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Politics
The Water We Ship to China
Most of the Great Salt Lake's missing water grows hay, and a big share of that hay ships overseas. Saudi Arabia restricted the use of thirsty forage crops at home to protect its own water. It buys ours instead.
The lake's dry bed carries arsenic and lithium, and the dust storms now have a predictable season. Whether the metals reaching the valley are dangerous yet is genuinely contested, and the story doesn't pretend otherwise. Two rescue efforts are underway, one funded by Utah's wealthiest families, one built on organized citizens, and they disagree about the only question that matters: whether Utah has to grow less.
Utah Groups Kevin O'Leary Called Chinese "Cells" Sue Him and Fox News
Kevin O'Leary went on 10 national shows and named two Utah nonprofits and two Utahns as cells working for the Chinese Communist Party. Now the nonprofits are suing him and Fox News for defamation, with the former attorney general of New Jersey leading their legal team.
The complaint runs 70 pages and reaches beyond O'Leary. To hold Fox liable for a guest, you have to show the network was at fault, and the plaintiffs are building that case partly from Fox's own Dominion discovery record. Fox apologized on air, something it never did for Dominion, even after paying $787 million.
John Curtis Walks Toward the Governor's Mansion
John Curtis walked 250 miles from Idaho to Provo and insists it had nothing to do with running for governor. His inner circle is asking donors to hold their money until he decides.
Standing in the way is Jason Chaffetz, who would be the first opponent Curtis has ever faced that voters actually recognize. Curtis has never won a convention and never lost a primary.
Business
Ryan Smith's Halo Fund Makes Its Biggest Bet Yet
For most of its history, Silicon Slopes exported companies and imported capital. Qualtrics took Accel's money. This week, Ryan Smith's venture fund led a $70 million round in a San Francisco fintech reportedly worth $1.2 billion.
The company is Flex, built for what its founder calls jumbo shrimps: owners too big for consumer fintech and too small for Silicon Valley to bother with. Roughly $700 million of Halo's billion remains.
The Next Silicon Slopes Giant
Filevine added AI medical record retrieval to its platform this week, its third such move this year. Filevine may be Utah's next tech giant, and its comparables continue to reprice upward. Clio went from $3 billion to $5 billion. Harvey went to $11 billion. Filevine hasn't raised since September.
One detail worth the click: when a two-year-old New York AI startup wanted distribution into American law firms, it came to Silicon Slopes.
Sold at the Top
Utah's unemployment rate looks excellent, and part of it is an illusion, held down by people who quit looking. The information sector, the category that built modern Utah's economy, is one of only three industries in the state that shrank last year.
On the other side of the ledger, 2025 was Utah's startup economy's best fundraising year. Whether the new money produces jobs the way subscription software did is the open question.
Religion
The Man Who Would Unchurch Utah
Doug Wilson is a Moscow, Idaho, pastor, the spiritual adviser to the Secretary of Defense, and a man who has said for years that members of Utah's largest church are not Christians. In June, the Pentagon cut its religious affiliation codes, labeling 21 of them as forms of Christianity. The Latter-day Saints weren't on the list.
Wilson had nothing to do with the codes, but would like to see a world in which public office is reserved for the orthodox. The people who settled this state were driven here over the same question Wilson now raises in an even voice, with footnotes.
The Fundamentals, According to Oaks
Dallin H. Oaks signed the introduction to his new book on September 21, 2025, as first counselor to a 101-year-old president. Nelson died six days later. The book, commissioned under one president and published under the next, is the first Oaks has released as leader of the church.
Along with the book, Oaks published an essay adapted from a 2011 speech and unchanged in fifteen years: the Constitution assumes a moral people, and religion is where that morality comes from. This time, the argument arrived with a churchwide fast, issued to 17 million members in the first year of his presidency.
The Church of Martin
On Monday, the church's official accounts featured Pono Skousen, a New York fashion designer, talking about faith and clothes that carry light. The post didn't mention that he's gay, or that in the year between filming and publishing, he co-founded a label called Church of Martin, which sells a shirt of two women kissing under the words Love One Another. Members found it within hours.
Skousen served a mission, worked wardrobe on the church's own Book of Mormon Videos, helped build Met Gala looks, and until recently sat in the bishopric of a Manhattan YSA ward. He says the label is a silly fashion brand, not a statement, and that he doesn't want to be a culture war symbol.
Sports
BYU Runs Out of Doubters
Last July, the Big 12's coaches cast 32 votes on who'd play for the conference title, and BYU got none of them. This month, BYU got more first-place votes than anyone, including the defending champion. What changed was a true freshman quarterback who arrived after the poll, learned the offense in a summer, threw for 3,000 yards, and played the title game on a sprained ankle.
The stakes narrow to one date: Notre Dame comes to Provo on October 17, the Irish's first visit since 2004, and one analyst thinks that game gives BYU a Playoff path no other Big 12 team has. The beat writers still like Texas Tech, fourteen votes to two. Since the league expanded to 16 teams, no team in it has won more games than BYU.
Peterson Has the Game, Utah Has to Find Him the Ball
Darryn Peterson's summer league résumé: 28 points in his debut, 25 and 12 assists two nights later, and a day off he spent asking Will Hardy to watch film of his own defense. Passing was supposed to be his weakness. Fourteen assists in two games did more for his stock than the 53 points, and bettors have already made him the Rookie of the Year favorite.
The problem is math. Rookie of the Year is a usage award, and Peterson walks into a locker room with Keyonte George coming off a breakout season, playing for an extension, Markkanen on a max, and Jackson on nearly one. Four players need touches.
Opening Night at Delta Center, New Year's Eve at Rice-Eccles
The NHL schedule is out, and Utah got the marquee: the Winter Classic comes to Rice-Eccles Stadium on December 31, Mammoth against the Avalanche, the franchise's first outdoor game in the stadium that staged the 2002 Olympic ceremonies. The season opens October 1 at Delta Center against Chicago, the same opponent as the franchise's first-ever game. The Mammoth have never lost a home opener.
The offseason has its own subplot. New Jersey tried to pry Barrett Hayton away with an offer sheet after Utah reportedly backed out of a draft-day trade that would have sent him there. Utah matched. The schedule wastes no time: the Mammoth play in Newark five days into the season.
Culture
The Driest Year
Utah has burned more land in six months than in the previous five years, and the season isn't over. The Cottonwood Fire is likely the most destructive in state history: 150 structures gone, more than half of the Eagle Point community lost, and the owner of the ski resort down to two year-round employees, both of whom lost their homes. On the Colorado border, a fire overran an initial attack crew in single-digit humidity and 45 mph winds. Three firefighters died in their shelters.
The monsoon arrived this week, and in an ordinary year, that would end the story. Burned soil repels water. The Cottonwood scar covers nearly all of Beaver County's watershed, which drains through one canyon toward the county's water supply, and the county's emergency director says the flooding "will take houses out." The forecast calls for thunderstorms every afternoon.
Rhinos All the Way Down
There are three bronze rhinos stacked on South Temple, and a Pulitzer-winning critic in New York has spent eight years calling their makers the worst artists in the public sector. Last month, he tagged them in a photo; the pile-on ran to thousands of comments, and the artists said they questioned whether to keep making art at all.
The Utah detail hiding at the bottom: Steven Price, the developer who bought the rhinos, chairs the Arts and Culture Committee for the 2034 Games. He'll have a large say in what art two million visitors see. The critics can post whatever they want.
The First Museum for Utah Artists Opens in a Jewish Temple
The Salt Lake Art Museum opens Pioneer Day in the state's oldest synagogue, an 1890 sanctuary that spent fifty years as a restaurant, a school, and offices, and could have been leveled when a developer bought the block.
Micah Christensen, an art historian whose great-grandfather belonged to the congregation, paid $3 million for it. The architect who designed it went home to Germany and died in a Nazi death camp in 1943. Grand opening July 24, 3:30 to 8, free.
