
New Utah laws are in effect. Here's how they'll impact you
Several Utah bills passed during the 2025 legislative session went into effect Wednesday.
Why it matters: These laws impact everything from how much money you take home to what your children eat for school lunch.
Here are some lesser-known laws worth your attention:
✍️ English learners: HB 42 gives public schools emergency funding if they experience a large enrollment increase of English language learners.
💰 Income tax cut: HB 106 lowers the state income tax rate from 4.55% to 4.5%.
🚗 Window tinting: HB 112 bars law enforcement officers from requesting driver's license or car registration suspensions for window tint violations.
🚫 Food additives: HB 402 prevents public schools from serving foods that contain certain additives, like Red Dye 40.
Red Dye 40 is commonly found in candies, cereals, sodas and other packaged snacks.
💧 Water rates: HB 274 allows cities to set up tiered water rates to promote conservation.
🎭 Child actors: HB 322 provides legal protections for child actors and social media influencers and mandates that parents or guardians establish trust accounts for them.

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Axios
an hour ago
- Axios
D.C. schools are banning cellphones, joining almost half of the nation
D.C.'s public schools will enforce a cell phone ban starting next school year, the district said on Friday. Why it matters: D.C. joins nearly half the country in the bipartisan push to limit students' cellphone use in the classroom. D.C. middle schools and several of its high schools already implemented the ban, the district said. Catch up quick: Phone bans have gained momentum across Democratic and Republican state legislatures in recent years. Arizona, Arkansas and New York 's governors signed bills into law this year to implement bans. By the numbers: As of April, 11 statewide phone bans or restrictions were implemented and seven states issued policy recommendations, according to health nonprofit KFF. An additional 17 states introduced legislation to ban or restrict cellphone use in schools. State of play: The phone bans are aimed at boosting students' attention during class as they struggle to recover from COVID learning loss. Screen time is also partially at fault for a youth mental health crisis, research has found. What they're saying: "Piloting a phone-free program in our middle schools demonstrated that storing students' personal devices throughout the school day enriches academic, social, and emotional learning," Lewis Ferebee, D.C. schools chancellor, said in a statement. "From increased classroom engagement to reduced anxiety and stronger student relationships — DCPS is ready to scale the program so we can keep driving outcomes that positively impact our students." What we're watching: Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Tim Kaine (D-Va.) reintroduced a bipartisan bill in February to study the effects of cellphones in schools, but the legislation has not seen movement since. The bill proposes $5 million annually for five years for a pilot program to provide schools with secure containers for the phones. It would allow exceptions for students with health conditions, disabilities and non-English speakers.


New York Post
2 hours ago
- New York Post
High schooler arrested by ICE on his way to volleyball practice freed after 6 days in ‘humiliating' conditions
A Massachusetts high school student who was arrested by immigration agents on his way to volleyball practice has been released from custody after a judge granted him bond Thursday. Marcelo Gomes da Silva, 18, who came to the U.S. from Brazil at age 7, was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents Saturday. Authorities have said the agents were looking for the Milford High School teenager's father, who owns the car Gomes da Silva was driving at the time and had parked in a friend's driveway Advertisement 5 Marcelo Gomes da Silva speaks to reporters after being released from ICE detention. AP Speaking with members of the media outside the detention center shortly after his release on $2,000 bond, Gomes da Silva described 'humiliating' conditions and said his faith helped him through his six days of detention. On his wrist, he wore a bracelet made from the thin sheet of metallic blanket he was given to sleep on the cement floor. 'I'll always remember this place,' he said. 'I'll always remember how it was.' Advertisement His lawyer, Robin Nice, told reporters after the hearing in Chelmsford that his arrest 'shouldn't have happened in the first place. This is all a waste.' 'We disrupted a kid's life. We just disrupted a community's life,' Nice said. 'These kids should be celebrating graduation and prom, I assume? They should be doing kid stuff, and it is a travesty and a waste of our judicial process to have to go through this.' She said Gomes da Silva was confined to a room holding 25 to 35 men, many twice his age, most of the time he was detained, with no windows, time outside, privacy to use the restroom or permission to shower. Advertisement 5 Supporters gather outside federal court in support of the teen who was detained by ICE last weekend. AP Nice said that at one point Gomes da Silva, who is active in his local church, asked for a Bible and was denied. Gomes da Silva, who said his father taught him to 'put other people first,' said many of the men imprisoned with him didn't speak English and didn't understand why they were there. He had to inform some of them they were being deported, and then watched them break down in tears. Advertisement 'I told every single inmate down there: When I'm out, if I'm the only one who was able to leave that place, I lost,' he said. 'I want to do whatever I can to get them as much help as possible. If they have to be deported, so be it. But in the right way, in the right conditions. Because no one down there is treated good.' 5 da Silva was confined to a room holding 25 to 35 men, many twice his age, most of the time he was detained, with no windows, time outside, privacy to use the restroom or permission to shower. AP He said some days, he was given only crackers to eat, which he shared with cellmates. His first stop after being released was for McDonald's chicken nuggets and french fries. Not ICE's target, but detained anyway U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said earlier this week ICE officers were targeting a 'known public safety threat' and Gomes da Silva's father 'has a habit of reckless driving at speeds in excess of 100 miles per hour through residential areas.' 'While ICE officers never intended to apprehend Gomes da Silva, he was found to be in the United States illegally and subject to removal proceedings, so officers made the arrest,' she said in a statement. Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons said Monday that 'like any local law enforcement officer, if you encounter someone that has a warrant or … he's here illegally, we will take action on it.' 5 According to U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, Gomes da Silva's father 'has a habit of reckless driving at speeds in excess of 100 miles per hour through residential areas.' AP Upon his release, Gomes da Silva pushed back on ICE's characterizations of his father: 'Everything I got was from my dad. He's a good person. He never did anything wrong.' Advertisement When he was able to call his parents during his detainment, Gomes da Silva said his father sobbed and told him the family was scared to leave the house. Gomes da Silva initially entered the country on a visitor visa and was later issued a student visa that has since lapsed, Nice said. He told reporters he didn't know his immigration status until he was arrested. Advertisement He said an officer asked him, 'Do you know why you were arrested?' He said no. 'I told her, ma'am, I was 7 years old. I don't know nothing about that stuff,' he recalled. 'I don't understand how it works.' Nice described him as deeply rooted in his community and a dedicated member of both the school marching band and a band at his church. The immigration judge set a placeholder hearing date for a couple of weeks from Thursday, but it might take place months from that, Nice said. Advertisement 'We're optimistic that he'll have a future in the United States,' she said. A shaken community 'I love my son. We need Marcelo back home. It's no family without him,' João Paulo Gomes Pereira said in a video released Wednesday. 'We love America. Please, bring my son back.' The video showed the family in the teen's bedroom. Gomes da Silva's sister describes enjoying watching movies with her brother and the food he cooks for her: 'I miss everything about him.' Students at Milford High staged a walkout Monday to protest his detainment. Advertisement Other supporters packed the stands of the high school gymnasium Tuesday night, when the volleyball team dedicated a match to their missing teammate. 5 Milford High students staged a walkout in protest of Marcelo's detainment. AP Amani Jack, a recent Milford High graduate, said her classmate's absence loomed large over the graduation ceremony, where he was supposed to play in the band. She said if she had a chance to speak with the president, she'd ask him to 'put yourself in our shoes.' 'He did say he was going to deport criminals,' she said. 'Marcelo is not a criminal. He's a student. I really want him to take a step in our shoes, witnessing this. Try and understand how we feel. We're just trying to graduate high school.' Veronica Hernandez, a family advocate from Medford who said she works in a largely Hispanic community where ICE has had an active presence, said cases like Gomes da Silva's show immigration enforcement is serious about taking 'anybody' without legal status, not just those accused of crimes. 'I think seeing that something so simple as a child driving themselves and their friends to volleyball practice at risk struck a chord,' she said.

Los Angeles Times
4 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
Planet-warming emissions dropped when companies had to report them. EPA wants to end that
LEOPOLD, Ind. — On the ceiling of Abbie Brockman's middle school English classroom in Perry County, the fluorescent lights are covered with images of a bright blue sky, a few clouds floating by. Outside, the real sky isn't always blue. Sometimes it's hazy, with pollution drifting from coal-fired power plants in this part of southwest Indiana. Knowing exactly how much, and what it may be doing to the people who live there, is why Brockman got involved with a local environmental organization that's installing air and water quality monitors in her community. 'Industry and government is very, very, very powerful. It's more powerful than me. I'm just an English teacher,' Brockman said. But she wants to feel she can make a difference. In a way, Brockman's monitoring echoes the reporting that the Environmental Protection Agency began requiring from large polluters more than a decade ago. Emissions from four coal-fired plants in southwest Indiana have dropped 60% since 2010, when the rule took effect. That rule is now on the chopping block, one of many that President Trump's EPA argues is costly and burdensome for industry. But experts say dropping the requirement risks a big increase in emissions if companies are no longer publicly accountable for what they put in the air. And they say losing the data — at the same time the EPA is cutting air quality monitoring elsewhere — would make it tougher to fight climate change. At stake is the Greenhouse Gas Reporting program, a 2009 rule from President Barack Obama's administration that affects large carbon polluters like refineries, power plants, wells and landfills. In the years since, they've collectively reported a 20% drop in emissions, mostly driven by the closure of coal plants. And what happens at these big emitters makes a difference. Their declining emissions account for more than three-quarters of the overall, if modest, decline in all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions since 2010. The registry includes places not usually thought of as big polluters but that have notable greenhouse gas emissions, such as college campuses, breweries and cereal factories. Even Walt Disney World in Florida, where pollution dropped 62% since 2010, has to report along with nearly 10,600 other places. 'We can't solve climate change without knowing how much pollution major facilities are emitting and how that's changing over time,' said Jeremy Symons, a former EPA senior climate adviser now at Environmental Protection Network, an organization of ex-EPA officials that monitors environmental policies. The group provided calculations as a part of The Associated Press' analysis of impacts from proposed rule rollbacks. Symons said some companies would welcome the end of the registry because it would make it easier to pollute. It's not clear how much the registry itself has contributed to declining emissions. More targeted regulations on smokestack emissions, as well as coal being crowded out by cheaper and less polluting natural gas, are bigger factors. But the registry 'does put pressure on companies to ... document what they've done or at least to provide a baseline for what they've done,' said Stanford University climate scientist Rob Jackson, who heads Global Carbon Project, a group of scientists that tally national carbon emissions yearly. Gina McCarthy, a former EPA administrator under Obama, said the registry makes clear how power plants are doing against each other, and that's an inducement to lower emissions. 'It is money for those companies. It's costs. It's reputation. It's been, I think, a wonderful success story and I hope it continues.' The potential end of the reporting requirement comes as experts say much of the country's air goes unmonitored. Nelson Arley Roque, a Penn State professor who co-authored a study in April on these 'monitoring deserts,' said about 40% of U.S. lands are unmonitored. That often includes poor and rural neighborhoods. 'The air matters to all of us, but apparently 50 million people can't know or will never know'' how bad the air is, Roque said. The EPA is also trying to claw back money that had been earmarked for air monitoring, part of the termination of grants that it has labeled as targeting diversity, equity and inclusion. That includes $500,000 that would have funded 40 air monitors in a low-income and minority community in the Charlotte, North Carolina, area. CleaneAIRE NC, a nonprofit that works to improve air quality across the state that was awarded the grant, is suing. 'It's not diversity, equity and inclusion. It's human rights,' said Daisha Wall, the group's community science program manager. 'We all deserve a right to clean air.' Research strongly links poor air quality to diseases like asthma and heart disease, with a slightly less established link to cancer. Near polluting industries, experts say what's often lacking is either enough data in specific locations or the will to investigate the health toll. Indiana says it 'maintains a robust statewide monitoring and assessment program for air, land and water,' but Brockman and others in this part of the state, including members of Southwestern Indiana Citizens for Quality of Life, aren't satisfied. They're installing their own air and water quality monitors. It's a full-time job to keep the network of monitors up and running, fighting spotty Wi-Fi and connectivity issues. Fighting industry is a sensitive subject, Brockman added. Many families depend on jobs at coal-fired power plants, and poverty is real. She keeps snacks in her desk for the kids who haven't eaten breakfast. 'But you also don't want to hear of another student that has a rare cancer,' she said. Walling, Borenstein, Bickel and Wildeman write for the Associated Press. AP writer Matthew Daly contributed to this report from Washington.