Special Session with Bryan Schott

Rep. Celeste Maloy and Democrat Kent Udell met at Utah Tech University in St. George for the only televised debate in Utah's new 3rd Congressional District, and Bryan Schott watched along live with commentary, fact-checks and viewer reactions.

The verdict? Boring.

Maloy, the incumbent, only needed to avoid stumbling, and she did. She leaned on her voting record and some well-worn talking points. Udell landed a few zingers, includin...

Utah finally has a competitive congressional race, and Tuesday night the two candidates met on the debate stage.

Democrat Ben McAdams and Republican Riley Owen faced off at Salt Lake Community College in the Utah Debate Commission's 1st Congressional District debate. It was the first debate for the new Democratic-leaning seat created after a court threw out the Legislature's gerrymandered map. We watched i...

In this episode:

• New Utah polling from Noble Predictive Insights
• Is a Democratic wave brewing ahead of November?
• How would a blue wave election impact Utah's legislative elections?
• Sen. John Curtis asks the Senate Judiciary Committee to investigate Donald Trump Jr.'s ties to a Russian oligarch
• Trump's press ban on CNN, MSNOW and Politico

Drew Ballard is a classically trained pianist with a 6,500-song repertoire who spent over a decade performing in piano bars and has recently turned that same instinct for what makes a crowd sing along toward political parody.

Known online as Druby.tunes, Drew produces biting takes on well-known songs aimed at corporate exploitation and government malfeasance in Utah.

We talk about the leap from concert competitions to bar requests,...

On this episode:

• Exclusive investigation: The Mormon Meteor 3. The state paid $20 million for the historic race car now displayed at the new Museum of Utah—$10 million from taxpayers, obtained via open records request.
• Gov. Spencer Cox's new book, Off Ramp: How to Be a Peacemaker in an Age of Contempt, arrived minutes before taping. Live unboxing and first reactions.
• Charlie Kirk, one year later.

One year after Charlie Kirk was shot and killed at Utah Valley University, host Bryan Schott sits down with journalist Jared Holt to unpack the battle over Kirk's legacy — and how it's been playing out very differently depending on who's telling the story. On one side: a sanitized, martyr-like version of Kirk pushed by Turning Point USA and Fox News. On the other: a mocking, AI-generated "Kirkification" meme culture that has ...

On this episode of "Special Session":

• 📊 Utah House & Senate Race Ratings Updated
• 🗳️ Senate District 11 Becomes a Head-to-Head Race
• 📬 USPS Whistleblower Report on Mail-In Ballots
• 📖 Spencer Cox's New Book, Off-Ramp
• ⚖️ Two More Appointments to the Utah Supreme Court

On this episode of Special Session:

• Outgoing Senate President Stuart Adams threatens legal action against four critics, including State Auditor Tina Cannon. Her lawyer fires back with one of the sharpest legal smackdowns of the year.
• Breaking down an absolutely chaotic seven-hour meeting of the Salt Lake County GOP Central Committee, including an attempt to oust the party chair, secret ballots and "election observers."
• What Mo...

In this episode:

• New polling shows Donald Trump, Gov. Spencer Cox, Sens. Mike Lee and John Curtis all underwater with Utah voters. We break down why the Deseret News's explanation for those falling numbers is wrong.
• An update on the ongoing First Amendment lawsuit against the Utah Legislature over press credentials.
• An analysis shows Utahns love vote-by-mail.
• Utah's looming Medicaid funding shortage.
• A Mike Lee fundraising ema...

Bryan Schott sits down with G. Elliott Morris—former lead data editor at 538, now running the election-data newsletter Strength in Numbers and the forecasting site 50 Plus One—to dig into a trend reshaping red-state politics: Democrats stepping aside so an independent can take on the GOP one-on-one.

They start with Morris's recent analysis of Montana's three-way Senate race, where independent Seth Bodnar is outpolling D...

On this week's episode:

• The SAVE Act is dead (for now). Mike Lee's voter-ID bill couldn't get 50 votes, let alone the 60 needed to break a filibuster
• Kevin O'Leary's mea culpa. The investor tells MS Now his team botched the rollout of Utah's controversial Box Elder County data center, an issue that helped sink Senate President Stuart Adams' reelection campaign.
• Mendenhall on the Democratic Socialist debate. Salt Lake City's ma...

On this episode:

• Sen. Mike Lee's SAVE America Act is stalled in the Senate, so he's recruiting dead people to try and resurrect the bill. He invoked Charlie Kirk on social media this week, just a few weeks after doing the same thing with Lindsey Graham.
• Federal Judge Robert Shelby rules Utah's gambling ban isn't preempted by federal commodities law, dealing the prediction-market Kalshi a major loss, with an appeal likely.
• Utah...

BYU sociology professor Dr. Jacob Rugh joins Bryan Schott to dig into the numbers behind Utah's political shift.

Rugh says Utah has swung further left since 2004 than almost any other state. He explains why MAGA has never fully taken over Utah's Republican Party the way it has nationally and what that means heading into the 2026 midterms.

The conversation covers the collapse of Phil Lyman's campaign, Stuart Adams' primary loss over...

On this episode:

• Sen. Mike Lee picks yet another fight with his own party over the SAVE Act
• Stuart Adams lost his election, but the checks kept coming.
• Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson with a subtweet for the ages
• Burgess Owens says incumbents losing elections is putting Utah on the path toward socialism

CD1 primary costs $6.1 million: Ben McAdams wins the Democratic nomination in a district that didn't exist a year ago, raising and spending more on his own than the other seven candidates combined. Outside groups poured in another $2.7 million—all of it backing McAdams.

Phil Lyman's mystery donor, again: A new super PAC that spent $300,000 attacking Rep. Celeste Maloy had a single donor—a company that also gave $550,000...

In this week's episode, host Bryan Schott discusses:

Bears Ears & Grand Staircase Escalante shrunk again President Trump signed an executive order this week drastically reducing both monuments—continuing the back-and-forth that's played out since Clinton (1996) and Obama (2016) created them...

A scathing state audit found the Utah Fits All Scholarship voucher program spent taxpayer money on Pelotons, gaming PCs, mirrorless cameras, trampolines and a $6,200 mountain bike, while auditors could only confidently trace about 19% of transactions.

Rep. John Arthur (D-Salt Lake City), a public school teacher, joins the show to break down the findings, explain why he believes the program itself is unconstitutional, and make the c...

In this episode of Special Session, Bryan Schott breaks down Senator Mike Lee's habit of posting bad-faith attacks every time the white nationalist group Patriot Front marches — and explains why the senator's rhetoric is designed for followers he holds in open contempt.

Plus: Lieutenant Governor Deidre Henderson pushes back against DOJ threats of criminal prosecution over Utah's refusal to hand over unredacted voter rolls, th...

Host Bryan Schott breaks down some huge news in Utah politics: his own First Amendment lawsuit against the Utah Legislature just got revived by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. 

Plus, Kevin O'Leary walks back his CCP-funding claims against Alliance for a Better Utah; the fight to replace outgoing Senate President Stuart Adams heats up between Kirk Cullimore and Evan Vickers; Governor Spencer Cox's statewide fireworks ban ami...