Child tax credits, election law and the Bonneville Shoreline Trail: What Utah’s delegation is fighting for in Congress

In his first 100 days back in office, Donald Trump signed five bills into law — fewer than any president in decades — but Sen. John Curtis, Utah’s newest U.S. senator, isn’t blaming the president.

“This is not so much, in my mind, dependent on the president, but on us,” Curtis said during a recent interview.

Congressional Republicans currently have a majority in both chambers, holding 53 of 100 seats in the Senate and 220 seats in the 435-person House. Despite the majority, Congress passed six bills during the first 100 days of the Trump administration, according to a Time Magazine analysis.

“Having not been in the Senate with a new president,” Curtis said, “this is kind of a new experience for me, but my a-ha moment was, ‘Holy cow, we have a lot of nominations, and the reconciliation [budget process] is taking a lot of time.’”

In his last session as a member of the House of Representatives, where Curtis served beginning in 2017 until taking office as a senator this January, the former Provo mayor was ranked the fifth most effective House Republican by the Center for Effective Lawmaking, as three of the 48 bills he proposed during the session were signed into law by then-President Joe Biden.

He’s hopeful he’ll be back on the same track soon. Once lawmakers are through with the budget and the Senate is done confirming nominees, Curtis said he thinks Congress will make more legislative progress.

As of Wednesday, no member of Utah’s congressional delegation has had a standalone bill signed into law during Trump’s second term, though several pieces of legislation sponsored by the federal lawmakers have begun to move through the House and Senate in recent weeks.

The Salt Lake Tribune looked at all the legislation Utah’s congressional delegation has introduced so far this year. This assessment focused largely on bills — not resolutions — that are chiefly sponsored by Utah’s members, and do not include legislation they are signed onto as co-sponsors.

Here’s a look at what all of Utah’s representatives are pushing in Congress right now:

Sen. Mike Lee

While most members of Utah’s congressional delegation have largely tailored their legislative proposals in the early months of this session to their areas of expertise and committee assignments, Mike Lee, the state’s senior U.S. senator, has proposed more than 50 bills already this year, which touch on a wide range of issues.

Lee’s office did not respond to a request for an interview or comment regarding his legislative priorities, though he has frequently highlighted his SAVE Act on social media in recent weeks. The bill, should it become law, would require proof of citizenship to vote, and a House version of the legislation passed the lower chamber last month.

In his public comments about the bill, Lee has frequently pushed misinformation about immigrant voters.

“Illegal immigrants and non-citizens across the nation are being improperly registered to vote, allowing them to cast illegitimate ballots in federal elections,” Lee said in a statement last year when he first introduced the bill. “At a time when trust in voting is more important than ever, we must stop foreign election interference and pass the SAVE Act.”

According to voting rights organization The Brennan Center for Justice, cases of non-citizens voting are extremely rare: In a 2016 assessment of 42 areas in the U.S. with high immigrant populations, the center found just 30 cases of suspected noncitizens voting, or just 0.0001% of votes cast.

Lee has also proposed legislation that would ban the use of federal funds for a federal database tracking racial disparities in affordable housing access; lift restrictions on abortion clinic protesters; terminate the U.S.’s membership in the United Nations; require age verification for app store purchases and online adult content; ban the use of union “official time;” and shift Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, costs onto states, a move that could hit Utahns particularly hard.

Since taking office in 2011, Lee has introduced more than 500 bills. Six have been signed into law, according to GovTrack.

Sen. John Curtis

In his first term in the Senate, Curtis said he continues to focus on energy, climate and public lands issues, and that he sees the U.S.’s relationship to China and tackling the national debt as high-priority issues for this session.

“I’m not afraid to talk about Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and reform,” Curtis said. “I think it’s a false narrative that you have to take away benefits to do it better, and [for] Social Security, that you somehow have to hurt our seniors to reform it. So I’m going to be really aggressive about that, because the debt really, really bothers me.”

One of the other early legislative focuses for Curtis has been the Fix Our Forests Act, which aims to reduce wildfire risks in U.S. forests.

“I think this is a really good example of coming together on an issue that Republicans and Democrats don’t always agree on,” Curtis said of the legislation. “Fires are becoming a bigger deal, and … I think this really is a very, very important bill.”

Despite its bipartisan group of co-sponsors, the bill has attracted some pushback from environmentalists, as it would allow for increased logging on federal land. A House version of the bill passed through the chamber in January.

Curtis has also introduced bills that, if passed and signed by Trump, would require a report on possible money laundering by the Chinese government, aim to address the presence of Hezbollah in Latin America and look into the expansion of Utah’s Bonneville Shoreline Trail.

“I aspire someday to have that run all the way across the state,” Curtis said of the trail. “The better that will be for recreation, for access, and once again, the more people that recreate there, the better. We’re giving them access, literally right out [in] their backyard, to just some amazing recreation.”

Curtis also had his first piece of legislation as a senator — a resolution undoing a Biden-era EPA rule — pass through the Senate earlier this month.

tk

Rep. Blake Moore

Rep. Blake Moore, who took office in 2021 and serves as the House Republican conference vice chair, is the first Utahn to serve in House leadership. A member of the House Ways and Means and Budget committees, most of the legislation Moore has proposed this year focuses on changes to the tax code. During a recent interview, he said the budget reconciliation process has been his central focus in recent weeks.

Moore, who represents Utah’s 1st Congressional District, is the main sponsor of the Family First Act, which aims to enhance the Child Tax Credit, a benefit for families of up to $2,000 for each dependent child under the age of 17. Moore said he is “highly confident” the proposal will be included in and passed via the reconciliation process.

“If we don’t do anything about the child tax credit in the next nine months, that will drop back down to $1,000, which is pre-2017 levels,” Moore said. “When you look at the time value of money, that would be a significant decrease in the Child Tax Credit, so we’re trying to enhance that, and it would be part of this larger package.”

Moore said he was not as confident that some of his other proposals would progress via reconciliation, including a bill that would provide an affordable housing tax credit for members of the armed forces, but that he intends to focus on passing them as standalone legislation once the budget process is complete.

As of Thursday, Moore has so far been the most successful member of Utah’s congressional delegation, having had two bills he is sponsoring, the MAPWaters Act of 2025 and the Hershel Woody Williams National Medal of Honor Monument Location Act, pass the House.

​”That’s going to be something that will be lasting and pretty neat to be able to have as a legacy piece that doesn’t cost the government any money,” Moore said of his work on placing the monument in Washington. “The development of it, the design of it, is all in conjunction with private owners … so it’s a neat little thing that is fiscally sound and also will enhance visitation to our nation’s capital and honor those… [who have] entered our armed services.”

Rep. Celeste Maloy

Rep. Celeste Maloy joined the delegation in 2023 following the resignation of former 2nd Congressional District Rep. Chris Stewart, and has so far proposed legislation this session related to water rights, congressional authority to designate national monuments, and the right for states to decide if they want to stay on daylight savings time year round, among other issues.

Maloy became one of the first members of Utah’s delegation to get a full vote on the House floor last week, as the House passed a joint resolution she sponsored to block a National Park Service rule limiting the use of off-road vehicles and ATVs in Glen Canyon Recreation Area.

“I introduced a resolution to nullify a senseless rule that limits recreation in a National Recreation Area, and I’m thrilled to see the House advance it,” she said in a statement. “Ensuring that agencies are managing land for multiple uses, as directed by Congress, is a continuous battle that I will continue to fight so that people in Utah and across the country are free to continue exploring and enjoying the land that was set aside for them.”

Maloy’s office did not respond to a request for an interview or comment regarding her legislative priorities this year.

Rep. Mike Kennedy

Rep. Mike Kennedy is Utah’s newest member of Congress and has thus far proposed eight pieces of legislation in the early months of his first congressional session.

“It has been my priority since I arrived on Capitol Hill to be a voice for Utah issues and safeguard United States interests,” the 3rd Congressional District representative said in a statement to The Tribune. “So far, I have proposed legislation to clean up federal government waste in Moab, fight back against [Bureau of Land Management] overreach when it comes to our public lands, and protect children from the dangers of ultra-processed foods in their school lunches. As I continue my work, I remain committed to elevating Utah’s priorities at the federal level.”

Kennedy is the lead House sponsor on the Moab UMTRA Project Transition Act of 2025 — a bill that Curtis has taken on as the lead Senate sponsor — which aims to transfer federal land previously used for a uranium milling operation in southern Utah to Grand County.

He has also joined with both Curtis and Lee to sponsor the Historic Roadways Protection Act, following a decision by the BLM to close a number of historic Utah roadways. Should the bill become law, it would prevent the agency from closing certain roads while a court fight over closures is ongoing.

Additionally, Kennedy has waded into “Make America Healthy Again” territory with his school lunches bill, which would ban “ultraprocessed foods” and several types of food dyes under the National School Lunch Act.

Rep. Burgess Owens

Rep. Burgess Owens, who originally took office in 2021, has focused most of his legislative proposals through the early months of this session on culture war issues in the education system, including the Say No to Indoctrination Act, which would ban federal funding for any school teaching “radical gender ideology,” as Owens said in a news release last month.

“[T]oo many schools are using taxpayer dollars to push political agendas instead of focusing on outcomes,” Owens said in a statement at the time. “The Say No to Indoctrination Act codifies President Trump’s commonsense executive order and puts a stop to this, ensuring that federal education funds go where they belong — into the classroom, not activism.”

Owens, who represents Utah’s 4th Congressional District, has also been promoting his Accreditation for College Excellence (ACE) Act. The bill would require that accreditors, according to a release from Owens’ office, “confirm their standards do not require, encourage, or coerce an institution to support or oppose specific partisan or political beliefs, viewpoints on social or political issues, or support the disparate treatment of any individual or group.”

In practice, the bill would mean that accreditors could not consider diversity, equity and inclusion teachings in the classroom as part of the accreditation process, and would protect the right for religious schools to require students to adhere to a religious code of conduct.

Owens also recently introduced a bill that would require unions to disclose any payments to consultants and legislation he proposed regarding the disclosure of foreign investments in U.S. universities included in the Defending Education Transparency and Ending Rogue Regimes Engaging in Nefarious Transactions (DETERRENT) Act, which passed the House last month.

Owens’ office did not respond to a request for an interview or comment on his legislative priorities during this session.

Note to readers • This story is available to Salt Lake Tribune subscribers only. Thank you for supporting local journalism.