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Joe Rogan has lost his crown of having the #1 podcast—and he’s seemingly not happy about it. The Joe Rogan Experience was knocked from its top spot by anti-Trump show The MeidasTouch Podcast, outpacing Rogan by downloads and views last month, according to Podscribe, a podcast ranker. The left-wing podcast, hosted by brothers Ben, Brett, and Jordan Meiselas, grew 101 percent in reach last month, with 56 million downloads and views on YouTube and audio platforms.

On July 12, 2024, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy took the stage at the National Governor’s Association conference in Salt Lake City to thank the Beehive State for helping his home on the opposite side of the globe.

“So many people and countries have united to help us save our freedom, and thus the common human understanding that evil must always, always lose,” he said, in gratitude to those who had given food, shelter, money and other resources in the face of war in Ukraine.

While clocking in at only 10 minutes, Zelenskyy’s speech elicited multiple standing ovations from a dozen U.S. governors and a crowded ballroom of hundreds of Utah legislators, state business executives and policymakers.

The visit, made possible by an invitation from Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, was Zelenskyy’s first to the U.S. outside of Washington, D.C., New York or California. A year earlier, Utah Senate President Stuart Adams led the first state trade and humanitarian delegation to the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv since Russia’s invasion in 2022.

The culmination of the weeklong trip included an 80-minute discussion with Zelenskyy and members of his leadership team. The meeting focused on how to encourage support for Ukraine during the war and to provide opportunity for both Ukrainians and Utahns following the war to build a prosperous future.

On Wednesday, those same Utah leaders found themselves struggling to communicate their views on Ukraine while avoiding criticism of their party’s standard bearer who alleged on social media that Zelenskyy was a “dictator” who had swindled American aid and prolonged Ukraine’s war with Russia.

Cox, Adams call for peace in Ukraine

In their careful responses, Cox, Adams and other Utah leaders reaffirmed Utah’s support for Ukraine as well as their desire for Trump to help the conflict come to an end.

“We are grateful for the overwhelming support Utahns have shown for Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression and pray for the President’s efforts to negotiate a lasting peace,” Cox told the Deseret News in a statement Wednesday.

During Zelenskyy’s visit to Salt Lake City last year, Cox praised the leader and his wife, Olena Zelenska, both of whom he said he spent time with during their stay in the state. Cox said they are good people thrown into an impossible task and noted that lesser people would have fled Ukraine in the face of such conflict.

“This man and this woman did not do that,” Cox said. “They stood up to evil and their country rallied around them.”

Immediately following Zelenskyy’s speech, Cox signed a sister-state agreement between Utah and Kyiv Oblast with the Ukrainian ambassador to the U.S. Oksana Markarova. The eight-page memorandum of understanding recognized the economic relationship between the Kyiv area and Utah, building on connections made during Adam’s trip to Ukraine, accompanied and organized by World Trade Center Utah officials in 2023.

Joined by state Rep. Jordan Teuscher, R-South Jordan, Utah Department of Agriculture and Food Commissioner Craig Buttars and two dozen business leaders, Adams met with 10 Ukrainian ministers or their deputies during his visit to promote Utah’s unique ability to build businesses, provide humanitarian aid and help Ukraine win the war.

“I hope the war ends,” Adams said Wednesday, when asked about Trump’s comments from earlier that day. “So I’m very glad that somebody is willing to engage and try to bring an end to the war. I believe President Zelenskyy has been a great leader for Ukraine. He’s led his country through a very difficult period of time.”

Adams said the people of Ukraine have “amazed” the world with the defense of their country against Putin. Teuscher, whose wife is Ukrainian, told the Deseret News a peace deal should ensure the continued existence of Ukraine.

“I hope that cooler heads prevail and that we can find a scenario where the war ends but Ukraine is able to maintain its sovereignty,” Teuscher said Wednesday in a statement.

What have Utahns done to support Ukraine?

Since Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, residents of few states have done as much as Utahns to support the eastern European country economically, according to Jonathan Freedman, the honorary consul of Ukraine in Utah.

In addition to joining the state-led delegation in 2023, Utah business leaders over the past few years have hosted former Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, supported humanitarian efforts from groups like To Ukraine With Love and August Mission, and welcomed 18 Ukrainian tech companies to the Silicon Slopes Summit.

The state’s business community also saw the tremendous contribution from Dell Loy Hansen, philanthropist and founder of the Wasatch Group, in the construction of whole communities to support Ukrainians who lost their homes.

Freedman, who since the 2023 trade mission has taken over as CEO of World Trade Center Utah, said that Ambassador Markarova regularly tells representatives from other states that Utah is “leading the way in engagement with Ukraine.”

“I think that Utah Business Engagement with Ukraine will continue, regardless of what is being heard out of Washington,” Freedman told the Deseret News on Wednesday. “When the world flees a problem area, Utah, historically, has demonstrated that we will show up and engage.”

While private sector support remains strong, according to Freedman, recent turns in the political environment have put public aid in question.

How much has the U.S. spent on Ukraine?

Since the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian War, the United States has allocated roughly $183 billion to support Ukraine, the Special Inspector General for Operation Atlantic Resolve found.

Of this total, around $70 billion has gone toward military aid, $33 billion has been used to prop up the country’s government budget and $3 billion has been used for humanitarian purposes, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.

On Wednesday, Trump put these figures much higher, totaling $350 billion, and said that Zelenskyy had “talked the United States of America into” funding a war “that couldn’t be won.”

Utah Sen. Mike Lee, who has previously spoken out against wasteful funding toward Ukraine, did not immediately respond to a request for comment by the Deseret News regarding Trump’s comments. However, the Utah senator posted on X hours after the statement to say: “Not another dime for Ukraine.”

In a statement released Wednesday, Utah Sen. John Curtis did not question Trump’s “negotiating tactics” but expressed concern about a potential deal that would encourage Russia to stir additional chaos.

“President Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian people have stood admirably against an unprovoked invasion. I want an end to this war just as much as President Trump does, but it must end on terms that bring lasting stability and peace,” Curtis said. “That means ensuring Vladimir Putin does not walk away with a victory.”

A Deseret News/Hinckley Institute of Politics poll in 2023 found that Utahns’ interest in the Russia-Ukraine war had already begun to wane compared to the year before.

The survey found 61% of respondents are very closely or somewhat closely following the war, down considerably from the 85% a month after Russia’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine in February 2022.

At the onset of the war, an estimated 2,000 people gathered on the south steps of the state capitol building in solidarity with Ukraine. They were accompanied by state leaders including Cox, Adams, former House Speaker Brad Wilson and Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall.

State officials bathed the capitol building in blue and yellow light and raised the Ukrainian flag, the first time a foreign flag was over the statehouse. Russia’s invasion also rekindled the relationship of Salt Lake City with its longtime sister city of Chernivtsi, resulting in video updates from the city mayor.

Astronomers have uncovered a treasure trove of feeding black holes at the heart of dwarf galaxies — small, faint galaxies containing thousands to several billions of stars but very little gas. The discovery, made with the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), contains several “missing link” intermediate-mass black holes.

This is both the largest sample of dwarf galaxies with active black holes ever seen and the largest haul of elusive intermediate-mass black holes ever collected. The data could help scientists better understand the dynamics between the evolution of dwarf galaxies and the growth of black holes while building an evolutionary model of the universe’s earliest black holes.

However, there is still a mystery associated with this sample: The team behind this discovery was surprised that their data didn’t contain more of these mid-sized black holes.

“When a black hole at the center of a galaxy starts feeding, it unleashes a tremendous amount of energy into its surroundings, transforming into what we call an active galactic nucleus,” team leader and University of Utah researcher Ragadeepika Pucha said in a statement. “This dramatic activity serves as a beacon, allowing us to identify hidden black holes in these small galaxies.”

Some mid-sized black holes are big eaters

Logan • A northern Utah nonprofit that distributed 1.6 million diapers to families last year is running out of space.

As need for the nappies and other necessities swells, Logan’s Little Lambs Foundation for Kids is unable to accept large donations in its cramped 2,000-square-foot facility, potentially leaving some Utahns without essential hygiene supplies.

“We had to turn down an entire semi,” saidfoundation Executive Director Ted Chalfant, “and that was about a quarter of a million in donations that we weren’t able to accept.”

Chalfant hopes state funding can help his nonprofit create some room to grow while rising costs continue to fuel demand.

When he started Little Lambs out of his Logan basement in 2014, Chalfant had no idea how much of a need there would be in Cache County for his organization, which, at first, provided hygiene kits to kids transitioning into foster care.

Even more surprising to him is how much the nonprofit has grown — from getting its own building, to becoming one of the only diaper banks in the state, to providing essentials such as feminine hygiene products, wipes and formula to more than 70,000 low-income families throughout Utah in 2024, Chalfant said.

The need, Chalfant said, rises drastically each year. In the organization’s first year, about 750 children were served.

“Diaper insecurity, it’s not an inconvenience; it’s a public health crisis,” he said. “Families should be able to have enough diapers so that they don’t have to choose, ‘Is it diapers or dinner today?’ Every child deserves dignity, respect and love, and they also need to feel secure.”

Chalfant, who grew up in a family that cared for foster children, started the foundation after seeing child after child arrive with only the clothes on their backs, and sometimes, their belongings in a trash bag or paper sack. What began as a program to provide essentials to help kids settle into new homes grew into a statewide distribution center for Division of Child and Family Services offices throughout the state.

Because of this, Chalfant has requested $3.1 million in state funding from the Utah Legislature to help build a 16,000-square-foot community resource center in Logan. The new center would not only support these services in Utah, he said, but also create space for additional programs, including a teen resource center to assist teen mothers with care for their children.

“Populations throughout the state are struggling,” he said. “It is our number one goal to make everyone be able to have access to basic essentials.”

Former Logan Republican Rep. Dan Johnson said he supports granting these funds, adding that he saw the demand for Little Lambs’ services grow significantly during his time in the House of Representatives. Lawmakers, he said, should focus on helping those in need.

“Sometimes, if you could just give a person a leg up,” Johnson said, “if you could just help them with some very basic needs, it’s such a difference-maker in their lives.”

Nibley resident Marilyn Wilson has been volunteering with Little Lambs for nearly a decade, helping create hygiene kits, delivering feminine products to girls at school and making clothing for families in need.

Wilson, who has seen the number of people turning to Little Lambs grow significantly over the years, said there is not enough space for volunteers — who provide nearly all the services — to work efficiently.

She said a new building is crucial for continuing these services. She has seen firsthand people facing illness or other difficult circumstances that lead them to ask for help.

“We give hope to families,” Wilson said. “That’s the biggest thing. We try to break the cycle of poverty. It takes a village.”

Bolstered by Mormon voters’ distaste for MAGA politics, the center-right is trying to reassert itself in a ruby-red state.

A Utah lawmaker removed a controversial piece of his legislation that critics say would gut the state’s public records law but left in an equally controversial part that would eliminate a volunteer committee that decides disputes about access to government information.

Senate Majority Whip Mike McKell made the changes just prior to a hearing Tuesday on SB277 before the Senate Government Operations and Political Subdivisions Committee.

McKell, R-Spanish Fork, told reporters before the meeting that he wants to focus on the process used to seek records under the state’s Government Records Access and Management Act or GRAMA, which he described as “broken.”

During the packed meeting, residents panned the legislation, urging the committee to not approve a bill few have had a chance to read and that would hinder transparency and give too much power to one person to decide whether government records are private or public.

Still, the revised bill passed out of committee 6-2, though some senators voiced reservations. It now goes to the full House for consideration.

Why eliminate State Records Committee?

SB277 would replace the State Records Committee — a seven-member panel appointed by the governor — with a Government Records Office. The governor would appoint the office’s director, who must be an attorney, to a four-year term with Senate approval. The director would oversee an ombudsman who would handle records disputes. The two positions would cost the state an estimated $447,900 a year.

“I think the current records committee process is flawed, and the bill that will continue to move forward with a focus on process,” McKell said. “It’s too slow, it’s too inconsistent and we just need to do better.”

State and legislative audits found few cases in the past few years were resolved within the 73 days the law requires and last year the average time was 156 days, he said.

“The goal of this legislation is to make sure we have the ability to be efficient and responsive to these record requests. We have missed the mark today and we have to improve and do better,” McKell said.

Passing the bill, he said, would reduce delays and increase confidence in government transparency.

GRAMA more beloved than Jerry Sloan?

The Utah Media Coalition, a consortium of news outlets that works to keep government records open, says the State Records Committee has served the state well, noting the courts have affirmed the panel’s decisions 98% of the time.

“GRAMA’s a marvel. This room is full because people love GRAMA. If you polled the public about GRAMA, it would poll higher than ice cream, it would poll higher than (the late Utah Jazz coach) Jerry Sloan, it would poll higher than Zion National Park,” Mike Judd, a lawyer representing the media coalition, told the committee.

Judd said the records committee gets things right and disagrees that a lawyer would make things better. “This is a citizen-led process,” he said.

Utahns of various political persuasions lined up at the hearing to express opposition to the bill and ask lawmakers to keep the records panel intact.

Some suggested that if McKell is concerned about a lack of law training on the committee, that one member be a lawyer. Others said the state should spend the annual cost for the two new jobs to provide training for committee members and county clerks who are often tasked with responding to records requests.

They also lamented the possible loss of the committee’s independence in favor of one person beholden to the governor. The bill allows the governor to fire the director “with or without cause.”

‘Last bastion’ of transparency

Veteran journalist and former State Records Committee member Tom Haraldsen said decisions are better when a group of people share their thoughts. He said the Legislature not filling vacancies on the panel last year contributed to the backlog of cases.

“I think that the SRC is the last bastion of transparency in this state. It gives an opportunity for every citizen who has a complaint to be heard, to be seen, to voice their concerns, not just simply file paperwork that one person looks at and decides if it’s true or valid,” he said.

Sen. Daniel Thatcher, R-West Valley City, was one of two senators to vote against the measure. He said he agreed that the records committee could benefit from legal advice but that that could be accomplished with a staff position.

He said there is a significant benefit to having diverse backgrounds of opinion on a volunteer committee rather than a person’s whose “at-will employment is contingent upon keeping somebody happy that may or may not be happy with certain rulings.”

Thatcher also said there’s a lot of things right in the bill “but there’s just one thing just I can’t get past. … The public does not feel heard and it’s something that we are seeing more and more and hearing more and more. If we listen, what we’re hearing is they are concerned about power grabs, they’re concerned about not being included in the process. They’re concerned about bills not having enough time or enough input, and I agree with them.”

Speaking in favor of the bill

The Utah League of Cities and Towns and the Utah System of Higher Education support the bill.

“Of course there’s going to be disputes about whether we classify records correctly,” Geoff Landward, state commissioner of higher education, told the Senate committee. “We think that the question of whether a record is classified correctly is a legal question that requires legal analysis and a determination that’s properly handled by legal professionals.”

He said that would bring great clarity, consistency and predictability government agencies are seeking in the GRAMA process.

Public interest balance test remains

Before Tuesday’s hearing, McKell pulled one of the most controversial provisions from the bill. His initial version would have removed a longstanding part of the law known as the “balancing test” used to determine whether public interest warrants releasing records that would otherwise be classified as protected or private.

The balancing test — in the law since it took effect in 1992 — is the “beating heart” of GRAMA, according to the Utah Media Coalition. Without it, government could withhold records even if the public interest in disclosure was compelling and the interests favoring secrecy were nonexistent or minimal.

Senate leaders said another lawmaker intends to address the test in separate legislation, though it would likely be limited to records regarding workforce harassment.

The latest edition of WWE Monday Night Raw aired on February 17, 2025, and fans want to know the results of the matches that took place. The event streamed live on Netflix from the Spectrum Center in Charlotte, North Carolina, and is now available on the platform for its subscribers. It featured two elimination chamber […] The post Who Won at WWE Monday Night Raw on February 17? Results Revealed appeared first on Mandatory.