legal precedent that told federal agencies to look before they leap when approving projects that could harm communities and the environment," saidEarthjustice senior vice president of program Sam Sankar in a statement. "The Trump administration will treat this decision as an invitation to ignore environmental concerns as it tries to promote fossil fuels, kill off renewable energy, and destroy sensible pollution regulations."
Since the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) was signed into law in 1970 by Republican then-President Richard Nixon, it has become a key target for GOP policymakers aligned with the planet-wrecking fossil fuel industry, including President Donald Trump, who swiftly took aim at the law after returning to office in January.
"We urgently need to strengthen laws like NEPA, not weaken or narrow them, so that we can prioritize the health of people over polluters and corporate greed."
NEPA requires federal agencies to prepare an environmental impact statement (EIS) for certain infrastructure projects. In 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit tossed both an EIS for the proposed Uinta Basin Railway and the U. S. Surface Transportation Board's approval of the project, which would connect Utah's oil fields to the national rail network.
After hearing arguments for Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County in December, the nation's highest court reversed that decision on Thursday, continuing a trend of rulings slammed by environmentalists as gifts to corporate polluters.
Conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch recused himself without explanation. Politiconoted that "it followed a public pressure campaign from environmental groups and Democrats who argued his close connections to the owner of oil and gas producer Anschutz—which filed a brief in the case saying NEPA's scope was critical to developing oil and gas reserves—disqualified him."
Justice Brett Kavanagh delivered the opinion, joined by the other right-wingers who participated in the case. Justice Sonia Sotomayor filed a concurring opinion, joined by the other two liberals.
Kavanaugh wrote for the majority that "the D. C. Circuit failed to afford the board the substantial judicial deference required in NEPA cases and incorrectly interpreted NEPA to require the board to consider the environmental effects of upstream and downstream projects that are separate in time or place from the Uinta Basin Railway."
Sotomayor, joined by Kagan and Jackson, refuses to join Kavanaugh's majority opinion, saying it "unnecessarily" grounds its analysis "largely in matters of policy." (It's clear that Kavanaugh wants to weaken NEPA's restrictions on energy permitting.) www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24p...
Environmental and public health advocates were quick to warn of the impacts of not only this 88-mile rail project, if completed, but also the decision more broadly.
"This decision is terrible news for the entire Colorado River Basin," said John Weisheit, conservation director at Living Rivers. "To avoid the pending collapse of the Colorado River, we have to immediately reduce water consumption by 25% and cut carbon emissions by 50% by the end of this decade. Our federal decision-makers must deny any project that counters these objectives. The Uinta Basin Railway unquestionably falls into that category and should never see the light of day."
Critics of the ruling are worried about increased oil extraction in Utah as well as additional refining in Gulf of Mexico communities.
"Regrettably, the Supreme Court has scored one for the oil companies who don't want you to look too closely at the harm their product will do to Black and Brown communities in Cancer Alley," said Sierra Club senior attorney Nathaniel Shoaff. "Our bedrock environmental laws, like NEPA, are meant to ensure people are protected from corporate polluters."
"Fossil fuel infrastructure projects do not exist in a vacuum and have far-reaching impacts on communities, especially those on the frontlines of climate change or those who face serious health harms from increased pollution," Shoaff stressed.
"The last thing we need is another climate bomb on wheels that the communities along its proposed route say they don't want."
Center for Biological Diversity senior attorney Wendy Park declared that "the last thing we need is another climate bomb on wheels that the communities along its proposed route say they don't want," and vowed to "keep fighting to make sure this railway is never built."
Park also looked beyond the train project, warning that "this disastrous decision to undermine our nation's bedrock environmental law means our air and water will be more polluted, the climate and extinction crises will intensify, and people will be less healthy."
WildEarth Guardians staff attorney Katherine Merlin similarly emphasized that "today's decision is a devastating loss for our wild places, our wild rivers, and for all of the human and nonhuman communities that depend on a clean environment and stable climate."
The ruling comes as the Trump administration and congressional Republicans are working to boost planet-heating fossil fuels, ignoring scientists' warnings about the worsening climate emergency.
"After the hottest year on record, when the U.S. should be improving environmental safeguards and empowering frontline communities, this decision is a giant step backwards," said Ashfaq Khalfan, Oxfam America's director of climate justice. "Everyone deserves to live and work in communities with clean air and safe drinking water. We urgently need to strengthen laws like NEPA, not weaken or narrow them, so that we can prioritize the health of people over polluters and corporate greed."
"We're here in so-called 'conservative' Utah, and tomorrow we're gonna be in Idaho," said Sen. Bernie Sanders. "Because we believe that in every state of this country, people are prepared to stand up and fight."
"We're here in so-called 'conservative' Utah, and tomorrow we're gonna be in Idaho. Because we believe that in every state of this country, people are prepared to stand up and fight," Sanders (I-Vt.) told the crowd gathered in Salt Lake City's Huntsman Center.
"We are living in the most dangerous moments in the modern history of this country," Sanders told the Salt Lake City audience. "We are living in a moment where a handful of billionaires control our government... We do not want a government of the billionaire class, by the billionaire class, for the billionaire class—we want a government that represents all of us."
Sanders' remarks followed a fiery speech by Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who has emerged as a leading voice against the Trump administration and outspoken critic of the
Democratic leadership's capitulation in the face of what the progressive lawmakers characterized as a growing authoritarian threat.
"We are at a crossroads in America," said Ocasio-Cortez. "We can either have extreme and growing wealth inequality with the toxic division and corruption that it requires to survive, or we can have a fair economy for working people along with the democracy and freedoms that uphold it."
"Oligarchy or democracy," she added, "but we cannot have both."
Watch the rally in full:
The Salt Lake City event came after a week in which Trump continued to wreak global havoc with his
billionaire-enriching tariff chaos and Republicans in Congress moved ahead with another round of tax breaks for the wealthy—giveaways they want to pay for, in part, with massive cuts to Medicaid and federal nutrition assistance.
"It does not surprise us that their first economic mission has been to target Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, firing our federal workers, and cutting benefits from our veterans for hundreds of billions of dollars, so that they can hand that money off to the wealthiest," Ocasio-Cortez said Sunday.
The Utah event came days after Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez appeared before a crowd of 36,000 in Los Angeles, which the Vermont senator described as "our biggest rally ever."
"When Donald Trump looks out at this crowd—and they pay attention to this stuff, Elon Musk does—you are scaring the hell out of them," Sanders said at the Los Angeles rally. "Because they know what we know: They are the 1% and we are the 99%."
"We already have a good voting system and it's not broken, so it doesn't need to be fixed," said the Utah advocacy director for Mormon Women for Ethical Government.
Utah has the unusual distinction of being a deep-red state where voters enjoy automatic by-mail voting, but that will likely change in the next few years, in part thanks to the influence of conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation.
The state is poised to codify legislation that would get rid of the practice of automatically mailing ballots to all active, registered voters. The GOP-controlled legislature recently passed a bill that will phase out the state's current automatic by-mail voting system by 2029 and also requires voters to list the last four digits of their state identification number with their return envelope beginning in 2026, according to the Utah News Dispatch. Those who opt in to voting by mail and include their state ID information will still be able to vote by mail.
The bill is a scaled back version of an earlier proposal that would have "drastically restricted voting by mail and required most Utahns to return their ballots in person at either a polling place or a drop box manned by at least two poll workers while showing their government-issued ID," per the Utah News Dispatch.
Utah Republican Gov. Spencer Cox is expected to sign the legislation, The Washington Postreported Monday.
"We already have a good voting system and it's not broken, so it doesn't need to be fixed," Melarie Wheat, the Utah advocacy director for Mormon Women for Ethical Government, told the Post. "There are going to be people who are expecting their vote-by-mail ballot and are not going to get it, who are going to say, 'Well, it's just not worth it and I don't have time to go in at this point and vote in person.'"
Chris Diaz, director of legislative tracking for the Voting Rights Lab, told the outlet that "there's never been a state that did this, in taking that step backwards after adopting universal mail voting."
In 2012, Utah began allowing counties to run elections entirely by mail if they chose to do so, according to the outlet Bolts. Eventually, by 2018, about 90% of Utah voters cast ballots by mail, and in 2020 the state changed the default voting method for registered voters to vote by mail by automatically mailing a ballot to them (while still providing in-person voting options).
Researchers at Brigham Young University found that the shift to vote by mail led to a dramatic increase in voter participation in municipal elections.
Trump has repeatedly claimed that mail-in voting leads to fraud—despite having used the system himself in Florida. Research has found that incidences of fraud with mail-in ballots are exceedingly rare—and a recent legislative audit of Utah's election system failed to find "significant fraud."
State Rep. Jefferson Burton (R-64), the lawmaker who championed the bill, conceded to Bolts that the audit had not found widespread fraud in the state and that vote-by-mail has had a positive impact on turnout.
According to the outlet, when speaking about the bill Burton cited a scorecard maintained by the Heritage Foundation, the right-wing think tank that published the far-right policy blueprint Project 2025. The Election Integrity Scorecard gives Utah a relatively poor ranking—53 out of 100. Utah gets poor marks for its "absentee ballot management" and for currently not requiringa photo ID or a unique identifier when participating in vote by mail, among other criteria.
"As [the] Utah House GOP championed a bill to effectively end vote by mail, I kept hearing one organization repeatedly cited: The Heritage Foundation," wrote Emily Anderson Stern, a reporter for The Salt Lake Tribune, wrote on Bluesky.
"While pushing for an end to Utah's universal vote-by-mail election system, state lawmakers—including House Speaker Mike Schultz—have repeatedly relied on the Heritage Foundation's policy perspectives, referencing them in public debate, interviews, promotional materials, and social media posts," according to reporting published by Anderson Stern last week.
