There might not be a more beloved public-access golf course in Utah than Bonneville, a hilly layout with treacherous greens nestled in the foothills above Salt Lake City.

Many of the state’s top amateur golfers got their start at Bonneville, which first opened for play in 1929. It remains one of the most-played courses in the entire state.

That’s why so many of the state’s best female golfers are excited to test the par-74 (for women) course at the 112th Utah Women’s State Amateur, which begins Monday and runs through Thursday.

“I love it out here,” said defending champion Kelsey Chugg, having won the tournament last year at Davis Park. “I am a city course kid. I love coming up here in the evenings, and you can feel the history all over the place.”

The Women’s Am is returning to Bonneville for the first time since 1992, when Lisa Imamura won the second of her two State Am championships. Imamura is now an accountant with the Utah Golf Association.

“Winning it at Bonneville really meant a lot to me,” Imamura said, recalling a win when the tournament was still a 54-hole stroke-play event. “I saw my husband with tears in his eyes, and said, ‘aha, I finally made you cry.’”

Bonneville also hosted the tournament in 1946, 1958 and 1965. Utah Golf Hall of Fame member Mary Lou Baker, who recently died at the age of 96, was the winner in 1946. Another Hall of Famer, Marge Fillis, won in 1958 and Sue Thompson won in 1965.

“For me, I see all these pictures around, of guys like Dick Kramer, Tom Sorensen and Tommy Reese,” Imamura said. “There’s so much history here. It’s a wonderful place for the tournament.”

Chugg, a Weber State product who played in the U.S. Women’s Open last month, is looking for her fifth State Am title. She defeated BYU golfer Anna Kennedy 2 up in last year’s championship match, and also took home the trophy in 2012, 2013 and 2015.

Having won the U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur last November, the soft-spoken UGA staffer is one of the best female golfers in Utah history, if not the best.

“Some of it is luck, to be honest,” she said of her State Am dominance recently. “I have had matches that were so intense, and have come down to the last hole, and a short putt is missed, or something like that, by the other player. If I stick to my game plan, I usually do pretty well.”

Imamura and Chugg said Bonneville favors golfers with outstanding short games who can read the tricky greens and hit accurate approach shots.

“The greens are so tough that you need to land it in the right spots or you are going to have a tough time two-putting,” Chugg said. “There are greens out here where you have to be on the right tier, or you are done.”

Chugg is one of the favorites, but defending her title won’t be easy.

Utah Valley golfer Carly Dehlin won the Women’s Stroke Play championship last week and is having a sensational summer, having also qualified to play in the Utah Men’s State Amateur. Alpine’s Kerstin Fotu won the Mary Baker Open and is also playing well. Grace Summerhays, sister of State Amateur champ Preston Summerhays, is also entered.

Then there are the BYU golfers — Kennedy and Annie Yang.

“The BYU girls — I don’t know who is going to play, but they have just been getting better and better every year,” Chugg said.

Bridgewater, N.J. • President Donald Trump said Sunday that he would consider shutting down the government if Democrats refuse to vote for his immigration proposals, including a U.S.-Mexico border wall.

Republicans, trying to protect their majority in Congress, are playing down the chance of a shutdown as the November election nears. Trump, however, isn't backing away from the idea.

"I would be willing to 'shut down' government if the Democrats do not give us the votes for Border Security, which includes the Wall!" Trump tweeted. "Must get rid of Lottery, Catch & Release etc. and finally go to system of Immigration based on MERIT!

"We need great people coming into our Country!" Trump said.

Trump returned to the idea of shutting down the government over the border wall after meeting at the White House last week with House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to discuss the fall legislative agenda.

McConnell, asked about a shutdown during a Kentucky radio interview, said it was not going to happen. He did acknowledge, however, that the border funding issue was unlikely to be resolved before the midterm elections.

Ryan said after the meeting: "The president's willing to be patient to make sure that we get what we need so that we can get that done." He added that money for the wall was "not a question of if, it's a question of when."

Trump campaigned on the promise of building a border wall to deter illegal immigration and making Mexico pay for it. Mexico has refused.

Congress has given the president some wall funding but far from the $25 billion he has requested. Trump wants changes to legal immigration, including scrapping a visa lottery program. In addition, he wants to end the practice of releasing immigrants caught entering the country illegally on the condition that they show up for court hearings.

Trump has also demanded that the U.S. shift to an immigration system based more on merit and less on family ties.

Democrats and some Republicans have objected to some of the changes Trump seeks.

The federal budget year ends Sept. 30, and lawmakers will spend much of August in their states campaigning for re-election. The House is now in recess, returning after Labor Day. The Senate remains in session and is set to go on break the week of Aug. 6 before returning for the rest of the month. McConnell canceled most of the Senate's recess to give senators time to work on the annual spending bills that fund government operations.

Both chambers will have a short window to approve a spending bill before government funding expires.

Trump would be taking a political risk if he does allow most government functions to lapse on Oct. 1 — the first day of the new budget year — roughly a month before the Nov. 6 elections, when Republican control of both the House and Senate is at stake.

Some Republican lawmakers doubted the government would be forced to shut down.

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said on CBS' "Face the Nation" that he didn't think shutting down the government just before the elections would be helpful "so let's try and avoid it."

Rep. Steve Stivers, R-Ohio, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, the campaign arm for GOP House candidates, agreed.

"I think we're going to make sure we keep the government open, but we're going to get better policies on immigration," he said on ABC's "This Week." ''The president, I think, wants us to have policies that work for America and work for Americans, and I think that's what we are going to move forward with."

House Republicans released a spending bill this month that provides $5 billion next year to build Trump's wall, a plan he supports.

Democrats have long opposed financing Trump's wall but lack the votes by themselves to block House approval of that amount. They do, however, have the strength to derail legislation in the closely divided Senate.

The $5 billion is well above the $1.6 billion in the Senate version of the bill, which would finance the Department of Homeland Security. The higher amount matches what Trump has privately sought in conversations with Republican lawmakers, according to a GOP congressional aide who wasn't authorized to publicly talk about private discussions and spoke on condition of anonymity.

At the White House meeting last week, Trump, Ryan and McConnell agreed that Congress is on track to enact more than half of federal spending before the new budget year begins Oct. 1, but that DHS funding, including the border wall money, doesn't have to be settled before then, according to a person familiar with the meeting who was not authorized to discuss it publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Two leading Democrats — Reps. Nita Lowey of New York and California's Lucille Roybal-Allard — called the $5 billion a waste that "only further enables this administration's obsession with cruel attacks on immigrants."

Trump also tweeted on Sunday that there are "consequences when people cross our Border illegally" and claimed many who do so are "using children for their own sinister purposes."

Trump's tweet came several days after the government said more than 1,800 children separated at the U.S.-Mexico border under Trump's "zero-tolerance" immigration policy have been reunited with parents and sponsors. A federal judge had ordered the reunions to be completed by last Thursday, but hundreds of children remain separated. The administration says some of their parents have criminal histories.

“Please understand, there are consequences when people cross our Border illegally, whether they have children or not - and many are just using children for their own sinister purposes,” Trump said.

Bridgewater, N.J. • The publisher of The New York Times said Sunday he “implored” President Donald Trump at a private White House meeting this month to reconsider his broad attacks on journalists, calling the president’s anti-press rhetoric “not just divisive but increasingly dangerous.”

In a statement, A.G. Sulzberger said he decided to comment publicly after Trump revealed their off-the-record meeting to his more than 53 million Twitter followers on Sunday. Trump's aides had requested that the July 20 meeting not be made public, Sulzberger said.

"Had a very good and interesting meeting at the White House with A.G. Sulzberger, Publisher of the New York Times. Spent much time talking about the vast amounts of Fake News being put out by the media & how that Fake News has morphed into phrase, "Enemy of the People." Sad!" Trump wrote.

Hours after that exchange, Trump resumed his broadside against the media in a series of tweets that included a pledge not to let the country "be sold out by anti-Trump haters in the ... dying newspaper industry."

Sulzberger, who succeeded his father as publisher on Jan. 1, said his main purpose for accepting the meeting was to "raise concerns about the president's deeply troubling anti-press rhetoric."

"I told the president directly that I thought that his language was not just divisive but increasingly dangerous," he said.

Sulzberger said he told Trump that while the phrase "fake news" is untrue and harmful, "I am far more concerned about his labeling journalists 'the enemy of the people.' I warned that this inflammatory language is contributing to a rise in threats against journalists and will lead to violence."

Sulzberger, who attended the meeting with James Bennet, the Times' editorial page editor, said he stressed that leaders outside the U.S. are already using Trump's rhetoric to justify cracking down on journalists.

"I warned that it was putting lives at risk, that it was undermining the democratic ideals of our nation, and that it was eroding one of our country's greatest exports: a commitment to free speech and a free press," the publisher said.

Sulzberger added that he made clear that he was not asking Trump to soften his attacks against the Times if he thinks the newspaper's coverage is unfair. "Instead, I implored him to reconsider his broader attacks on journalism, which I believe are dangerous and harmful to our country," he said.

Trump reads the Times and gives interviews to its reporters. But the president — who, like all politicians, is concerned about his image — also regularly derides the newspaper as the "failing New York Times." However, the Times' ownership company in May reported a 3.8 percent increase in first-quarter revenue compared to the same period in 2017.

The president, who lashes out over media coverage of him and the administration that he deems unfair, has broadly labeled the news media the "enemy of the people" and regularly accuses reporters of spreading "fake news" — the term he often uses for stories he dislikes.

Hours after his tweet about the Sulzberger meeting, Trump renewed his criticism of the media in a series of posts in which he accused reporters of disclosing "internal deliberations of government" and said that can endanger "the lives of many." He did not cite examples but wrote "Very unpatriotic!" and said freedom of the press "comes with a responsibility to report the news ... accurately," a sentiment that journalists share.

Trump also claimed that 90 percent of the coverage of his administration is negative, leading to an "all time low" in public confidence in the media. He cited the Times and The Washington Post, two favorite targets, and claimed, "They will never change!"

Last week, Trump told hundreds of people attending the annual Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Kansas City, Missouri: "Don't believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news," as he gestured toward journalists at the back of the room.

He also told them to remember "what you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening."

Sulzberger said he accepted the meeting because Times publishers have a history of meeting with presidential administrations and other public figures who have concerns with the publication's coverage of them.

After Sulzberger took charge, Trump tweeted that his ascension gave the paper a "last chance" to fulfill its founder's vision of impartiality.

In the January tweet, Trump urged the new publisher to "Get impartial journalists of a much higher standard, lose all of your phony and non-existent 'sources,' and treat the President of the United States FAIRLY, so that the next time I (and the people) win, you won't have to write an apology to your readers for a job poorly done!"

Tension between the administration and the news media was put on display last week after the White House told a CNN correspondent that she could not attend a Rose Garden event that was open to all credentialed media.

The correspondent, Kaitlan Collins, said she was barred because she asked Trump questions he did not like at a press event in the Oval Office earlier that day. The White House said Collins was barred because she refused to leave the Oval Office after being repeatedly asked to do so. Other journalists who were in the room at the time disputed the White House account.

Anthony Scaramucci, who spent 11 days as White House communications director last year before he was fired over an obscenity-laced tirade against other staffers in an interview, said he disagreed with the decision to put Collins in the "penalty box." He told CNN's "State of the Union" the order to bar Collins likely came from Trump because "he likes to be respected."

Vice President Mike Pence, in a separate interview, said the administration believes in freedom of the press.

“But maintaining the decorum that is due at the White House I think is an issue that we’ll continue to work for,” he said in a taped interview broadcast Sunday on Fox Business Network.

Redding, Calif. • The deadly Northern California wildfire that has forced tens of thousands of people to flee their homes burned virtually unchecked Sunday as fire crews surveyed a small town that was reduced to an ashy moonscape of blackened trees and smoldering rubble.

The death toll climbed to six, and authorities worried that another forecast for high winds could fan the flames even further.

"Right now, it's going everywhere. We still have a lot of open line," said Anthony Romero, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. "Any event could bring this back up again."

The National Weather Service predicted more hot and dry conditions, with wind gusts expected.

Keswick, a mountain town of about 450 people, was almost completely wiped out. The San Bernardino County Fire Department was called in to tamp down smoking piles of debris that were scattered amid downed electricity lines.

"What we're seeing here is an incomplete burn situation," Capt. Doug Miles said as his crew used picks, shovels and rakes to open up piles that just days ago were family homes. The flames laid waste to about 25 blocks, and the "mop up" work was likely to take days. He said his crew would be looking for anything salvageable, but there was little left standing.

Anna Noland, 49, was evacuated twice in three days before learning through video footage that her house had burned. She planned to stay at a shelter at Simpson College in Redding while searching for another place to live.

"I think I'm still in shock," Noland said. "It's just unbelievable knowing you don't have a house to go back to."

Noland was among the 38,000 people who evacuated after the so-called Carr Fire roared into the outskirts of Redding in Shasta County. The fatalities included two firefighters and a woman and her two great-grandchildren.

"My babies are dead," Sherry Bledsoe said through tears after she and family members met Saturday with sheriff's deputies.

Her two children, 5-year-old James Roberts and 4-year-old Emily Roberts, were stranded with their great-grandmother, Melody Bledsoe, 70, when flames swept through the family's rural property Thursday on the outskirts of Redding.

The sixth victim, who was not identified, did not evacuate despite receiving an evacuation warning, Shasta County Sheriff Tom Bosenko said Sunday.

A vehicle problem ignited the fire July 23, but it wasn't until Thursday that the blaze exploded in size and raced into populated areas west of Redding before entering city limits.

On Saturday, it pushed southwest of Redding, the largest city in the region, toward the tiny communities of Ono, Igo and Gas Point. The fire grew slightly Sunday to 139 square miles (360 square kilometers).

It is the largest fire burning in California, threatening more than 5,000 structures. The flames were just 5 percent contained.

The latest tally showed at least 517 structures destroyed and another 135 damaged, Romero said. A count by The Associated Press found at least 300 of those structures were homes.

The firefighters killed in the blaze included Don Ray Smith, 81, of Pollock Pines, a bulldozer operator who was helping clear vegetation in the path of the wildfire. Redding Fire Inspector Jeremy Stoke was also killed, but details of his death were not released.

Bledsoe's relatives were among more than a dozen people reported missing after the furious wind-driven blaze took residents by surprise and leveled several neighborhoods.

The sheriff said he expects to find several of those people alive and just out of touch with loved ones. Officers have gone to homes of several people reported missing and found cars gone — a strong indication they fled.

Wildfires around the state have forced roughly 50,000 people from their homes, said Lynne Tolmachoff, a Cal Fire spokeswoman.

About 12,000 firefighters were battling 17 significant fires Sunday in California, she said.

"We are well ahead of the fire activity we saw last year," she said. "This is just July, so we're not even into the worst part of fire season."

About 100 miles (160 kilometers) southwest of Redding, two blazes that prompted mandatory evacuations in Mendocino County destroyed four homes and threatened more than 4,500 buildings, officials said. They had blackened 39 square miles (101 square kilometers) and were each 5 percent contained.

Authorities also issued evacuation orders in Napa County, famous for its wine, when a fire destroyed eight structures. The blaze had blackened 150 acres, but was 50 percent contained on Sunday.

Big fires continued to burn outside Yosemite National Park and in the San Jacinto Mountains east of Los Angeles near Palm Springs. Those blazes had burned nearly 100 square miles (260 square kilometers).

Yosemite Valley remained closed to visitors and will not reopen until Friday.

Cooperstown, N.Y. • Chipper Jones didn’t bow to the pressure of the moment, and it was considerable.

Jones was inducted Sunday into the Baseball Hall of Fame, and he stood there delivering his speech with wife Taylor staring up at him, hours away from giving birth to a son to be named Cooper in honor of the special day.

Faced with that daunting task, Jones delivered flawlessly, just as he did during his 19-year career with the Atlanta Braves.

“She changed my life forever,” Jones said as his wife brushed away tears. “It took me 40 years and some major imperfections in me along the way to find my true profession. Now we’ve taken our two families and blended them together. It has given me what I’ve been searching for my entire life —true happiness.”

A crowd estimated at about 50,000 gathered on a sun-splashed day to honor six former players. Also enshrined were Jim Thome, Vladimir Guerrero, Trevor Hoffman and former Detroit Tigers teammates Jack Morris and Alan Trammell.

Jones controlled his emotions in a speech that took the crowd through his entire career, starting with his rookie season when he helped lead the Atlanta Braves to the 1995 World Series title. He was one of the greatest switch-hitters in baseball history, in the mold of his dad’s favorite player, Mickey Mantle, and finished with a .303 career batting average, 468 home runs, and 1,623 RBIs, credentials that earned him election on the first try.

Jones also heaped praise on his mom and dad.

“You’re the reason I’m on this stage,” he said.

He ended his speech by thanking the loyal Atlanta fans.

“You stuck by me,” he said. “You’re the reason I never want to play anywhere else. I love you guys. Thank you.”

Emotional during a Hall of Fame visit in February to tour the museum to prepare for this day, Thome held it together despite having to wipe away tears after his daughter Lila sang the national anthem.

“I’m so honored to be part of something so special,” Thome said. “Baseball is beautiful and I am forever in its service.”

The lefty-swinging Thome hit 612 home runs, eighth all-time, and had an MLB record 13 walk-off homers, mostly for the Cleveland Indians. He also had 1,699 RBIs, scored 1,583 runs and drew 1,747 walks.

Among the many he thanked, Thome praised former Cleveland manager Charlie Manuel, who served as the Indians’ hitting coach in the late 1980s and 1990s. Manuel was in the audience.

“He told me I could hit as many home runs as I wanted to,” Thome said. “I knew this was someone I could connect with.”

Greeted by hundreds of fans waving Dominican Republic flags, Guerrero spoke in his native Spanish in a speech that was translated from Spanish and lasted just five minutes. He thanked his father and mother, who cooked dinners for him and does the same now for his son, and the fans and the people in his hometown of Don Gregorio. His son Vladimir Jr., the top prospect in the minor leagues with the Blue Jays, was in attendance.

The nine-time All-Star outfielder batted .318 with 449 homers and 1,496 RBIs and is the first player inducted wearing the cap of the Angels, the team where he enjoyed his greatest success.

Just as he did in his unflappable role in the bullpen during his career as an ace reliever, Hoffman was flawless in delivering his speech, closing it by thanking his wife.

“You shared with me this amazing journey of ups and downs from the beginning, always never letting me get too high or get too low,” Hoffman said. “I love you.”

Hoffman, chosen in his third year on the ballot, played the bulk of his career with the San Diego Padres before finishing with the Milwaukee Brewers. After failing to impress the front office in three years as a shortstop, he switched to the bullpen and became a star. Using a stultifying change-up, Hoffman recorded 601 saves over 18 seasons, second all-time to former Yankees star Mariano Rivera’s 652.

He credited his parents for his success.

“Mom, dad, you’re the biggest reason I’m on this stage,” Hoffman said. “In fact, you’re all of my reasons. Not a day goes by that I’m not thankful for all both of you have done. I love you both beyond words.”

Morris, now 63, pitched 18 seasons for the Tigers, Twins, Blue Jays and Indians, and played on four World Series champions. In the 1980s, he led all pitchers with 2,444.2 innings pitched and 162 wins and topped all AL pitchers in strikeouts with 1,629.

Among those he thanked were his parents and the late Sparky Anderson, who managed the Tigers to the 1984 World Series championship.

“Thank you mom and dad for everything you taught me and have done for me,” Morris said, his voice cracking with emotion as he looked at his dad. “Mom, I know you’re smiling down on us today. Dad, thank you for instilling in me the work ethic that was so vital to my success, but more than that you showed equal love for all your children.

“I know Sparky Anderson is with us today,” Morris said. “He taught me so many things. He taught me to fight through adversity.”

The crowning achievement of Morris’ career was his 1-0 complete-game victory in Game 7 of the 1991 World Series while pitching for his hometown Twins against the Braves. Minnesota manager Tom Kelly wanted to take him out after nine innings and the 36-year-old Morris convinced him not to. Morris also thanked Kelly for that decision.

Trammell and Morris were selected together in December by a veterans committee, which made the day extra special for them.

Trammell played shortstop for 20 seasons — all for the Tigers — and earned six All-Star Game selections, four Gold Glove Awards and three Silver Slugger Awards. His .977 fielding percentage ranks sixth among shortstops with at least 2,000 games played.

Trammell formed a stellar double play combination with Lou Whitaker, who was in the audience on a special day for Tigers fans and put a plug in for his old teammate.

“For 19 years Lou Whitaker and I formed the longest running double play combination in the history of baseball,” Trammell said, recalling the two were called up to the Tigers on the same day. “Lou, it was an honor and a pleasure to have played alongside you all those years. I hope someday you’ll be up here, too.”

Trammell also thanked Anderson, who took over as manager of the Tigers in 1979 after leading the Cincinnati Reds to great success.

“Little did we know our lives were about to change,” Trammell said. “We thought we were good ballplayers, but we found out we didn’t know squat.”

Facing the No. 1 seed in the Midwest Regional, second-seeded Team Fredette knew it could not afford another slow start in The Basketball Tournament, a $2 million winner-take-all event involving 72 teams across the country.

Leading almost the entire way, the team led by former BYU star Jimmer Fredette rolled to an easier-than-expected 100-78 win over an Ohio State-based team known as Scarlet & Gray in a TBT quarterfinal game at Georgia State University’s Sports Arena in Atlanta.

“We knew a better start [than three previous games] was important, especially against this team,” Fredette said. “We knew that if we got down in a hole, in would be really tough to get back.”

Fredette scored 28 points on 10-of-17 shooting and former Utah Jazz center Jack Cooley added 16 points and eight rebounds as Team Fredette silenced former Buckeyes Aaron Craft, Jared Sullinger and Greg Oden.

The victory pushed Team Fredette into the semifinals in Baltimore on Thursday. It will play the winner of Team Challenge ALS and Eberlein Drive at The Fieldhouse on the campus of Morgan State University.

Team Fredette took a 21-17 lead into the second quarter after Jimmer made a jumper to beat the first-quarter buzzer, and had a 51-40 lead at halftime.

The BYU-based team that also features former Cougars Brandon Davies and Charles Abouo led by as many as 23 points in the second half.

“We played together and shared the ball,” Fredette told ESPN. “That’s what we try to do. We got all these guys for a reason. These guys can play.”

Cooley was a late addition to the team, first joining it for a Super 16 game last Friday.

“We controlled the whole game,” Fredette said. “Jack down low, Brandon down low, [they] controlled the boards, got out in transition, and were able to make shots. … It was a whole team effort.”

Ekpe Udoh stayed ready.

By the end of last season, “stay ready” had become a mantra of sorts for a faction of the Utah Jazz bench. With as much depth as the Jazz boasted, there simply wasn’t enough playing time to go around among some guys who were a part of the rotation in the beginning of the season.

Udoh was one of those guys. So were Alec Burks, Raul Neto and Jonas Jerebko. Udoh didn’t know if or when he was going to play from game-to-game. But his professionalism, his support of his teammates, his work in the community, and not to mention his defense, won him a lot of fans in the Jazz organization.

“It was huge,” Udoh said back in May during locker room cleanout. “They said the strength of the team is the team, and a lot of us, we stayed ready. We have a great team of guys. We all trusted in each other and we were all ready for each other.”

A few weeks ago, the Jazz guaranteed Udoh’s contract for a second season, making him a rarity: a former lottery pick who initially didn’t stick in the NBA, matriculated overseas, remade his game and came back to the league.

Udoh’s season was a roller coaster of sorts on the floor. He was a primary reserve for much of the first half of last season, playing consistent minutes through December. He was a sporadic starter when Rudy Gobert and Derrick Favors encountered injury issues.

By the second half of the season, those minutes primarily dried up. Jazz coach Quin Snyder made a change to the rotation, playing Favors as his backup center, significantly affecting Udoh’s minutes. And then, the Jazz traded for Jae Crowder and played him as a smaller power forward.

Udoh never complained, not once. He still wore a perpetual smile around Utah’s locker room. His community service through his monthly book club never waned.

“I was grateful for the opportunity,” Udoh said. “I was happy with the chance I was given. I knew that I still had to go to work.”

So, for what basketball reasons did the Jazz bring Udoh back?

The answers are simple, if yet complex. Udoh wasn’t a scoring threat, averaging 2.6 points per game. But, he came to the Jazz with the reputation as a terrific defender and he didn’t disappoint. He averaged 1.2 blocks per game. More importantly, he may be Utah’s best big man in terms of hedging defensively on the perimeter and staying in front of smaller players, which is a critical skill for a big in today’s NBA.

As a third center, Udoh’s valuable, especially if he understands and is fine with sporadic playing time. Secondly, the Jazz play well with Udoh on the floor, in no small part due to his defense. Udoh posted a positive net rating last season, and for a long stretch had one of the best net ratings on the team.

Maybe most importantly, especially for his role in the upcoming season, Udoh showed an ability to come up big in games after sitting for long stretches. The ability to stay ready, if you will.

In a January road win over the Washington Wizards, with Gobert and Favors out with injury, Udoh stepped in and provided 16 points, nine rebounds, four steals and two blocked shots in 34 minutes. He hadn’t played that many minutes in a month. He wouldn’t for the remainder of the season.

Off the floor, Udoh fit seamlessly with the Jazz culture. He’s become a respected veteran presence in Utah’s locker room. He and Thabo Sefolosha are strong voices concerning social dynamics around the country.

“It’s great that we can have that kind of locker room,” Udoh said. “I want to be able to have conversation with anyone I come in contact with.”

He’s looking forward to improving his game as the offseason reaches its concluding stages. OTAs for the Jazz are roughly six weeks away. And Udoh has spent a large chunk of the summer in SLC working out with Utah assistants.

“I have to be able to score the ball better,” Udoh said. “Defensively, I’m not going to back down. But, being able to score, that’s the key to longevity in the league.”

Long Pond, Pa. • Kyle Busch and his Joe Gibbs Racing team were in sync everywhere on the track but victory lane. When it was time to snap photos of the winners, some members flashed one finger, others held up six.

Yes, that’s one for the win at Pocono Raceway and six for the total this season.

Busch then heard his name shouted from the top of the Richard Petty 200 Victory Circle. He craned his neck toward the section where the words were flanked by two images of Petty in his feathered Stetson hat and dark glasses.

Busch still has a long chase toward Petty on the Cup wins list but it hasn’t kept the 33-year-old star from thinking about how far he can get.

“The top! Pretty simple,” Busch said.

Busch had no one to bump him out of the lead this week and stormed from the bottom half of the field Sunday at Pocono Raceway on the way to his sixth NASCAR Cup victory of the season.

While champagne was sprayed on the podium, team owner Joe Gibbs was a safe distance from the party, a Super Bowl ring glistening on a finger he plugged into his ear to muffle the noise as he talked on the phone.

“Crazy, man. He’s on a tear right now,” he said to the other side.

The milestones kept piling up for Busch in a race where he matched Kevin Harvick for most wins this season.

Busch tied three-time champ Tony Stewart for 13th on the career wins list with 49.

“You keep reaching higher up the ladder and you keep reaching more milestone drivers,” Busch said. “Tony Stewart is one of the all-time best and one of the drivers that I was a fan of growing up. It’s awesome to be able to tie him. There’s many more. We want to keep going.”

Gibbs fielded cars for both Busch and Stewart and said both drivers were born to race.

“Very talented, driven, they want to go to the front,” Gibbs said. “Both of them were real talented, that’s for sure.”

Busch, who won eight times in 2008, made it look easy at Pocono this weekend, with a win Saturday in the Truck Series race. He won for the 192nd time over the Cup, Xfinity and Truck Series.

“How many can you get? I don’t know. I’d like to think everything’s achievable,” Busch said.

He has Cup wins this year at Texas, Bristol, Richmond, Charlotte and Chicagoland. He hasn’t gone more than three races without a winning a race since April. Busch had never won at Pocono until July 2017. He’s won 10 races since that date and led more than 2,000 laps.

The only quibble with all this success?

“I do have a trophy case problem,” Busch said, laughing.

Busch was set to start second but his No. 18 Toyota was one of 13 cars dumped to back of the pack for flunking post-qualifying inspection. The penalized cars included Harvick, who used a bump-and-run on the 18 with seven laps left last week at New Hampshire to knock Busch out of contention.

Oh well.

Much like the qualifying penalty, last week was just a minor afterthought.

Harvick’s pole qualifying run also was tossed out but he led 30 laps and finished fourth.

The race was red flagged with six laps left in the wake of a violent wreck by Darrell Wallace Jr. Wallace lost the breaks in his No. 43 Chevrolet and the car shot across the grass and slammed into the wall. There were several tense seconds during a wait for Wallace to put down his window net. Once out, he sat on the track and slumped against the car before he taken to the track medical center.

When the race resumed, Busch zipped away and he surged ahead again on the final restart in overtime to add to the win total for NASCAR’s Big Three: Busch, Harvick and Martin Truex Jr. have won 16 of the 21 Cup Series.

“What’s crazy is, how this year keeps going,” Busch said. “Harvick gets one, we get one, Truex gets one. We’re all back and forth.”

Busch held off a pair of young drivers aiming for their first career Cup win. Daniel Suarez, the first Mexican driver to win the pole for a Cup race, finished second and Alex Bowman was third.

There are just five races left before the 16-driver playoff field is set.

Only seven drivers have won races this season.

Harvick had a shot at his seventh win derail when the Ford was damaged on pit road and he slipped again to the back of the pack. Harvick is 0 for 36 at Pocono and has yet to win there or at Kentucky Speedway.

Sam Young is a former bishop with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He is also the founder of a group that calls itself “Protect LDS Children.”

FOX 13 News reported that Young and members of the group started a hunger strike in hopes of influencing the LDS Church to stop allowing bishops to do one-on-one interviews with minors to determine their “worthiness.”

Church leaders counsel youth and often conduct a series of interviews, which Young and many other former and current LDS Church members say are inappropriate. Young claims bishops often ask very detailed sexual questions to young church members, which he and his supporters feel can leave minors susceptible to psychological trauma and predatory behavior.

Young plans to fast until church leaders listen to his pleas, and said he hopes the hunger strike will call the church to action.

“I am calling my fellow members to step up and not just protect our children, but protect the good name of the Church,” Young said.

For the full story, go to www.fox13now.com.

Editor’s note: The Salt Lake Tribune and FOX 13 News have a content-sharing partnership.

Paris • The spits and the jeers. The eggs thrown at team cars. The attempts to unbalance riders while riding up the most grueling climbs.

Geraint Thomas never flinched at whatever fans — or his rivals — threw at him or Team Sky.

The Welsh rider was the steadiest rider from the start, the strongest in the Alps and the Pyrenees. On Sunday he concluded his transformation from a support rider into a champion of cycling’s biggest race by claiming his first Tour de France title.

“With the boys, that’s the main thing for the whole three weeks, we stuck together through some tough times, stayed strong,” Thomas said. “Everything just clicked this race.”

Thomas successfully defended his lead of 1 minute, 51 seconds over second-placed Tom Dumoulin in the mostly ceremonial final stage.

Four-time champion Chris Froome, Thomas’s teammate, finished third, 2:24 behind. Froome rode next to Thomas as they crossed the line and applauded.

Thomas was a support rider during Froome’s four victories but he emerged as Sky’s strongest rider in this race when Froome crashed early on and couldn’t keep up in the mountains.

Sky — and consequently Thomas — became a target for many fans due to an asthma drug case involving Froome, stemming from last year’s Spanish Vuelta. Even though Froome was cleared of doping days before the start of the Tour, that didn’t stop some fans from abusing the British team’s riders throughout the three-week race.

“When there is negativity like that, it brings us as a team closer together,” Froome said. “It feels like it’s us against the rest of the world. ... You can choose to let it get to you or you can choose to let it motivate you, and we let it motivate us.”

Thomas stormed into the lead by winning back-to-back mountain stages in the Alps, including the iconic climb up Alpe d’Huez, then defended his advantage in the Pyrenees.

During the podium ceremony, Thomas draped the flag of Wales over his shoulders, then ended his victory speech with a mic drop.

“All I can say is that I do it the right way,” Thomas said when asked about concerns of alleged doping within Sky. “We train super hard and there’s nothing I can say that will prove it. I’ve just got to keep doing what I’m doing. It will stand the test of time.”

An all-around rider who began his career on the track, the 32-year-old Thomas helped Britain to gold medals in team pursuit at the 2008 and 2012 Olympics before turning his full attention to road racing.

“I have my own goals and I kept doing what I’m doing and kept focused on that. ... Obviously it’s not nice to hear (the jeers) but I do what I do and focus on myself,” Thomas said. “It’s easy to get wrapped up in or get angry or depressed but I stay in my own world.”

Riding a yellow bicycle to match his yellow jersey, Thomas shared glasses of champagne with his teammates during the casual ride into Paris before buckling down to keep up with the other leaders on the jarring cobblestones of the Champs-Elysees.

“It’s going to take a while to sink in,” Thomas said. “Normally that stage is really hard but today I just seemed to float around it. I had goose bumps going around there. The support from the Welsh, British flags. ... To ride around wearing this (yellow jersey) is a dream.”

Norwegian rider Alexander Kristoff with UAE Team Emirates won the last stage in a sprint finish, narrowly beating John Degenkolb and Arnaud Demare.

“I’ve dreamed about this victory for many years,” Kristoff said. “I’ve been close many times before but never managed to beat the faster guys like (Mark) Cavendish, (Andre) Greipel, or (Marcel) Kittel, but today they’re not here, they’re out after the mountains, and today I was the fastest, so I’m super happy.”

The mostly flat 116-kilometer (72-mile) leg began in Houilles just outside Paris and concluded with nine laps up and down the Champs-Elysees.

Many spectators along the Champs-Elysees held their arms high to record the riders on their smart phones as they went past on the cobblestones, and there were more cheers when 11 jets flew overhead leaving trails in the blue, white and red colors of the French flag.

Street vendors sold chicken, sausages, waffles, cake and sweets, while the smell of crepes filled the air.

Glenn Roberts, from Newtown in mid-Wales, was in attendance with his wife and children. The family timed its summer vacation to coincide with the Tour’s finish.

“Thomas was in the yellow when we left Wales but we didn’t know if he was going to keep it. We thought Froome was going to win it, if I’m being honest,” Roberts said. “It’s the best thing a Welshman has ever done in sport.”

Atlanta • Sean Newcomb thought his near no-hitter would be the story of the day.

Then he picked up his phone.

Newcomb said he had forgotten about racist, homophobic and sexist tweets he sent as a teenager, but was quickly reminded a few minutes after speaking with the media about the Atlanta Braves’ 4-1 win Sunday over the Los Angeles Dodgers.

After seeing that he had been called out, the 25-year-old Newcomb said it was his idea to bring reporters back to the clubhouse so he could address the issue before he went home.

The old tweets overshadowed his career-best moment.

“This is something obviously that can’t be happening,” he said. “I feel bad about it. I don’t mean to offend anybody. It was six, seven years ago. I didn’t mean anything by it and I definitely regret it, for sure.”

Newcomb came within one strike of pitching the first no-hitter by the Braves since 1994, denied when Chris Taylor sharply singled with two outs in the ninth inning.

“I was happy to get to that point and annoyed it was just a groundball through the hole,” Newcomb said. “In hindsight, you’d like to throw a different pitch or something, but I will just take that and go forward.”

Newcomb had a 2-2 count when Taylor hit a hard grounder beyond the reach of diving third baseman Johan Camargo. That came on the career-high 134th and final pitch by the lefty.

“I was crushed,” Braves catcher Kurt Suzuki said. “It felt like we lost, like that was a walk-off hit, but it happens. We were really close.”

Newcomb (10-5) exited to a thunderous standing ovation from the sellout crowd at SunTrust Park as manager Brian Snitker removed him. Snitker took the ball and gave it back to Newcomb as a keepsake — instead, Newcomb simply tossed it toward the Atlanta dugout as he walked off, wanting no souvenir of the near-miss.

Kent Mercker was the last Atlanta pitcher to throw a no-hitter, doing it 24 years ago at Dodger Stadium. There have been three no-hitters in the majors this year.

Less than an hour later, Newcomb was talking about his offensive tweets.

“I just wanted to apologize for any insensitive material,” he said. “It was a long time ago, six or seven years ago, saying some stupid stuff with friends.”

Major League Baseball dealt with a similar situation this month involving Milwaukee Brewers reliever Josh Hader on the night he pitched in the All-Star Game.

“Such inappropriate comments have no place in our game,” MLB said in a statement. “We are aware of this serious issue ... we will identify an appropriate course of diversity training for him in the Atlanta community.”

In a statement posted on Twitter, the Braves said they had spoken to Newcomb, calling him “incredibly remorseful.”

“We find the tweets hurtful and incredibly disappointing and even though he was 18 or 19 years old when posted, it doesn’t make them any less tolerable. We will work together with Sean towards mending the wounds created in our community,” the team said.

Newcomb struck out eight and walked one against the NL West leaders. He retired the first 15 batters before walking Yasiel Puig to begin the sixth, and that was the only runner Newcomb permitted until the ninth.

Dan Winkler relieved Newcomb and gave up Manny Machado’s RBI single before ending it on Matt Kemp’s groundout.

Nick Markakis homered, doubled and drove in three runs as the Braves snapped a four-game skid and pulled within 1½ games of the NL East lead.

Pitching past the seventh for the first time in 40 career starts, Newcomb worked fast, mixing a good fastball with sharp breaking balls. This is his second season in the majors, having gone 4-9 in 19 starts last year.

“He could’ve thrown 160 pitches and been fine, as evidenced to the last hitter,” Snitker said. “He got up to 95 (mph), probably had some of his best velocities. He kept attacking the strike zone, making them swing the bat and did a great job.”

Ross Stripling (8-3) was subpar in his second straight start, allowing four runs, seven hits and one walk in four innings. Stripling, a first-time All-Star, gave up seven hits and five runs, a season high, in a no-decision that the Dodgers lost last week at Philadelphia.

For Newcomb, a day that could’ve been nearly perfect had a dramatic letdown. His old social media comments cast some darkness on a big day for the Braves, who were also celebrating the Hall of Fame enshrinement of third baseman Chipper Jones in Cooperstown, New York.

July 24 was a very scary day for many in Salt Lake City as flames, smoke and drifting ash erupted from the hillside above the state Capitol, climbing rapidly in wind-fanned fury.

My wife described her fear watching flames shoot higher and higher, racing toward the many homes spread around the conflagration. She feared the first firefighters on the scene would be overwhelmed by the magnitude of the blaze, but hopeful as she watched them take up positions, get their equipment deployed and begin to bring the worst of the situation under control. From her vantage point she said it was clear the firefighters knew exactly what to do and how to do it. It is to their credit that the potential disaster was kept to little more than an exciting fright.

We are really fortunate to have such exceptional professionals, and the results of Tuesday's scare are a credit to their years of training, experience and stamina under conditions of exceptional physical stress. All Salt Lakers should join me in expressing our gratitude to them. The same goes to all the men and women who serve the public good, day and night, most under conditions not as dramatic as Tuesday's fire, but all essential to our exceptional community.

Kudos to all.

Richard H. Schmidt, Salt Lake City

I read with interest your July 25 article "The first small nuclear modular reactor in the country may be coming soon." Unfortunately, this NuScale reactor system is being presented as if its design is fully tested and will be ready to produce power by 2026. The NuScale design being developed on behalf of Utah municipal utilities is a radically new, experimental reactor system that has never been built anywhere.

With the bankruptcy of Westinghouse due to new reactor construction last year and the bankruptcy of France's Areva in attempting similar projects in Europe, even pro-nuclear advocates like Michael Shellenberger have concluded that nuclear power cannot hope to be economic if its proponents continue to insist upon embarking on brand new designs. Shellenberger outlines this eloquently in Forbes this week: "If radical innovation makes nuclear power expensive, why do we think it will make nuclear cheap?"

An Oregon company wants to build a radically new nuclear power reactor system in Idaho and have a Washington utility, with its own history of failing to complete construction on four out five reactors [google WPPSS default], run it. And they want Utah ratepayers to pay for it. What could possibly go wrong?

Charles K. Johnson, Boston

I was delighted to read Lydia R. Berggren's letter ("Missionaries clog airport," July 24) regarding those who like to turn a flight arrival into a social event, but I would like to add concerns and possible solutions that could possibly maintain the integrity of the short-term parking facility.

Hourly parking, after the first 90 minutes, should charge $8 an hour. (For those who can't accurately access arrival and departure times, use the economy lot.) For all-day users, raise the daily maximum to $85 (good luck expensing that, business travelers). And for my favorite, the all-night users, dispense with the love-note warnings and clearly post "all vehicles in short-term parking past 3 a.m. will be ticketed and towed" around the lots.

Salt Lake International, the state of Utah has spent billions of taxpayer dollars to make you a "big boy" airport. Perhaps it's time to start acting like one.

Gary D. Ruiz, Murray

I read about the Jordan School Board’s decision to hire a psychologist per elementary school in response to the suicides and in recognition of the tremendous stresses that involve our students.

Bravo to the school board for this forward thinking! I would also point out that psychologists in the schools are generally used for testing and limited counseling. Mental health counselors are great at counseling and working with groups to improve mental health and to be alert to individuals in crisis. There are already school nurses in the district who, if there were one per school, could be a resource for mental health concerns, lead groups and refer students to providers who can prescribe appropriate medication. Registered nurses have coursework in mental health.

Unfortunately, with one nurse per eight or nine schools, that nurse has to confine his/her work to medications and Individual Education Plans.

Diane Forster-Burke, RN, Cottonwood Heights

I am one of those people who love to camp in public lands, so I have not appreciated Rep. Mike Noel’s efforts to take public lands away from the public over the years, but I have to say I am glad he sponsored SB2004, which will provide funds for counties to maintain more existing roads in public lands.

I hope that one of the roads on the list is the one we use in the edge of the San Rafael Swell, north of Goblin Valley, which has much deteriorated in recent years.

Fred Ash, Sandy

What might it take for Utah to change from a solidly red state politically to a more purplish hue? Perhaps it’s just a matter of time.

We all know Utah’s population has been exploding. It was the fastest-growing state in 2016 and has been among the fastest growing states for decades. Between 2000 and 2010, just two states — Nevada and Arizona — saw more growth.

But dig deeper into those trends and forecast what they mean for our future, and you’ll see a strikingly different Utah than we’ve seen in the past — socially, ethnically, religiously and even politically.

Since their arrival in the Salt Lake Valley, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has dominated Utah’s culture and politics.

Initially, that meant Democrats commanded Utah’s statehouse. Fueled in part by national Republican efforts to stamp out polygamy, Democrats held 57 of the 61 seats in Utah’s first state Legislature.

Over the next several decades, control swung back and forth wildly, until stabilizing during the Great Depression — an evolution that Brigham Young University professor Adam Brown tracks in his soon-to-be-released book, “Utah Politics and Government.”

It wasn’t until around 1970 that Utah moved decidedly to the Republicans, fueled by social issues: abortion, civil rights, anti-communism and later, homosexuality and same-sex marriage, Brown writes.

Mormons, generally, are the most committed voting bloc the GOP has, and in Utah it is even more pronounced: 78 percent of Utah Mormons identify as Republicans.

Utah’s long-standing majority Mormon population, their allegiance to the Republican Party and their inclination to actually turn out and vote, have combined to create a Mormon colossus standing astride Utah politics.

But Brown also points to demographic trends that may slowly erode that dominance.

As a strong economy has attracted more and more outsiders, the state’s population is growing faster than the church’s membership.

According to data from the Pew Research Center, between 2007 and 2014, the percentage of Utahns who identify as members of the church dropped from 58 percent to 55 percent.

That’s not huge, but if the trend continues, we may soon see less than half the state belonging to the church for the first time since early pioneer days.

The other big driver is the growth of Utah’s Hispanic population. According to Census data, between 2000 and 2010, the state’s Hispanic population grew by a whopping 78 percent and Hispanics account for 30 percent of the entire statewide population growth in that time.

The trend has been especially pronounced in Utah’s older cities. Taylorsville, for example, saw 3,909 Hispanics move in, as 3,205 white residents moved out between 2000 and 2010. And Salt Lake City saw 7,383 new Hispanics, losing 3,853 white residents in that period.

Hispanics currently make up 13 percent of Utah’s population — up from 5 percent in 1990.

It is a huge factor in the ethnic diversification of the state. According to research by Pam Perlich, director of demographic research at the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute at the University of Utah, ethnic minorities make up a little more than 20 percent of the population today. By 2050, that will climb to 30 percent.

Why does that matter? As the population diversifies, voting patterns that have dictated Utah politics for as long as I’ve been alive could shift.

Brown cites the 2016 Utah Colleges Exit Poll which found that 81 percent of active Mormons identified as Republicans, compared to just 28 percent of non-Mormons. On top of that, 60 percent of white Utahns identified as Republicans, compared to just 26 percent of Hispanics.

“Eventually, this growth and diversification may threaten the Republican Party’s decades-long dominance,” Brown wrote. “If these left-leaning demographic groups — that is non-Mormons and Hispanics — continue increasing their share of Utah’s population, they may someday change Utah’s partisan balance even if white Mormons remain solidly Republican.”

Some on the right probably consider this wishful thinking. There’s no question that the change, if it comes, will be glacial, perhaps not in my lifetime. And, Brown notes, it also depends on one other factor — whether these new Utahns vote.

But as we peer into the crystal ball and see Utah’s future, it is likely to be very different from the past, and that slow shift to a more diverse population and toward political balance, a shift from red to purple, will be good for our state.

Santaquin • Harvesting Utah’s tart cherry crop — the second largest in the country — is part physics, part mechanical ingenuity and a lot of wow.

It happens like this: Two large pieces of farm equipment sidle up on either side of a tree laden with cherries.

The driver of the first vehicle — a hydraulic shaker — pushes a button and rattles the tree trunk loosening about 130 pounds of cherries from the branches and creating a mini-red rainstorm.

The catch frame on the other side of the tree collects the fallen fruit, moves it along a conveyor and then into a bin filled with cool water.

Once all the “picked” fruit is safely in the bin, the two vehicles inch forward to the next tree.

Shake, collect, repeat.

The process continues for three hot weeks each summer — usually from mid-July to early August. Crews work six days a week, 16 hours a day until all the cherries are collected for processing, said fruit farmer Ray Rowley.

It’s grueling work but exciting, too, he said during a recent tour of his 1,000-acre Cherry Hill Farms. "It’s what we do.”

While cherries are as American as pie and President George Washington, most people don’t even realize there are two types of cherries produced in the United States — sweet and tart.

About 97 percent of the sweet cherries are grown in Washington, California and Oregon and are sold fresh to consumers through grocery stores and markets.

When it comes to Montmorency tart cherries, Michigan is the U.S. capital, producing more than 200 million pounds annually. Utah ranks second — albeit a distant one — averaging of about 30 million pounds of tart, or sour, cherries a year.

Final numbers for the 2018 crop in Utah won’t be in for several weeks, but Rowley believes it’s a “good crop" but probably not a record.

Most of the Utah tart cherries are grown along the Utah County foothills in and around Payson and Santaquin, where the elevation, the climate and the soil combine to help the fruit trees thrive.

Eight family farms — including Rowley’s —produce most of Utah’s tart cherries; together they make up the Payson Fruit Growers cooperative.

Years ago, most of the Utah tart cherries were turned into pie filling. But, in the 1990s, the co-op perfected the process for drying and packaging cherries for use in granola, trail mixes and other snacks. A small amount still goes for canning or is turned into cherry juice or juice concentrate.

In recent years, the health industry has promoted dried cherries as a super food, and sales have soared. Studies have show that dried tart cherries are high in antioxidants — two or three times higher than fresh sweet cherries. They also are one of the few fruits with natural melatonin, which researchers say may help regulate sleep and lessen inflammation.

During a recent tour of the harvesting process, organized by the Cherry Marketing Institute, Rowley said several things contributed to the health of the 2018 crop, including a mild spring without a late frost that often damages flowers.

Although, even when temperatures dip, Utah cherry farmers are ready to battle the weather — fighting off late frost with propane heaters and large fans that tower over the orchards.

They’ve also learned how to attack harmful bugs using minimal pesticides and applying “mating disruption” pheromones that prevent male insects from finding the females, Rowley said.

There also is constant barrage of sea gulls, starlings and robins that feast on the fruit. “We can’t do anything about birds,” Rowley said, “we just let them have their share.”

Today, however, Utah cherry farms face two new threats: urban development and foreign imports.

Parts of Utah now top the nation in population growth, according recent U.S. Census estimates. The state’s strong birthrate and booming economy have made the Provo-Orem area one of the fastest-growing metropolitan areas in the country and increased the push to turn farmland into subdivisions.

“Land value here is high and everyone wants a house,” explained Payson fruit grower Mark Rowley, Ray’s cousin. “People just aren’t as farm-minded as they used to be.”

Because of suburban sprawl, farmers have started new orchards in outlying areas such as Tintic and Genola, anticipating that eventually the land will be gobbled up by development.

In recent years, tart cherry products from Turkey and Poland, the world’s leading cherry producers, have been flooding the U.S. market with low-priced fruit that undercuts U.S. producers, explained Matt Hargreaves with the Utah Farm Bureau.

He said cherry growers in Turkey receive subsidies from the European Union for the processing of tart cherries as well as from the Turkish government to pay for fuel, fertilizers and other costs.

Those subsidies, he said, allow growers to make a profit yet still sell their products in the U.S. at low prices. Turkey also has developing nation status, which allows products to flow into the U.S. without tariffs.

Consumers can avoid the imported fruit if they look for the name Montmorency, the U.S. tart cherry varietal, on products they buy. But they will pay more.

Right now, however, all the threats take a back seat while the cherries are harvested and trucked to the processing plant, where they are washed, pitted and frozen in white plastic buckets. The entire process, from tree to freezer, takes 12 hours, said Ray Rowley.

As orders for dried cherries come in throughout the year, the fruit is removed from the deep freeze, thawed and put through the drying process.

“As soon as the cherries are done," he said, “we’ll be harvesting peaches and apples.”

That will keep the Rowleys busy until mid-November.

The Trump administration’s vision of American “energy dominance” is taking shape across the West, and, for Utah, that means a return to oil and gas leasing in places valued for wildlife habitat, recreation and artifacts — along with new limits on public participation in decision making in the name of “streamlining” the approval process.

Later this year, the Bureau of Land Management’s Utah office intends to embark on two of its largest lease offerings in years, putting out more than a half-million acres for auction despite an existing inventory of more than 1 million acres of undeveloped leases.

Some of the nearly 334 parcels to be sold online in September and December feature areas cherished by hunters and anglers, such as the Book Cliffs and the headwaters of the Price River, as well as priority sage grouse habitat, archaeologically rich lands in San Juan County, areas with troubled air quality, and wild country that has seen little or no drilling in the past.

Either sale, if approved as proposed, would be larger than the one eco-activist Tim DeChristopher disrupted with phony bids a decade ago to protest leasing lands around national parks in the waning days of President George W. Bush’s tenure. That offering, which was largely pulled back by the Obama administration, exposed flaws in the BLM’s leasing process, leading to reforms that Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has now pushed aside as unnecessary hindrances to energy development on public land.

“When you look at energy domination, all other uses lose. The natural resources, hunters and anglers, the artifacts, hikers, campers, grazers,” lamented Land Tawney, executive director of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers. “Energy dominance is not the way our public lands are set up. They were set up for multiple use.”

Sparking criticism from wildlife and wilderness groups was BLM’s recent announcement that it planned to sell 225 leases on 330,000 acres spread around Utah at its quarterly auction in December. The public has until July 31 to submit comments on what may be the state’s biggest sale ever. That’s on top of the 204,000 acres to be sold online at the September auction. Industry representatives praised these large sales as an overdue correction to previous policies that discouraged energy development.

How it’s ‘supposed to work’

“They are all in areas designated for multiple use through land-use planning,” said Kathleen Sgamma of the Western Energy Alliance. “The administration is simply moving forward with leasing as opposed to holding it up as it has been for several years.”

She said there is much “pent-up demand” for leases that, if issued, do not preclude other uses of the land and will require focused environmental reviews once drilling is proposed.

"It’s not surprising we are seeing some larger sales,” Sgamma said. "People were getting used to anemic lease sales where there were just a couple thousand acres or canceled altogether. That it’s not how the system is supposed to work.”

Many parcels to be auctioned were drawn from a huge backlog of lands that industry had “nominated” for leasing but were tabled by the Obama administration’s Interior Department while it was developing “master leasing” plans for several Utah landscapes, where hydrocarbon deposits overlapped with public lands that held strong wildlife, archaeological and recreational values.

The idea was to postpone leasing decisions until a plan could be completed that would spell out where drilling could occur inside these planning areas, but the issue became moot after the transition to President Donald Trump’s Republican administration.

Master leasing was one of the many Obama-era reforms scrapped under Zinke.

A memorandum Interior issued in January guides oil and gas leasing now, requiring expeditious decisions once parcels are nominated by industry.

“The BLM will not routinely defer leasing,” agency spokeswoman Kimberly Finch said. “The new policy says we won’t defer leasing if we are revising or amending resource management plans. We will exercise our discretion within existing plans.”

The Government Accountability Office reports, however, that Utah’s inventory of federal oil and gas leases that remain undeveloped totals more than a third of the 3 million acres under lease.

According to the June report, 731 leases remained under suspension as of 2016, suggesting industry is sitting on more oil and gas leases that it knows what to do with.

Sgamma contends those suspensions reflect the inordinate amount of time it takes to get drilling permits.

“Some of that acreage is hung up in the long, drawn-out federal process. Many times suspensions are granted because BLM knows it is spending too much time on the environmental analysis,” she said. “When lands are leased, they are not locked away from other uses. All they do is confer a right to potentially develop if you can get through all the NEPA [National Environmental Policy Act] analysis and permitting, which can take years and years.”

State is on board

On Thursday, the BLM announced its final decision to offer 94 parcels at the September sale, covering 204,000 acres, mostly in Emery, Wayne and Utah counties. The protest period closes Aug. 6.

Utah officials fully endorsed the leases offered at the September sale.

“The state appreciates the frequency and efficiency with which the BLM is currently holding its quarterly oil and gas lease sales and hopes that these lease sales may continue,” public lands policy director Kathleen Clarke wrote in the state’s official comments. “Utah residents will continue to benefit as the BLM fulfills its mission to promote the sustained yield and multiple use of the state’s public lands.”

The only reservations she expressed concerned two parcels adjacent to an aquifer that Yuba State Park taps for its culinary water and North Beach. Clarke asked that wells drilled here be cased to avoid groundwater contamination and prohibit surface disturbance near the popular beach.

Most of the September sale covers a 12-by-24-mile block in southern Emery County, east of State Route 24 and west of the Greer River, an area covered by the now-abandoned San Rafael Desert master leasing plan.

“This process has shown a disturbing lack of concern for the invaluable resources and experiences that will be lost and hasn’t taken into account input from the American public,” said Nada Culver, who directs The Wilderness Society’s BLM Action Center.

Drawing the most ire from environmental groups is the attenuated opportunity for the public to weigh in on the lease proposals, required under NEPA. The public previously had 30 days to comment during the “scoping” process and again after the release of draft environmental assessments, or EAs.

Under Zinke, the “scoping” comment period has been cut to 15 days and eliminated for the EAs. Instead the public has 10 days to file “protests” after the release of the final EAs. That’s not enough time for anyone outside the most established environmental groups, staffed with lawyers familiar with the leasing process, to prepare meaningful protests, complained Landon Newell of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.

“We are going back to what BLM said nine years ago was a broken system,” Newell said.

The September sale includes several parcels around Emma Park, an area near Soldier Summit along U.S. Highway 6 midway between Spanish Fork and Price. Anglers frequent the headwaters of the Price River and its tributaries there, plying the waters for trout.

With most of these parcels, the surface acreage is privately owned in a “split estate” arrangement that prioritizes mineral development over surface uses.

“They are squeezing the public out by narrowing the scope of NEPA and at the same time they are doing unprecedented leases in Book Cliffs and surrounding areas in Utah,” said Tawney of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers. “The majority of Americans are taking it in the shorts. It’s the elite few who are making the money all in the name of energy domination.”

The December sale will offer several more Emma Park parcels to the south, in Carbon County, in addition to numerous parcels in the Book Cliffs, famous for its herds of elk and mule deer. This area is the southern fringes of the East Tavaputs Plateau, which has seen extensive energy development.

Some hunters fear the latest leasing proposal will expand development off the plateau, displacing big game.

“I am very nervous about the quality of the experience and the quality of the habitat,” said Michael Lipps, a BHA member from Midvale. “If you put too many roads in, you might push animals out of areas that really need to use them, specifically on the upper ridges. If they move down too low, they are going to find poorer forage.”

Also on the block in December are new parcels around Montezuma Canyon, where the ancestors of today’s Hopi Indians left a largely intact record of an agricultural civilization that persisted for centuries in this unforgiving landscape.

In March, the BLM sold leases to 43 parcels in this landscape west of Blanding over the objections of historic preservation groups.

Washington • The links among Vladimir Putin, President Trump and segments of both the Republican Party and the American conservative movement seem bizarre. How can this be, given the Russian president’s KGB pedigree and a Cold War history during which antipathy toward the Soviet Union held the right together?

In truth, there is nothing illogical about the ideological collusion that is shaking our political system. If the old Soviet Union was the linchpin of the Communist International, Putin’s Russia is creating a new Reactionary International built around nationalism, a critique of modernity and a disdain for liberal democracy. Its central mission includes wrecking the Western alliance and the European Union by undermining a shared commitment to democratic values.

Putin is, first and foremost, an opportunist, so he is also happy to lend support to forces on the left when doing so advances his purposes in specific circumstances. But the dominant thrust of Putinism is toward the far right, since a nationalism rooted in Russian traditionalism cements his hold on power.

And the right in both Europe and the United States has responded. Long before Russia’s efforts to elect Trump in the 2016 election became a major public issue, Putin was currying favor with the American gun lobby, Christian conservatives and Republican politicians.

In a prescient March 2017 article in Time magazine, Alex Altman and Elizabeth Dias detailed Russia’s “new alliances with leading U.S. evangelicals, lawmakers and powerful interest groups like the NRA.”

Evangelicals, they noted, found common ground with Putin, a strong foe of LGBTQ rights, on the basis of “Moscow’s nationalist and ultraconservative push — led by the Russian Orthodox Church — to make the post-Soviet nation a bulwark of Christianity amid the increasing secularization of the West.”

Altman and Dias highlighted the role of Maria Butina, a Russian national who was in court last week after her indictment for conspiring to act as a foreign agent.

Butina was at the forefront of forging Russian ties with the NRA. In 2015, many of its leaders traveled to Russia to attend her annual gun-rights conference, Altman and Dias reported. Such a meeting is absurd on its face given Russia’s autocratic nature. It should be a bigger scandal than it has been so far that those who speak so much about constitutional liberties and individual freedom have cozied up to Putin.

The Russian president did not have to invent Europe’s new right. It was rising without him, although he has been happy to help it along. Writing in New Statesman, the British center-left magazine, veteran journalist John Lloyd described the formation of what he called an “Illiberal International” that seeks to limit immigration and weaken or destroy the European Union.

Lloyd focused on Sebastian Kurz, the Austrian chancellor; Victor Orban, Hungary’s prime minister; and Matteo Salvini, Italy’s interior minister whose Lega party is now in a coalition government with the Five-Star Movement.

It’s important to recognize that something more is going on here than merely a generalized effort to disrupt American and European politics. Putin is pushing in a very particular direction, a lesson that should be absorbed across our philosophical divides.

The deepening ties between the Russian government and elements of the right should give pause to all conservatives whose first commitment is to democratic life. The willingness of traditionalists and gun fanatics to cultivate ties with a Russian dictator speaks of a profound alienation among many on the right from core Western values — the very values that most conservatives extol.

It should bother members of the GOP that the progressive writer Brian Beutler was on to something when he observed recently that “in many ways, Moscow understood Republicans better than Republicans understand themselves.” Putin saw that what he and parts of the right share is a hatred of liberalism.

And Republicans should bear in mind that disrupting Robert Mueller’s probe serves Putin’s interests, not just Trump’s.

In the meantime, progressives and moderates should not be intimidated by those, including Trump apologists, who claim that standing up to Putin’s intervention in our election represents an effort to revive the Cold War. No, opposing Putin is principled, rational and necessary because he is waging a campaign against democracy and is working to undermine the pluralism and tolerance on which it depends.

It’s odd that self-styled opponents of globalization who shout slogans about putting their own countries “first” are actually putting their ideology first as they seek to globalize the far right. Friends of democracy everywhere need to stand in solidarity and resist this backward-looking drift to autocracy.

E.J. Dionne’s email address is ejdionne@washpost.com. Twitter: @EJDionne.