Statue of Martha Hughes Cannon in DC; Primary elections underway

SALT LAKE CITY (KUTV) — Host: Heidi Hatch
Guests: Greg Hughes and Maura Carabello

Topics: Martha Hughes Cannon finally makes her way to Washington DC, Utah is breaking heat records, and the primary elections are officially underway.

Biden takes executive action at the border

While Republicans say it’s not enough to solve the problem and secure the U.S. southern border, some Democrats say the order goes too far.

• The asylum ban allows authorities to quickly expel or return to Mexico migrants who cross the U.S.-Mexico border illegally.
• The ban goes into effect when migrant apprehensions exceed 2,500 per day for a week.
• Border arrests averaged 4,300 per day in April, according to the most recent publicly available statistics.

Exoro Group’s Maura Carabello believes President Biden is playing to the 3-7% of truly undecided voters, saying, “The math has to be political and the math has to be about the undecided because he’s clearly ticked off his base.” If you look at it from a purely political perspective, it doesn’t matter if you tick off your base because they don’t go to Trump. This is a show of force that is probably difficult to achieve because, as we know, the problem is not the border, but the system for managing the people who come in.”

Hughes says Biden’s plan has too many loopholes, including nonverbal indications from migrants about where they can stay in the country ‘even if they look scared’: ‘I don’t think so let it have bite, just window dressing. If Biden’s base is angry about the bill, they shouldn’t be, it won’t slow the flow.”

Ballots for Utah’s primary election were delivered to mailboxes across the state this week

U.S. Senate candidate Brad Wilson is suspending spending effective May 28, days before ballots arrive for Utah’s primary election. While some say this means Wilson is out, the KUTV 2 News business team tells us more media ad buys could come from national PACs during the second week of June.

Does a pause in spending in the run-up to the election give voters pause? “I saw this news and thought two things: sad because I want him to succeed and secondly, if you are a voter and you vote for Brad Wilson, you don’t want to lose your vote. If the candidate is not all in, you want to vote for someone who is viable,” said Greg Hughes, former speaker of the Utah House. He added that although spending has taken a pause, his grassroots campaign remains strong.

Maura Carabello notes that Curtis is the biggest spender in the Senate race, mostly among PACs: “We haven’t talked much about who is donating to John Curtis, but most are PACs and that’s interesting.”

Road rage legislation is in effect from July 1; Two road rage deaths this week

• Will the bill save lives? There will be tougher penalties and funds for education.
• 38-year-old man with children in car killed: link
• A man in his sixties shot dead: link

National look at the presidential race:

• Biden in France for the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings, campaigning through presidential acts.
• Hunter Biden case: Laptop verified as his by the FBI a year before 51 intelligence officials signed a letter saying the laptop had “all the classic hallmarks of a Russian information operation.”
• Trump Vice President Search: Senator JD Vance, Senator Marco Rubio, Senator Tim Scott, Governor Doug Burgum, Representative Byron Donalds, Representative Elise Stefanik, Dr. Ben Carson. We don’t know how far the demands go.