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(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) U.S. Senate candidate Becky Edwards in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, May 10, 2022.

By Susan Howe | Special to The Tribune

| June 9, 2022, 6:38 p.m.

At the funeral of Sen. Orrin Hatch, we were reminded of what an effective senator he had been, passing over 1,300 bills, more than any other senator in U.S. history. Before this years primary election, then, it seems useful to compare Hatch with Mike Lee and Becky Edwards, both Republican candidates for the U.S. Senate.

Former Oregon Sen. Gordon H. Smith explained what made Hatch such an effective legislator. According to Smith, Hatch began his career by learning how the Senate worked so that he could participate effectively. He grew to understand that legislating required hard, painstaking work and the building of trust. He never held a grudge or considered senators of the other party to be enemies. Rather, he sought to accommodate perspectives different from his own and worked to find the commonsense center that is necessary to the making of law, not just noise, in the United States Senate.

How does Sen. Mike Lee, the incumbent in this years race, compare to Hatch? Lee entered the Senate as part of the Tea Party movement, with the express purpose of disrupting the legislative process by refusing to cooperate not only with the other party but with his own party leaders. Consequently, in 12 years he has passed only four bills, two of which were to rename buildings.

Lee has absolutely refused to compromise in passing legislation for America. He was the only senator to vote against the ALS Disability Insurance Access Act, the Opioid Crisis Response Act and Americas Water Infrastructure Act. He also voted not to pass the Violence Against Women Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act. Furthermore, he led the suicide caucus, which shut down the federal government for 16 days, achieving essentially nothing but costing the American people $24 billion.

Recently released emails between Lee and Mark Meadows, Donald Trumps former chief of staff, prove that Lee has always been part of the Trump machine. Trump regularly insults and belittles even his own colleagues, not to mention Democratic lawmakers. The resultant hostility has led to complete dysfunction in Congress, which is failing to do the work the American people need it to do that is, compromise to pass laws that will provide solutions for the serious problems facing the country.

During the same period in which Lee was obstructing the work of the U.S. Senate, Becky Edwards was hard at work in the Utah House of Representatives, implementing solutions to Utah problems. In the mold of Hatch, she built a coalition among both Republicans and Democrats to pass HCR007, the first legislation in a red state acknowledging climate change. This resolution then led to a state-funded initiative to create the Utah Roadmap for clean air and climate solutions, as well as the Utah Climate and Clean Air Compact.

Edwards was equally effective in working for more affordable housing, less expensive health care, safe and affordable childcare, and economic development in Utah.

Which of these two Republican Lawmakers Lee or Edwards is more like Hatch? Which will be the better senator for the state of Utah in the next six years? As the old saying goes, we cant keep doing the same thing over and over and expect different results. We know what we will get if we reelect Mike Lee the same obstructionist efforts weve seen in the past 12 years. To the contrary, Becky Edwards has shown, through her record, that she will identify problems, form coalitions with other colleagues, and achieve solutions.

It is time to change directions by electing Becky Edwards to the U.S. Senate. She is much more like Senator Hatch, who, as Oregon Sen. Smith said, served as a model for what politics must again become if our system is to function well and our democracy is to prosper.

Susan Howe is the associate editor of BYU Studies and one of the editors responsible for the current issue, The Restored Gospel and Good Government. This article does not represent the views of BYU Studies; its ideas are entirely those of the author.

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Utah's Sen. Hatch set an example for effective government that Becky Edwards can follow. - Salt Lake Tribune

As the Jan. 6 committee hearings begin in prime time, the American people will finally have the chance to learn the truth behind one of the darkest days in our nations history. Theyll hear the select committee make its case that former President Donald Trump and his alliesthrough election fraud lies and outright encouragement of violence sought to overturn not just the results of the 2020 election, but American democracy itself.

What they likely wont hear is that this assault on our democracy has been going on for years. Trump and his followers may have taken things to a violent extreme on Jan. 6, but their goals are consistent with over a decade of work by far-right billionaires and legislators seeking to shift America from a democracy to an outright oligarchy.

Through the immense influence their wealth has afforded them in a political system that treats money as speech, a small number of ultra-wealthy Americans have reshaped our society and government to reflect their own personal preferences, rather than the will of the people. We saw this on Jan. 6, when a few ultra-rich donors were the ones that indirectly enabled Trump and his allies.

The Save America rally at the White House Ellipse was for all intents and purposes the staging ground for the attack on the Capitol. There are reports that as much as$3 millionwas raised to stage the rally, with most of the funding coming from a handful of dark money groups the Rule of Law Defense Fund, the Tea Party Express, Turning Point, andWomen for America First which themselves were financed by a few ultra-wealthy donors. One of the most notable donors was Publix supermarket heiressJulie Jenkins Fancelli, who gave a whopping $650,000 to these groups just eight days before the event.

The Ellipse rally would not have happened were it not for the $3 million in funding that organizers received. The funding was necessary to pay for therobocallsthat invited the thousands of patriots that attended the event. It was necessary to pay for the events elaborate staging, video and sound equipment. It was necessary to pay for VIP tents, refreshments andhotel rooms. And yes, it was even necessary to pay forport-a-potties.

The rally gave President Trump and his far-right friends an incredible platform with which to spew their election lies and hate speech. In all likelihood, the riot that erupted two miles away at the Capitol would not have happened without it. Taking things a step further, we can say that the riot would not have happened were it not for the dark money groups and ultra-wealthy donors that bankrolled the rally, almost all of whom were able to do so anonymously thanks to weak campaign finance and disclosure laws.

Recent Supreme Court decisions have only made it easier for the ultra-rich to wage successful battles against our democracy. Since the infamous 2010Citizens Unitedruling, billionaire donors have pourednearly 40 times moremoney into federal elections upping their spending from $31 million in 2010 to a dizzying $1.2 billion in 2020 andthe number of Super PACs and dark money groupshas exploded. In fact, in 2020 nearlyone in every 10 dollars spent on the election was spent by a billionaire, despite that group consisting of less than 0.01 percent of donors. More recent rulings, most notablyFEC vs. Ted Cruz for Senatewhich made it drastically easier for wealthy individuals to (legally) bribe candidates, have only made things worse.

Contrary to what the conservative justices on the Supreme Court would have you believe, money isnotspeech. Instead, money is power. All of us have the opportunity to contribute to our favored political causes and campaigns and make our voices heard, but only the rich have the financial power to really make use of that opportunity. This drowns out the speech of everyone else in America and is unfair and undemocratic. And as we saw on Jan. 6, the consequences of this unbridled power can be dire.

The Capitol assault made clear the urgent need to combat election misinformation and hate speech in America. But it also underscored the equally urgent need to reform our political system to dilute the power and influence of big money. Only then will we be able to turn the volume down on the massive megaphones that allow rich and powerful political actors like Trump to spew their venom in the first place.

Ron Guillot is the vice president of sales at HeartBeam and an investor in equities, options and direct start-ups. He is a member of the Patriotic Millionaires.

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What Jan. 6 and far-right billionaires have in common - The Hill

In difficult times, we refer to the advice of those who lived and handled difficult situations with Turkey. Because, as the late Greek diplomat and writer Vyron Theodoropoulos often said, history should not teach you what to do but what not to do. We are on the verge of some kind of incident, without anyone being able to predict what and when it will happen. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has too much invested to back down without losing face.

So previous experience has taught us what to do:

We should not be dragged into an escalation that is not planned and a foregone conclusion. Avoiding escalation is a great art. One wrong move, statement or decision can push into a spiral of endless actions and counteractions. We are supposed to have learned our lesson after the 1996 Imia crisis. Nothing can simply be left to chance.

We should know exactly what our key partners and allies are thinking and planning to do in the event of an incident. This is not easy either. But since we have paid dearly many times for this lack of knowledge in the past, it is absolutely crucial. We need straight talk, even if it displeases us. It is better to know the truth and the limits of each allys reaction than to be unpleasantly surprised.

All main players must speak the same language, be able to communicate without quarreling or personal agendas which is something we paid dearly for in Imia. And of course we must put aside partisan and personal issues for a while, because without a solid domestic political front one cannot go very far.

We must keep some elementary channels of communication open with the other side. Erdogan is burning bridges and making it difficult. It requires perseverance because without such channels it will be very difficult to ease tensions.

All of the above may be unnecessary remarks and it may turn out that we are going through another rhetorical and psychosomatic outburst of a very cornered and arrogant leader. But Erdogan may face the consequences of historic hubris, which could happen through his relationship with Greece.

So lets be prepared, just in case. And lets not underestimate the accident that can blow everything up. It happens in the most organized countries when everything is blurred by the fog of an escalating crisis. As former foreign minister Petros Molyviatis often points out to us with his great wisdom, do not always seek to find something deep or complicated behind a mistake. It may just be a mistake. Eyes open, then.

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Erdogans hubris and accidents - Kathimerini English Edition

ISTANBUL

Turkeys export will exceed the targeted $250 billion at the end of 2022, President Recep Tayyip Erdoan has said, stressing that the existing growth-based economic model will continue to be decisively implemented.

The global health crisis followed by security crisis are making our job in terms of becoming a manufacturing hub easier. In this picture, the country that comes to the fore is Turkey. We understand that our export will exceed $250 billion, our target for 2022, Erdoan said at a meeting on the occasion for distributing awards to investors in Istanbul on June 13.

The meeting was organized by Turkeys Exporters Assembly (TM).

The first quarter has shown an increase beyond expectations in the exports figures thanks to the efforts and works by the TM, Erdoan stated.

Export figures exceeding $250 billion will make Turkey one step closer to fulfilling the 2023 targets, the president said.

Global economic problems, uncertainties and currency fluctuations also has impact on Turkey, Erdoan stressed, citing the rising cost of life in the country.

This is the empty part of the glass, but we should also look at the full part of the glass, he said, underlining economic and democratic development of Turkey in the past 20 years under his rule.

We will do everything so that our country takes more share from $100 trillion global markets.

Turkey has always been the target of some powers who wanted to stop its economic growth, and these efforts have been much more visible in the past decade, Erdoan said.

The government will not allow high interest rates but will focus on growing the economy and employment by boosting production, the president noted.

We will surely compensate the loss of our peoples prosperity. We will decisively implement the Turkish economic model based on employment, production, investment and export.

Erdogan,

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Turkeys 2022 exports will exceed $250 billion target: Erdoan - Hurriyet Daily News

Erin Schaff/Pool/AFP via Getty Images

Erin Schaff/Pool/AFP via Getty Images

At the Supreme Court, nothing is as usual this term after the leak of Justice Samuel Alito's draft opinion in the biggest abortion case in nearly a half-century.

Normally at this time of year, the justices would be exchanging hundreds of pages of draft opinions and working with each other to resolve differences and reach consensus in the most challenging cases of the term. Instead, the court is riven with distrust among the law clerks, staff and, most of all, the justices themselves.

The atmosphere behind the scenes is so ugly that, as one source put it, "the place sounds like it's imploding." To cite just one public example, Justice Clarence Thomas in a speech a few weeks ago seemed to say he no longer trusts his colleagues.

"When you lose that trust, especially in the institution that I'm in, it changes the institution fundamentally," he told a conservative group. "You begin to look over your shoulder. It's like kind of an infidelity that you can explain it but you can't undo it."

Specifically, he implied that he doesn't trust Chief Justice John Roberts.

"The court that was together 11 year[s] was a fabulous court. It was one you look forward to being a part of," he said.

Those 11 years were when the chief justice was William Rehnquist, who died in 2005 and was succeeded by Roberts, who, ironically, had been one of Rehnquist's clerks many years earlier.

The root of the current antipathy is not definitely known. What is known is that Roberts infuriated some of conservatives on the court 10 years ago when he changed his mind and voted to uphold key provisions of the Affordable Care Act. These switches are rare, but they do happen; justices change their minds, and in good faith. But that switch so angered some of the court's conservatives that it leaked, obviously from someone connected to a conservative justice, who aimed to embarrass Roberts.

Now, there is a much bigger and, in fact, unprecedented leak to deal with an actual draft opinion reversing a half-century of abortion precedents. The chief justice called the leak "a betrayal" and ordered the Supreme Court marshal to conduct an internal investigation. But the investigation may only be adding to problems at the court.

To begin with, the Supreme Court marshal overseeing the probe has no experience as an investigator; nor do the Supreme Court police. Their job is to protect the justices. And people who do have experience as investigators say that leak inquiries are, in the words of several, "nightmares."

Glenn Fine, a former inspector general for the Justice Department and then the Defense Department in both Democratic and Republican administrations, conducted and supervised lots of these investigations.

Typically, he wrote, in the beginning "we would be told that ... only a few people had access to the material that had been leaked. Only a few individuals were at the key meeting or worked on the document."

But, he said, "invariably when we probed the universe of people who had access," the number expanded "exponentially." Instead of a discrete few, the number included "additional co-workers, office staff, computer administrative staff, family and friends of those working on the matter, even people who passed through the office," and in the pandemic era, one might assume, the homes of the justices and others working from home. Fine said that even if there was some evidence of contact with a reporter, "we were usually unable to prove that the contact led to the leak." Therefore, most of the time, all the investigators ended up with were theories and speculation.

Now, turning to this leak, CNN has reported that the court "has taken steps to" ask the clerks to sign sworn affidavits and to essentially dump their cellphones.

"Taken steps to" doesn't mean that anything has actually happened. But if the clerks have been asked to sign an affidavit, it is unknown what is in the affidavit or will be in the affidavit. And while the leak of a draft opinion is in fact a huge ethical breach, the draft is not classified, so the leak is not a crime. That said, lying in a sworn affidavit is.

So, imagine you swear under oath that you didn't have anything to do with the leak, and it turns out that your former college classmate is a reporter, and you had dinner with him in April prior to the leak; you could be in a heap of trouble. So, indications are that some law clerks are lawyering up. And some justices may forbid cooperation with a probe they see as a witch hunt.

Not to mention that if the court can dump information from a clerk's cellphone without a warrant, that directly contradicts the Supreme Court's own ruling eight years ago when it said that police could not search a suspected gang member's phone without a warrant after he was pulled over in a traffic stop.

Roberts wrote the court's unanimous opinion, saying that modern cellphones are not just another technological convenience. They are a compendium of everything in a person's life your political preferences, interests, hobbies, medical records, where you have been and with whom.

"Allowing a warrantless search of all this information is not just an incidental intrusion like a peek into a cigarette pack," he said in summarizing the opinion from the bench. "It is a significant invasion of privacy."

The Fourth Amendment, he noted, was the Founders' response to the reviled "general warrants" of the colonial era, which allowed British officers "to rummage through homes in an unrestrained search for evidence of criminal activity."

A cellphone search, without a warrant, the court concluded, is no different.

Now, however, the court may be doing just that, and the terrified law clerks have been calling law firms, wondering whether they need legal representation. All of this presents its own ethical problems, since these law firms do have cases in front of the Supreme Court.

As for the court itself, it is not in a good place.

"I don't know how on earth the court is going to finish up its work this term," said a source close to the justices. The clerks, he explained, are sort of "the court's diplomatic corps." Especially at this time of year, they talk to each other, with the approval of their bosses, to find out how far the envelope can be pushed in this case or that one or conversely, how can we soften language to get five justices on board. But at the moment, he noted, the clerks are terrified that their whole professional lives could be blown up, so they aren't able to do that. In short, it's a very perilous time for the Supreme Court.

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After the leak, the Supreme Court seethes with resentment and fear behind the scenes - NPR