Elevate Utah Podcast

If you’ve been following us for a while, you probably have a vague sense of who we are. You’ve seen our faces. You’ve heard our takes. You might have even trusted us enough to buy the same bottle of vodka we grabbed at the Sugar House liquor store — which, for the record, is extremely flattering and also slightly alarming, because you have absolutely no reason to trust our taste in vodka.And since people keep asking — and we should have done this a while ago — we figured it was past time to give you the full picture.This week we turned the mics on ourselves. Our backgrounds, how we got into this work, how our company came together, and why we are so annoyingly optimistic about Utah.Listen in on your favorite podcast app or watch on Youtube. Get full access to Elevate Utah at www.elevateutah.news/subscribe

Derek Kitchen was one of the most compelling potential candidates in Utah’s new congressional district. Now he is the first candidate to officially step away from the race. In this episode, we sit down with Derek for a candid conversation about why he made the decision to step away, what he saw happening inside the race, and what most people get wrong about how these decisions are actually made.We talk about his path from suing the state of Utah over marriage equality to serving in the State Senate and the Biden administration, and what those experiences taught him about power, relationships, and getting things done in a state like Utah.We also get into the bigger questions shaping this race: what it actually means to be a “pragmatic progressive,” how crowded primaries change the math, and why stepping aside can sometimes be the most strategic move.Listen on your favorite podcast app or you can see the full interview on YouTube: Get full access to Elevate Utah at www.elevateutah.news/subscribe

Session is over. The legislators have gone home. Sine Die. And so we are HERE to tell you everything that actually happened — which has almost nothing to do with policy.This week we’re skipping the bill-by-bill breakdown (that’s coming in the Substack, don’t worry) and going straight to the drama. Is this journalism? Debatable. Is it accurate? Allegedly. Did it happen? Our sources say yes. Here is how session felt to us. What did you think? You’re going to want to see the images we reference so we would recommend watching on YouTube here. Get full access to Elevate Utah at www.elevateutah.news/subscribe

Okay, so. This is our first attempt at a podcast. They say boys can do it, so here we are.But please accept our sincerest apologies for any sound imperfections and know that we are just two girls who care very deeply about Utah politics and very little about technology. We’re learning. Be gentle with us.What we can promise you is that the content is worth it because this week we went down a rabbit hole so deep and so dark that we genuinely could not stop until we hit the bottom. And the bottom, it turns out, involves Nazi propaganda films, a eugenicist who tried to take over the Sierra Club from the inside, a sperm bank for geniuses, and 10 boxes of sealed archives at the University of Michigan that won’t be opened until 2035. All of this because Trevor Lee walked into a committee hearing and cited one source.We’re breaking down HB 88 — Rep. Trevor Lee’s bill that would strip healthcare, food assistance, WIC, CHIP, domestic violence shelter access, and more from undocumented immigrants and mixed-status families in Utah. We cover who Trevor Lee actually is, where his numbers came from (spoiler: a federally designated hate group), why the math doesn’t add up, and what happened to Alabama, Arizona, and Georgia when they tried this exact same thing.You can listen right here, find us on your favorite podcast app (we think it works), or head to YouTube where you can watch our faces react in real time and see all the pictures, graphics, and references we're talking about.📌 Voices for Utah Children one-pager on HB 88: https://utahchildren.org/newsroom/speaking-of-kids-blog/protecting-utahs-immigrant-families-say-no-to-hb88#i📌 FAIR 2023 report: https://www.fairus.org/sites/default/files/2023-03/utah2023.pdf📌 ProPublica - John Tanton: https://www.propublica.org/article/john-tanton-far-right-extremism-environmentalism-climate-change Get full access to Elevate Utah at www.elevateutah.news/subscribe