Hosting a second Winter Games in 2034 is “an Olympic-sized opportunity” for the state, according to a new report released Tuesday by the University of Utah’s Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute.

“Few single events in Utah history compare in reach and significance,” states the institute’s second “Keepers of the Flame” report, citing an estimated 15 billion viewer hours of coverage expected during the Olympics and the Paralympics that follow for athletes with disabilities.

That puts pressure on the state to tackle what the report described as “Utah’s Troubling Seven” challenges, just as the 2002 Winter Games pushed officials to deal with problems like I-15 gridlock and the need for more public transportation.

“Even with Utah’s well-documented exceptional economy, our state is changing fast. And even as Utah prospers, serious challenges pose a threat to Utah’s long-term success,” the report warned, but the 2034 Games can serve “as a powerful catalyst to make Utah even better.”

Utah’s seven challenges identified by the institute are:

1. Housing affordability and homelessness. Housing prices grew faster in Utah than anywhere else in the U.S. from 1991 to 2024, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency, while the number of Utahns without homes reached a record high this year.
2. Traffic congestion. Delays on Utah roads between June 2016 and January 2025 grew four times faster than the state’s population, based on six-month moving averages.
3. Third grade reading proficiency. Considered “a leading indicator for future educational success,” proficiency remains below 50% statewide
4. College graduation rates. The share of Utah high school graduates enrolling in higher education has dropped in two of the past three years, while half of the state’s eight degree-granting institutions report completion rates below 50%
5. Water and Great Salt Lake. “Lower water levels put at risk the benefits created by the lake and threaten Utah’s long-term economic, ecological, and human health,” the report said, and “represents one of Utah’s greatest international and national reputational risks”
6. Energy supply. Utah, like the rest of the country, is facing increased power demands due to growth, energy intensive industries and artificial intelligence, and the need to replace aging plants
7. Behavioral health. Utah is third in the nation for adults with serious mental illness, and the fourth for those with serious thoughts of suicide, the report said, while the “share of Utah young adults with poor mental health more than doubled in the past 10 years”

Before billions tune into Opening Ceremonies at the University of Utah’s Rice-Eccles Stadium on Feb. 10, 2034, the 44-page report offers starting points to address those challenges, such as creating a statewide community land trust, as “a quick and effective way to lower housing costs” and prioritizing connected autonomous vehicles to ease traffic congestion.

Other “consequential ideas” to be considered are placing reading pros in K-3 classrooms, expanding career-oriented “catalyst centers” into Salt Lake County, conserving up to 500,000 acre-feet of water annually, investing in a state energy research fund, and aligning behavioral health efforts and investments with Utah’s strategic plan.

Insights in the reports that are intended “to help guide Utah and leverage the Games” begin with a call for the state “to lead with dignity,” in “a time of significant polarization and mean-spirited, sometimes even violent, expression and actions.”

Next is tapping in to Utah’s younger generations, followed by focusing on long-term goals at the community level and catalyzing private innovation and investment, possibly through creating an impact fund that could provide both societal benefits and profits.

Utahns stepped up for the 2002 Games, the report noted, with estimated private and public investments in transportation, resorts, venues, housing, hotels and other areas that were made to benefit the 2002 Games add up to $7.25 billion in 2024 dollars.

While about $4 billion of that amount went to rebuild I-15 and add TRAX light rail lines along with other transportation projects, the list also included spending for ski resort and Salt Palace expansions, new hotels and Olympic venues, and a public safety communications system.

Thanks in large part to the work done in the decades before and after 2002, this time around, Utah can claim seven “major achievements in the state’s economic success story,” the report said. Dubbed “Utah’s Magnificent Seven” achievements, they are:

1. Economic dynamism and diversity. “Utahns have built the most impressive economy in the nation,” the report said, highly diversified with more than double the national average real GDP growth over the past decade
2. High household income and low poverty. Adjusted for regional price parity, Utah’s 2023 household income ranks the nation’s highest while the state’s three-year average poverty rate from 2021 to 2023 is the lowest, at 6.7%
3. Upward mobility. Utah is one of only three states nationwide to hit top levels of upward mobility in every county, according to Opportunity Insights at Harvard University estimates
4. Widespread prosperity. Utah “exhibits the most equal distribution of income in the nation,” according to a Census Bureau measurement
5. Well-trained and educated workforce. Utah had the nation’s third highest share in 2023 of adults aged 25-64 with postsecondary training, including from trade and technical schools
6. Fast growing population and youthfulness. Utah’s population increased 18.4% between the 2010 and 2020 censuses, a faster rate than any state in the nation. With a median age of 32.4 in 2024, Utah also has the nation’s youngest population.
7. Social cohesion. Utah had the highest level of social capital among the state in a 2021 Utah Foundation study of more than 30 measures “in the broad categories of family structure, community participation, and economic mobility.”

The institute’s director, Natalie Gochnour, said the state is positioned to take advantage of another Winter Games.

“The global spotlight of the 2034 Games provides a powerful motivation and deadline for Utah to make strategic investments and pursue innovative solutions to many of our state’s most troubling challenges,” Gochnour said. “By proactively addressing our challenges and building on our strengths, Utah’s Olympic legacy will extend far beyond the Games.”

The Utah governor, Spencer Cox, on Sunday told national talkshows that the man suspected of killing Turning Point USA executive director Charlie Kirk was living with and in a relationship with a person “transitioning from male to female” as investigators continue exploring a possible motive in the attack.

The Republican politician’s comments came four days after Kirk – a critic of gay and transgender rights – was shot to death from a distance with a rifle during an event at Utah Valley University while speaking with a student about mass shootings in the US and trans people. Nonetheless, Cox stopped short of saying that officials had determined the suspect’s partner’s alleged status was a factor in Kirk’s killing.

In comments to NBC’s Meet the Press, Cox said that Kirk’s accused killer, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, was not cooperating with authorities. Yet authorities are gathering information from family members and people around him, Cox said.

Cox said that what investigators had gathered showed Robinson “does come from a conservative family – but his ideology was very different than his family”.

Citing the content of investigators’ interviews with people close to Robinson, Cox said “we do know that the [suspect’s] roommate … is a [partner] who is transitioning from male to female.

“I will say that that person has been very cooperative with authorities,” Cox remarked to Meet the Press host Kristen Welker, referring to the roommate. “And … the why behind this … we’re all drawing lots of conclusions on how someone like this could be radicalized. And I think that those are important questions for us to ask and important questions for us to answer.”

The governor did not elaborate on the evidence that investigators were relying on to establish Robinson’s relationship to his roommate with whom he shared an apartment in Washington county, Utah, about 260 miles from where Kirk was killed.

Robinson’s arrest was announced on Friday after he surrendered to authorities to end a two-day manhunt in the wake of the 31-year-old Kirk’s killing.

At the time of his arrest, Robinson was a third-year student in an electrical apprenticeship program at Dixie Technical College.

Utah records show both of his parents are registered Republicans who voted in the 2024 election that gave Donald Trump, their party’s leader, a second presidency. But publicly available information offers little if any insight into Robinson’s personal beliefs.

Cox made it a point to tell NBC that “friends that have confirmed that there was kind of that deep, dark internet … culture and these other dark places of the internet” where Robinson “was going deep”. The governor did not elaborate – though on Saturday, citing the work of law enforcement, he told the Wall Street Journal that “it’s very clear to us and to investigators that this was a person who was deeply indoctrinated with leftist ideology.”

On Sunday, in a separate interview, CNN’s Dana Bash asked Cox to elaborate on his comments to the Journal.

“That information comes from the people around him, from his family members and his friends – that’s how we got that information,” Cox told CNN. “There’s so much more that we’re learning, and so much more that we will learn.”

Bash also asked Cox whether the roommate’s status was relevant to the investigation and a potential motive. The governor replied, “That is what we are trying to figure out right now.”

“I know everybody wants to know exactly why, and point the finger,” Cox said. “And I totally get that. I do, too.”

Yet Cox said he had not read all interview transcripts compiled by investigators, “so I just want to be careful … and so we’ll have to wait and see what comes out.”

Cox said he expected the public would learn more when formal charges were filed against Robinson. The governor said he expected that to happen Tuesday.

During his CNN appearance, Cox also said that investigators were looking into a potential note left by Robinson.

Officials at the group chat app Discord recently said that they had identified an account on the platform associated with Robinson – but found no evidence that the suspect planned the incident on the platform.

The spokesperson for Discord did say that there were “communications between the suspect’s roommate and a friend after the shooting, where the roommate was recounting the contents of a note the suspect had left elsewhere”.

When asked about the note, Cox said that “those are things that are still being processed for accuracy and verification”. He suggested additional details about the note could be “included in charging documents”.

Members of both of the US’s major political parties on Sunday reiterated condemnations of Kirk’s killing and political violence in general.

“Every American is harmed by this – it’s an attack on an individual and an attack on a country whose entire purpose, entire way of being is that we can resolve what we need to resolve through a political process,” Pete Buttigieg, a Democrat who served as the US transportation secretary during Joe Biden’s presidency, said to Welker.

Republican US senator Lindsey Graham, meanwhile, told Welker: “What I’m asking everybody to do is not to resort to violence to settle your political differences.”