All Categories - Jay Evensen

Can government get people to make more babies?

1/13/2026

Leaders of the Utah House of Representatives are worried about Utah’s fertility rate, and rightly so.
In 2014, Utah led the nation in the per capita production of babies. That was well-known and sometimes fodder for jokes. But by 2023, the last year for which figures are available, Utah ranked 8th, well behind No. 1 South Dakota, which was third back in 2014.
Falling fertility rates are a problem in nearly every part of the world and every state in the nation, but Utah’s fall has been especially dramatic.

America's long, unsuccessful history trying to nab Greenland

1/13/2026

Seventy-nine years ago, a Republican California congressman named Bertrand Wesley Gearhart introduced a resolution in Washington that would have urged the United States to buy Greenland from Denmark, and to make Iceland the 51st state.
If you think today’s headlines sprang to life without any historical context, you are mistaken.
“Iceland and Greenland lie on the line of march of any marauding empire which might be bent on world conquest,” Gearhart said. (I’m quoting newspapers of the day available at newspapers.com) “In the face of an onslaught, Iceland would, standing by herself, be helpless. In any world war that might involve us, she is indispensable to our defense. Her strategic value cannot be ignored longer.”

How Utah's anti-gambling stance is being threatened

1/6/2026

You may have noticed the commercials during your favorite sporting events. A company called Kalshi is urging you to gamble on an endless array of things, especially sports-related, using a motto such as, “Kalshi. The world’s gone mad, trade it.”
I hope Utah lawmakers have seen these. The real message is, “We don’t care about your state laws against gambling.”
I’ve written through the years about the challenges of remaining a gambling-free state in the middle of a virtual sea of states that allow it. Now there is a tidal wave of the stuff pouring over Utah.

A ray of light amid horrible tragedy

1/6/2026

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” — The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Ahmed el Ahmed may not fit everyone’s definition of light in a hyper-partisan, make-everything-fit-the-narrative world, but he shone blindingly bright in an otherwise dark and stormy time last weekend.
If, like me, you have your phone set to alert you to big news stories, it was one jolt after another as the weekend unfolded. First came reports of a deadly mass shooting at Brown University, for which, as I write this, a suspect still is at large. Then came stories of an even more widespread shooting at a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia. That, as we have since learned, was an expression of “Islamic State ideology,” as Australian authorities put it. Finally, Rob and Michele Reiner were discovered murdered in their California home. Their son, Nick, has been arrested in connection with this.

What New Year's revelers did 100 years ago

12/31/2025

Most of the inventions we enjoy every day are just better-engineered versions of something invented between 1880 and 1920, a time that saw the introduction of electric lightbulbs, cars, airplanes, radios, telephones, typewriters, vacuum cleaners, cameras (for both still photos and movies), phonographs, x-ray images and assembly line mass production, among other things.
Electronic computers didn’t come around until the 1940s, but by the 1920s, people were so conditioned to the idea of invention and progress that it’s a safe bet few people from a century ago would be shocked to see the modern world.
Curious, intrigued and even excited, perhaps, but not shocked. They wouldn’t flinch at the droning of an airplane overhead, the ringing of a cell phone in our pockets or the constant babble from a radio or a podcast.

How gamblers are getting around state laws

12/31/2025

You may have noticed the commercials during your favorite sporting events. A company called Kalshi is urging you to gamble on an endless array of things, especially sports-related, using a motto such as, “Kalshi. The world’s gone mad, trade it.”
I hope Utah lawmakers have seen these. The real message is, “We don’t care about your state laws against gambling.”
I’ve written through the years about the challenges of remaining a gambling-free state in the middle of a virtual sea of states that allow it. Now there is a tidal wave of the stuff pouring over Utah.

Should schools make kids repeat grades they have failed?

12/17/2025

In my public school years, I had a good friend who was a year older than me. We were in the same class because, somewhere in the early grades, he had been held back a year.
I was aware of this, although I no longer can remember how I knew it. I didn’t know the exact reason he was held back, or the subjects for which he was held back. When we were in high school, he got his driver license a year earlier than I did. It never mattered to me. We were friends and that was good enough. The subject didn’t come up.
This probably sounds very old fashioned to today’s school-age generation (we were also paddled occasionally by the principal, but that’s another column for a different time).
I didn’t grow up in Utah, but schools here and in most of the nation have, for years now, automatically passed kids to the next grade, regardless of how well they mastered subjects in the previous grade.

Would you go spearfishing with a political rival?

12/17/2025

The recent NBC televised discussion between Utah Gov. Spencer Cox and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro wasn’t the first attempt to bridge the political civility gap on television.
A few years ago, then-Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona, a Republican, invited Democrat Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico to a deserted island, where they had to spear fish in order to survive.
They brought a Discovery Channel crew with them and named the show, “Rival Survival.” It wasn’t great TV.

What Christmas 1925 can teach us today

11/26/2025

By the time I started work this morning, I already had dozens of emails waiting to leap at me with breathless exclamation marks.
“Season of savings!” “New deals just dropped!” “Score early deals now!”
Strolling through these daily missives is like walking down the midway of a carnival. I am warned not to pass up great offers. Money? Don’t worry, I’m told, I can pay later.
Which is what many people do, by the way. At the start of the annual holiday shopping season, it’s worth noting that a survey from Consolidated Credit found 36% of respondents admitting they still are paying for purchases from the 2024 holiday season.

Why tariffs are hurting U.S. toy sellers at Christmas

11/26/2025

In 1934, the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration set up intricate and complicated rules for small businesses in a misguided effort to fight the Great Depression. As a result, four Jewish brothers, the Schechters, who ran a kosher butcher shop in New York City, were arrested for not following these rules, set up under the first phase of the New Deal.
In short, new laws forbade them from letting customers select individual chickens from a coop for slaughter, which was what customers preferred. Instead, they had to select either a full coop or half a coop. Kosher rules governing the health of the birds were not allowed.

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