On Sunday, The Salt Lake Tribune — owned by the same parent company as the other well-known Utah site, Deseret News — chose to attack conservative data guru Data Republican by wading into her personal life and doxxing her husband, a private citizen and co-owner of a Salt Lake City distillery.
Instead of explaining how Data Republican (who’s real name is Jennica Pounds) rose to prominence on social media, had tremendous personal success as a deaf Utahn, and found seemingly endless examples of government waste, The Tribune’s Brock Marchant chose to smear Pounds’s work, dox her husband, and reveal his occupation:
[S]he also co-owns Spirits of the Wasatch Distillery in Salt Lake City with her husband, a former officer for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, as reported in a Feb. 15 article by Utah Stories that profiles the business. As of Friday, the “Our Story” webpage on the distillery’s website appeared to have been removed.
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When The Salt Lake Tribune reached out for comment this week, Pounds’ media and security representative said she has had to discontinue all media interviews for the immediate future.
An email sent to Spirits of the Wasatch Distillery was answered by Brent Pounds, who is Jennica’s husband according to the Utah Stories article.
“Jennica’s activities as DataRepublican (small r) have no connection with the distillery or our staff,” he said, referring to DataRepublican’s account by its full display name.
He added that he forwarded other “questions to her and she will hopefully be able to respond soon, but is currently out of town.”
And why was The Tribune even interested in Pounds? Because Data Republican was recently doxxed by the fraudsters Rolling Stone (yes, these fine people) and seen increased notoriety on X by the likes of Elon Musk and The Tribune’s favorite boogeyman, Senator Mike Lee (R-UT). Predictably, the rag implied she is the real head of DOGE and true yielder of the chainsaw. Spooky!
As a result of that boom, she left her tech job with Upstart — which they made sure to note has “ties to right-wing billionaire Peter Thiel” as though they were connecting dots with string on a wall — to engage in what our friends at RedState described as “full-time work aligned with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).”
Sadly, Pounds telegraphed this a few weeks ago on X, lambasting the left for “attacking my husband’s small business” when he’s merely “an honest man who works hard.”
After the article went live, she tore them to pieces on X: “Hello Salt Lake Tribune, If your goal was to introduce me to the world, why did you cut the part of my husband's quote where he said he forwarded your questions to me and that I should be responding soon? You had no interest in following up with him—so why present it otherwise? Thanks, Jennica.”
In another, she called out the paper for choosing to “not” engage in “journalism,” but instead “manufacturing a narrative.” “Trust is built on good faith and fair reporting. You showed neither.”
The rest of The Tribune piece came off like an aggregation of the Rolling Stone screed and the thesis that “some of the information she’s offered has led to false conclusions.”
As a result of this smear campaign, The Tribune has been torched on social media. Based on the responses to the X post of the article and even subsequent, unrelated X posts (like here, here, and here), they’re having a rough few days.
In contrast, The Tribune and Rolling Stone could have taken the lead by actually hearing what she had to say. Prior to the Rolling Stone smear piece, NewsNation senior national correspondent Brian Entin spoke to her last month for a 30-minute network special (and clips airing on other NewsNation shows) (watch below):
RedState’s Brad Essex also gave Pounds her due (click “expand”):
Jennica, a brilliant and tech-savvy conservative voice, has been assisting Elon Musk in ways that evoke the Irregulars from Sherlock Holmes—only with a modern, digital twist. Unfortunately, her efforts to contribute to society have made her a target. Left-leaning detractors recently doxxed her, exposing personal details about her life simply because of her association with Musk. And the harassment hasn’t stopped.
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Despite the pressure, Jennica remains steadfast, using her platform to advocate for causes close to her heart—most notably, accessibility for the deaf and hard-of-hearing community.
A Passion for Accessibility
Jennica, who is deaf, leverages her personal experience to push for practical solutions. Take, for instance, her reaction to President Donald Trump’s recent press conference takedown of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. While she enjoyed the exchange, she noticed a glaring omission: the lack of a sign language interpreter. “An interpreter for a one-hour press conference earns, at most, around $50,” she pointed out on X, underscoring how affordable this accommodation could be. She didn’t stop at this mild critique—she reached out to Trump directly. “Thank you. I did, in fact, call out President Trump on the need for interpreters and have had many debates about it on X,” she wrote. Her proposal? Update federal TV standards to include “a second, toggleable camera stream” for sign language, mirroring the ADA-mandated push that brought closed captions to the mainstream.
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Jennica Pounds is changing that narrative. For the first time, she’s showing the world that people with disabilities can be a positive, transformative force in America—not just as recipients of aid, but as innovators and leaders.
