President Donald Trump has turned his attention to the drying Great Salt Lake, declaring his commitment to “MAKE ‘THE LAKE’ GREAT AGAIN!” over the weekend and pledging to work with Utah’s governor to get the job done.
“We promised to work closely together,” Gov. Spencer Cox told reporters at the state Capitol Monday after meeting with Trump last week.
“I told him that it’s going to take funding to help us save the Great Salt Lake,” Cox said. “He didn’t flinch at that at all. He said that he could be supportive of helping us secure the funding that we need.”
Cox, a Republican, said he and the president talked about the potential for $1 billion in federal funding for the lake. The governor said he and other state officials will spend the next few months hammering out a proposal to submit to the federal government. Cox, who returned over the weekend from a series of meetings with the White House and fellow governors in Washington, D.C., didn’t share details on what the plan might include.
The lake began 2026 at its third-lowest level on record due to decades of drought, climate change and redirection of water for use by farmers, cities and industry. Its exposed lakebed contains arsenic, mercury and lead, raising public health concerns about dust blowing into neighboring communities.
In a post Saturday on his Truth Social social media platform, Trump said that it is “very important to save the Great Salt Lake.”
“This is an Environmental hazard that must be worked on, IMMEDIATELY — It is of tremendous interest to me,” the post said. “The people of Utah are spectacular, and they deserve to be helped. I am dealing with your very caring Governor, Spencer Cox, and we are going to make it all happen! MAKE ‘THE LAKE’ GREAT AGAIN!”
Cox has said he didn’t vote for Trump in 2016 or 2020, but endorsed him after an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania 2024, calling his survival a “miracle.”
