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A 2026 legislative session gets underway next week, and it's probably too early to say what the defining issue will be.

A lot of the familiar issues are still on the table. Housing and taxes and legislative power and water.

But our panel of experts told us this week all of it is going to be shaped by the one reality lawmakers can't escape.

It's an election year. We talked with our own

Sean Higgins, Robert Gerke of the Salt Lake Tribune, former lawmaker Holly Richardson this week,

and they all made the same point. A good share of the rhetoric and a good number of the bills

themselves won't just be aimed at constituents. They'll be aimed at voters, and more specifically, at a political base.

They say you can already see that strategy in some of the bills being introduced, including by one lawmaker in particular, a man named Trevor Lee.

Here's Robert Gerke.

Nobody had really heard of Trevor until a few years ago,

and he knocked off longtime representative Steve Handy in a primary up in Leighton.

He is a very conservative, very MAGA, very anti-immigrant legislator

who has put his foot in his mouth a few times, gotten in some hot water,

statements criticizing LGBTQ people.

You know, going after immigrants, going after the city, going after Democrats.

He's very outspoken.

Kind of fits in that new MAGA mold that we've seen emerging at the Utah Capitol more and more.

And he's got a slate of bills this session, all of which are pretty provocative.

Yes, Representative Trevor Lee, and I represent District 16 here in the state of Utah.

Got it. So you recently made a post about intending to rename Harvey Milk Boulevard to Charlie Kirk Boulevard. Why are you

proposing this? Night South in Salt Lake City right now is called Harvey Milk Boulevard after the

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