Blue states, like California, have spent the hours since President-elect Donald Trump’s Tuesday night victory strategizing on how to guard against federal GOP policies. Utah’s newly chosen legislative leaders say they are similarly planning for 2025, but instead plan to use Trump’s campaign promise to scale down federal agencies to build bulwarks against how a future Washington can influence the deep-red state.
The Utah Legislature, after a vote of the Republican caucuses, will be helmed by the same two men next year: Senate President Stuart Adams, of Layton, and House Speaker Mike Schultz, of Hooper. The Republican Party holds a veto-proof supermajority in both chambers.
“It’s no secret Utah has felt the pressure from the federal government,” Schultz told reporters Thursday, as the House majority announced its leadership team
“Not Congress,” Schultz continued, “this is from the unelected bureaucrats coming from inside Washington, D.C., through the [President Joe] Biden administration, and we’re going to do all we can to push back on those things and try to cement them from happening again in the future.”
Republicans in the Utah House of Representatives opted not to make changes to leadership. In the Utah Senate, however, GOP lawmakers picked a new slate of leaders to work below Adams — ousting former Senate Majority Leader Evan Vickers, of Cedar City, and Majority Whip Ann Millner, of Ogden.
Draper Sen. Kirk Cullimore will move up from majority assistant whip to majority leader. In a news conference Thursday night, he insisted the contest was “nothing but cordial” and that the changes didn’t come down to policy differences — rather, lawmakers wanting to take advantage of “limited opportunities to serve in the state Legislature.”
Cullimore said the incoming Trump administration has “signaled that there may be some efforts to restructure the federal government, and I think that’s an opportunity for us to state to take a little bit more of a lead.”
He added, “If we can reverse some of what’s happened over the last several decades, maybe even 100 years, I think that’s a good thing. I think this poses an opportunity for us to assert ourselves a little bit more and work with the administration to reshape that balance.”
Leadership in both chambers said they hope to take advantage of a Trump White House by increasing state control of public lands, and turning to fossil fuels for energy — a move they say will decrease the cost of energy and improve its availability for technologies like artificial intelligence.
Last session, lawmakers passed the Utah Constitutional Sovereignty Act — a law giving themselves permission to choose which federal laws to follow and which to ignore. They used that law over the summer to vote to ignore new Title IX rules that extended protections to transgender students.
The Democratic minority caucuses will hold leadership elections in the coming weeks.
Utah Senate
Senate president: Sen. Stuart Adams, Layton
Senate majority leader: Sen. Kirk Cullimore, Draper
Senate majority whip: Sen. Chris Wilson, Logan
Senate assistant whip: Sen. Mike McKell, Spanish Fork
Utah House of Representatives
House speaker: Rep. Mike Schultz, Hooper
House majority leader: Rep. Jefferson Moss, Saratoga Springs
Majority whip: Rep. Karianne Lisonbee, Clearfield
Majority assistant whip: Rep. Casey Snider, Paradise
