In answer to Rep. Chris Stewart’s question about presidents: Actually, NATO funding was increased 100 percent (from 1 percent to 2 percent of member budgets) by President Barack Obama, while President Donald Trump’s grandstanding went unsubstantiated by any NATO government; U.S. energy security and oil production as well as alternative energy development took place under Obama, while Trump’s trumpeting has increased the price per barrel benefiting the Russian oil-sales-based economy and Vladimir Putin specifically due to his oil connections, unlike the prices they suffered under Obama; Ukraine’s was appropriately supported by Obama policies while not escalating the militarization — the policy the Republican national platform held, until Paul Manafort had it changed by Trump’s directive (?); sanctions against Russia, established by Obama because Putin unlawfully and immorally invaded and took over Ukrainian territory, were made law by the Republican-controlled Senate due to its concerns about Trump trying to undo them.

Trump’s weak actions, like his sycophantic acquiescence to Putin, have made Russia great again after Obama had rendered them a third-rate country equal to their economic clout.

Mr. Stewart could whine less about how Trump’s words make his job difficult and stop the Orwellian apologetics trying to make their blatant falsehood true. It’s like Sen. Orrin Hatch’s cry to end partisanship.

They should be ashamed of themselves for representing only extremist right constituents and for failing to protect and defend our country. Both of them, The Tribune and its reporter all need to “do your job.”

Greg A. Pedroza, Salt Lake City

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I received a Rep. Mia Love campaign rah-rah letter. Imagine my surprise to see in small letters "this mailing was prepared, published and mailed at taxpayer expense.”

What's that all about when she has a huge campaign chest? It gives one pause for thought. What's left in the cookie jar?

Lane Wilson, Midvale

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On the Aug. 3 Opinion page, The Tribune had three items that call into question President Donald Trump’s running of the Oval Office.

No. 1: Pat Bagley’s cartoon. A lot of us believe that the press, ever since Trump was elected, has sought to undermine his presidency. Bagley has, to my count, more than 150 cartoons always showing Trump as a buffoon or incompetent.

No. 2: Mr. Michael Greer’s letter to the editor (“American atrocity”). He refers to Trump’s “goons.” These men and women were only doing their job and showed compassion and understanding and certainly are not goons.

No. 3: Full quarter-page column by Mr. Ken Roach, which again states as facts things that are not true. There’s no evidence that anybody from Trump’s administration has been charged, much less convicted.

Editor Jennifer Napier-Pearce and Editorial Page Editor George Pyle are not independent, as you should be paid for by the Democrats. Sorry, but you are not an independent voice.

Bart Jacobs, South Jordan

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I have two words for Sen. Orrin Hatch in response to his comments regarding the “dumbass” partisanship surrounding the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court: Merrick Garland.

This is truly the epitome of hypocrisy.

Diane Haberman, South Jordan

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I am a high school teacher. Our school, like all secondary schools in Utah, is experiencing the effects of an increasing prevalence of student mental health issues.

Our state cannot accept an easy way for students to 3D print a gun.

A fear expressed by many teachers at our school is that one of our students who are struggling mentally or emotionally may consider gun violence against themselves or others in our building. Online blueprints for 3D printed guns make this devastating scenario more likely.

Sen. Mike Lee’s decision to block a bill to ban publication of such blueprints is unfortunate. It needlessly decreases safety and increases fear.

James D. Lloyd, Eagle Mountain

After a career as an accountant, Lynn David bought a 9,000-square-foot house just outside of Midway that he turned into The Hiking Inn, a bed and breakfast aimed at drawing tourists with a taste for the outdoors to this mountain recreation wonderland.

In 2017, David applied for a small grant from the regional Tourism Advisory Board, created to disperse a percentage of the hotel tax collected in Wasatch County, but he was turned down.

This year, David was back with a beefed up proposal and a request for $3,600 — which he would match with his own money — to improve The Hiking Inn’s website and to do some additional advertising. He was offered $500, such a pittance, he said, that it was pointless.

Then David got curious: Where was the money going? Then he got busy digging, and what he found disturbed him.

Through a series of requests under Utah’s Government Records Access and Management Act and a dive into other publicly available records, David found that for 2018, the Tourism Advisory Board had $50,000 to allocate and got 29 applications totaling more than three times that amount of money.

But when it came time to whittle down the field, $21,600 — more than 43 percent of the available funds — went to six entities with ties to three members of the five-member Tourism Advisory Board.

While the other 20 applicants had their requests shaved way down — like the $500 that David was offered — or rejected altogether, the three board members received 82 cents of every dollar they requested. All of the other applicants received 23 cents on the dollar.

For example, board member Stuart Ashe is general manager of the Soldier Hollow Nordic Center, which received two grants totaling $12,000, nearly a quarter of all the funds available, to promote the center and to help host the annual sheepdog championship. Ashe could not be reached for comment.

It simply didn’t pass the smell test, David said. Every indication was that the board members were self-dealing.

Wasatch County Administrator Mike Davis said state law requires that the board be made up of representatives of the tourism community, so situations can arise where organizations connected to board members are requesting funds.

"There have been applications from some of these people, but they have to recuse themselves from the process,” Davis said, in order to avoid a conflict.

Davis said neither he, nor the county’s tourism director, were aware of problems, but there is a proposal expected to go before the Wasatch County Council to change the board structure, creating a new 10-member board to oversee the tourism grants and the region’s $600,000-a-year marketing budget.

County Councilman Mike Nelson, who is proposing the change, said he hadn’t spoken to David about any of his concerns with the Tourism Advisory Board. He wants to change the structure to add “more representation from a broader spectrum of tourism interest in Wasatch County.”

The change, if it’s adopted, could at least lessen some of the potential conflicts that David pointed out.

But now, he has set his sights on a bigger fish: He wants to know details of how the county spends roughly $1.5 million in hotel taxes it receives each year. In May, he filed a new open records request seeking itemized allocations going back years.

So far, the city has not been cooperative and David is appealing his case to the State Records Committee.

“So, Gehrke,” you might be thinking, “what’s the point?” It is, after all, a relatively piddly amount of money in the grander scheme of things.

But what David is doing in Wasatch County is vital. Once upon a time, there were enough professional journalists around the state that we could spend the time and resources to dig into local government budgets and grants.

But as newsrooms have withered, local coverage has been hit especially hard. So it falls, more and more, to average citizens to play the role of watchdog, like David did.

“At its best, [citizen journalism] is exactly what this gentleman did,” said Matthew LaPlante, a former Tribune colleague who now teaches journalism at Utah State University and is a champion of the citizen watchdog. “It’s recognizing that nobody else is going to ask those questions. Nobody else is going to ask for those records. Nobody else is going to hold elected officials and public servants accountable, so you have to do it.

“When I hear stories like this I get really excited, because that’s exactly what needs to happen to sustain the Fourth Estate,” LaPlante said. “It’s literally every citizens’ birthright.”

(For more, check out LaPlante’s 2014 TEDx talk on the rise of citizen journalism from the decline of the news industry. )

We need more people like Lynn David; like Claire Geddes, who has spent years watchdogging the Utah Transit Authority; like former Salt Lake City School Board member Michael Clara, who calls out inequities on the city’s west side.

There’s no secret sauce to being a reporter. You’ve got the tools — a phone and a laptop. You’ve got the platform, whether it’s Facebook or Twitter or a blog.

So go to your City Council or community meetings. If something looks fishy, dig in. Be a watchdog, tell your story, commit an act of journalism.

Your community will be better for it.

You probably read about a woman who secretly recorded an interview with her former Missionary Training Center president regarding alleged sexual misconduct he committed. Or maybe you heard that Mormon general authorities are paid more than $120,000 a year in salary. Perhaps you wonder about the LDS Church’s vast wealth. You swear you’ve seen that it has at least $32 billion in stock holdings.

Well, if you know those newsy nuggets, it’s probably because of a website called MormonLeaks, which posts documents, recordings and videos secretly provided by church leaders, employees, sources, whistleblowers or other moles from within the Utah-based faith.

So how did MormonLeaks get its start? What is its goal? Which leaks have been the biggest? And how does it navigate often-tricky ethical waters?

We put those questions and more to the forces behind the website, Executive Director Ryan McKnight and technical director Ethan Dodge.

Click here to listen.

Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee, Wash., and Republican Gov. John Kasich, Ohio, sound like politicians did only a few years ago: vaguely normal.

Appearing on ABC's "This Week," Inslee responded to the accusation that Democrats lack a message:

“Number one, we’re going to protect and expand health care, not strip it away. ... Second, our message is rescue America — and we will rescue America — from the grasp of an unhinged narcissist who is creating the chaos that [Kasich] just talked about. And that is why so many Republicans and independents and Democrats are banding together in this rescue mission for America. And the third message — and this is very fundamental to the Democratic Party this year. We’re really defining gross domestic product the way it should be. The D in gross domestic product should mean domestic for families.”

The last one, it sounds like, is a pitch for shared prosperity; the idea that you can have a dynamic capitalistic economy but still ensure the middle and lower income American get a greater share of GDP. (Inslee boasted about efforts in his state: "Raised the minimum wage, best family leave policy in America, net neutrality passed, voter rights, expansion of clean energy, expansion of access to college. What do you get? You get 62 cranes in Seattle, the best economy two out of the last three years in America.")

Asked about an issue he'd champion if he ran for president in 2020, Inslee answered:

"Democrats need to make climate change a front-burner issue. It was really interesting, two days ago we had an interesting historical irony.

"It was reported that this last year was the hottest year probably in the history of our species. The very same day, Donald Trump purported to try to repeal the emissions rules that defeat carbon pollution, that help decrease transportation cost to get better mileage, because of his slavish devotion to climate denial.

"Now, we Democrats are the only party that has accepted science because we believe in science and have also embraced this vision of job creation around clean energy. We've shown this in my state where clean energy jobs are going twice as fast as the rest of the economy.

"And this is a job-creation message. Frankly, this does not fit in the presidential discussions yet, and it needs to be, and it's a winning message in governor's races across the country."

Not radical. Not nasty. Not socialism. We can have a reasoned argument over the means (e.g., minimum-wage increases or earned income tax credit), but it is hard to say securing health care, repairing our democracy, trying to reverse severe income inequality and trying to reduce greenhouse gases evidence a left-wing agenda. By contrast, wrecking Obamacare with no alternative in sight, continuing to delegitimize democratic institutions and denying climate science — which the GOP seems to favor — do seem radical.

Kasich doesn't sound like other Republicans these days. He is not excusing Trump's outlandish conduct nor is he pretending there is anything normal about this administration. He explained that "first of all, the chaos that seems to surround Donald Trump has unnerved a lot of people. So suburban women, in particular here, are the ones that are really turned off. " Kasich added, "I was with some women last night who said, hey, you know what, I'm not voting, and they're Republicans, I'm not voting for the Republicans." Well, he's got that right.

Kasich goes on to praise the Republican candidate in Tuesday's special House election because he opposed Trump's inhumane separation policy, opposed tariffs and promised to fix Social Security. Assuming that last one isn't pie-in-the-sky privatization of Social Security, those things sound reasonable, as well. On tariffs, Kasich enunciated the traditional GOP position:

"What they do is they hurt consumers. They hurt businesses in this country. And you can see how people have been reacting to it who are business people that want to get their markets overseas. For farmers, farmers don't want welfare, they want trade. They want to be able to sell their stuff.

“In regard to China, what we need to do with China is to work with our allies to say that this theft of intellectual property cannot stand. The problem is, we’ve made so many of our allies angry, they’re not so reluctant to get in line with us.”

Kasich concluded by chastising Trump for sowing division and praised LeBron James for his civic work.

Imagine these were the two candidates in 2020 — two experienced governors who can talk rationally about the issues. Does anyone think they are who we’ll end up with? Not a chance. And it is a shame, because the two we do wind up with will almost certainly be worse than Inslee and Kasich.

Jennifer Rubin writes the Right Turn blog for The Washington Post, offering reported opinion from a center-right perspective.

Ken Doctor saw it coming. A few years ago, the media analyst looked at the trend lines and predicted that by 2017 or so, American newsrooms would reach a shocking point.

"The halving of America's daily newsrooms," he called what he was seeing.

Last week, we found out that it’s true. A Pew Research study showed that between 2008 and last year, employment in newspaper newsrooms declined by an astonishing 45 percent. (And papers were already well down from their newsroom peak in the early 1990s, when their revenue lifeblood — print advertising — was still pumping strong.)

The dire numbers play out in ugly ways: Public officials aren't held accountable, town budgets go unscrutinized, experienced journalists are working at Walmart, or not at all, instead of plying their much-needed trade in their communities.

One problem with losing local coverage is that we never know what we don't know. Corruption can flourish, taxes can rise, public officials can indulge their worst impulses.

And there's another result that gets less attention:

In our terribly divided nation, we need the local newspaper to give us common information — an agreed-upon set of facts to argue about.

Last year when I visited Luzerne County in Pennsylvania to talk to people about their media habits, I was most struck by one thing: The allegiance to local news outlets — the two competing papers in Wilkes-Barre, and the popular ABC affiliate, WNEP, or Channel 16 as everyone called it.

The most reasonable people I talked to, no matter whom they had voted for, were regular readers of the local papers and regular watchers of the local news. (The county was one of those critical places that had voted for President Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, and flipped red to Trump in 2016.)

By contrast, those residents who got news only from Facebook or from cable news were deep in their own echo chambers and couldn't seem to hear anything else.

Last week, President Donald Trump, at his rally in Wilkes-Barre, again trashed the national media — to the crowd’s delight. But I would guess that many of the attendees would give a pass to their local media sources.

After all, the reporters and editors for those news outlets might send their kids to the same schools, shop at the same Dollar General, fill up their gas tanks at the same Sheetz.

When he made his prediction in 2015, Ken Doctor noted that the largest and the smallest of the nation's newspapers seemed to have some immunity.

Tiny papers have little competition, an enduring connection with their towns, and thus still are able to attract advertising and reader loyalty. The largest of the papers — including The New York Times and The Washington Post — are finding new ways to support themselves with a combination of digital ad dollars and subscriptions, among other revenue sources.

But the regional papers, such as the Denver Post, have taken the worst hits. And to make matters worse, many are owned by hedge funds that couldn't care less about journalism. They are only interested in bleeding the papers dry of whatever remaining profits they can produce with ever-shrinking staffs.

"Will hitting the halving point finally send a signal of news emergency?" Doctor asked. And he answered himself: "Probably not. Who would send it? Who would receive it? What does any citizen/reader feel he or she can really do about it?"

That's the rub. What's more, as papers decline, there's less reason to subscribe because coverage isn't what it used to be.

"We've had to make some tough decisions," Ken Tingley, editor of the Glens Falls Post-Star, a Pulitzer Prize-winning daily in the Adirondacks region of New York, told me recently. With his staff down by about half, he has pulled in the news coverage from a far-flung region to concentrate on just the metro area.

What he worries about most, Tingley said, is that there's not much of a career ahead for the young reporters on his staff.

"Where are they going to go?" he said, when bigger metro dailies keep shedding reporters like so many autumn leaves. (One recent example: The New York Daily News, which halved its newsroom.)

To be sure, the picture isn't entirely bleak: Nonprofit news organizations spring up, relying on grants and membership; organizations such as Report for America help fill the gaps at shrunken news organizations; and in Denver, a new outfit called Civil is funding an alternative to the decimated Post with the digital Colorado Sun, and hopes to produce many more like it. Some regional papers have been bought by well-meaning philanthropists.

But you can't argue with the numbers, or the crisis.

Yes, the emergency signal has gone out, if too faintly, and there is a response.

But I’m afraid it won’t be nearly enough to make up for what’s lost. And in a deeply divided America, that’s a tragedy.

Margaret Sullivan is The Washington Post’s media columnist. Previously, she was the New York Times public editor, and the chief editor of the Buffalo News, her hometown paper.

Right-wing commentators had a field day last week with the news that Sarah Jeong, a young Korean American hired to write about technology for the New York Times editorial board, had a history of attacking “white people” on Twitter. She was predictably pilloried as a racist by the usual suspects — Fox News, the Daily Caller, Gateway Pundit, Breitbart, Infowars, etc. And understandably so. As The Washington Post noted, her tweets include: “Oh man it’s kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men”; “White people marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants”; and “#CancelWhitePeople.”

The New York Times' explanation that she had just been countering the trolling she received from racists online doesn’t make much sense: Why respond to racism with racism? Doesn’t that just beget more bigotry? Nor is the response of leftist activists convincing when they argue that, as a minority herself, Jeong cannot be guilty of racism. Racism is “prejudice plus power,” leftist activists explain. Actually, racism is defined as “prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior.” If Jeong had been targeting African Americans or Jews, there is little doubt that her career would be over — as, in fact, happened with a previous Times editorial-board hire who was quickly unhired because of her friendships with neo-Nazis.

So the right has a point about Jeong. Fine. But where are their voices when a far more prominent bigot is spewing hatred from a much more powerful platform? Friday night, President Donald Trump tweeted: “Lebron [sic] James was just interviewed by the dumbest man on television, Don Lemon. He made Lebron look smart, which isn’t easy to do.” Is it just a coincidence that Trump is insulting the intelligence of two smart, successful African Americans? If you believe that, you must also believe it’s a total coincidence that he regularly attacks Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., another African American, as an “extraordinarily low IQ person.”

Granted, the “very stable genius” also sometimes spews charges of stupidity at white men such as the actor Robert De Niro and James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, who dare to criticize him. But an inordinate number of his attacks are directed against women and minorities. Especially minorities whose ancestors came from what he once called “s---hole countries” in Africa.

Trump’s comments are much more consequential and much more offensive than Jeong’s — and not only because a president is much more important and influential than a newspaper writer. There is no history in this country, much as white supremacists might like to pretend otherwise, of whites being oppressed because of their skin color. Thus, it is difficult for me, as a white person, to get too worked up by Jeong’s remarks, dumb as they are. Her tweets are more bizarre than offensive. Their chief harm is that they feed the phony white-nationalist narrative that whites are victims in a society on track to be become “majority minority” within a few decades.

The kind of prejudice that Trump exhibits is far more toxic and dangerous. We have a long, ugly history of discriminating against — and visiting violence upon — African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans and Asian Americans. Black people were lynched; whites generally weren’t (though a Jew was, once). Asians were barred from coming here; whites generally weren’t. And while we have made real progress toward a more color-blind society, we are not there yet — and with Trump at the wheel, we are going in reverse.

There are all too many videos circulating online of police officers harassing, beating, even killing African Americans in situations where whites would have walked away unmolested. Far from sympathizing with the victims, Trump attacks the African American NFL players who protest police brutality. Even worse has been Trump’s dehumanization of Latino immigrants — and not just MS-13 gangsters — he warns will “infest” America. He ordered Latino families to be separated at the border, their children locked in steel cages. There is no chance he would have treated white kids like this. He even praised white supremacists who gathered nearly a year ago in Charlottesville, Virginia, as “very fine people,” earning in return the praise of white-nationalist leaders David Duke and Richard Spencer.

If there has been an outcry against Trump’s virulent racism from the right, I must have missed it. Where are the Fox News and Breitbart rants against the president? Where is the criticism from Rush Limbaugh and Dinesh D’Souza? The only conservatives who are willing to regularly call out Trump’s bigotry are those of us who are #NeverTrumpers — and, as I constantly hear online, we aren’t “real” conservatives because we do not worship at the orange altar.

So, yes, there is a doublestandard on racism in this country — and, yes, liberals are guilty as charged. But conservatives are far worse in their hypocrisy, and their actions are far more destructive. Their selective outrage — speaking out against anti-white prejudice from an obscure writer, but not against anti-minority prejudice from the president of the United States — reveals their own chauvinism.

Max Boot, a Washington Post columnist, is the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick senior fellow for national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and a global affairs analyst for CNN. He is the author of the forthcoming “The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right."

No woman should ever be afraid that she will be punished for reporting to any authority — secular or religious — that she has been sexually assaulted.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints seemed to have grasped that when it went through a long process of soul-searching that led to a change in the way Brigham Young University and other LDS schools handle such cases.

Or maybe it didn’t.

BYU changed its rules last year so that anyone reporting that they had been assaulted would no longer have to worry that, in making such a claim, their own conduct would be thrown back in their face. The school, after a lot of pushing from some of its current and former students, decided that the victims of assault would no longer have to fear that they would risk being tossed out of school if the circumstances included some behavior on the part of the victim that violated the school’s Honor Code.

This amnesty recognized that if the victim of an assault had been doing something the school forbids — most often in these cases either drinking alcohol or being in a place they weren’t supposed to be — the victim might fear making a report. Or, worse, the attacker might threaten to report the victim’s Honor Code transgression as a way of keeping her quiet.

A large and dangerous loophole in this new policy is now apparent after a female student at BYU-Idaho was suspended from school because her bishop withdrew his endorsement. And he withdrew his endorsement because she — and her attacker — discussed with him not only an incident of sexual assault but the fact that both of them had been drinking.

The victim was assured by the appropriate school officials that she would not be punished for making her report to the BYU-I Title IX office, which by federal law is responsible for investigating such claims and for ensuring a safe environment on campus. And, technically, she wasn’t. At least not by the Title IX officials.

But the result, being tossed out of school for being honest about the circumstances that surrounded her dreadful experience, was the same.

An atmosphere where women are afraid to report that they have been assaulted is hardly unique to the LDS Church or its institutions. A great many women in that situation have been challenged by men of all faiths, or none, in religious and in judicial settings, accused of lying, of leading their attacker on, made to feel that it was all somehow their fault.

All of society is, or should be, moving away from that.

Religious institutions, which are supposed to be a comfort to the afflicted, should be leading that effort. Not struggling to catch up.

One of the most intriguing things about Melania Trump is the pointed yet cryptic way she seems to have found to drag her husband.

She leaves clues that appear to be subversive invitations to draw larger theories about what she's really trying to tell us.

Perhaps we, her followers, should start calling ourselves MAnon.

Our oracular first lady was at it again on Saturday, seeming to issue a deft smackdown to a childish tweet President Donald Trump had fired off late the night before.

"Lebron James was just interviewed by the dumbest man on television, Don Lemon," Trump tweeted. "He made Lebron look smart, which isn't easy to do. I like Mike!"

First, let's unpack the tweet: The interview in question was on CNN, a network that Trump has claimed he does not watch. The topic was the admirable work that King James is doing in his hometown of Akron, Ohio. Among the projects he has funded is a public school for at-risk third- and fourth-graders. But the discussion veered into politics, as they all seem to do these days, and James criticized the president for using sports to divide the country.

That was enough to trigger a presidential eruption, capped off by a kicker — “I like Mike!” — that was almost certainly a reference to the current debate over who’s the best basketball player of all time, LeBron James or Michael Jordan. Then CNN jumped in with a rejoinder that alluded to a New York Times report that the president had gone into a rage when he discovered that his wife’s television on Air Force One was tuned to CNN.

“Sounds like @FLOTUS had the remote last night. We hope you both saw the incredible work of @KingJames,” CNN’s communications team tweeted.

Ah, but it was Melania Trump who added the coup de grace, with a statement issued by her spokeswoman, Stephanie Grisham.

"It looks like LeBron James is working to do good things on behalf of our next generation and just as she always has, the First Lady encourages everyone to have an open dialogue about issues facing children today," Grisham said.

"As you know, Mrs. Trump has traveled the country and world talking to children about their well-being, healthy living, and the importance of responsible online behavior with her Be Best initiative," the statement continued. "Her platform centers around visiting organizations, hospitals and schools, and she would be open to visiting the I Promise School in Akron."

We’ve seen this kind of apparent trolling from our first lady before, starting with her choice of anti-bullying as a cause — one that by its very nature reminds everyone that her husband is the worst imaginable role model for the children whose behavior she is hoping to change. Similarly, she weighed in through Grisham in June when her husband’s administration began separating migrant children from their parents at the border, saying she “believes we need to be a country that follows all laws, but also a country that governs with heart.”

Then again, just when we think we have figured out what she is trying to tell us, Trump can confound — as she did by making a trip to visit an immigrant children’s shelter near the border, donning a jacket before and after the visit that said, “I really don’t care. Do u?”

What's significant is not just what a first lady says but when she decides to speak up. There is no requirement that she say anything at all, and this particular presidential spouse has been the most reticent going at least as far back as Pat Nixon.

So, Melania, I think I know what you are saying here. And I do hope you visit that school in Akron. But if you do, please find something else in your closet to wear.

Karen Tumulty is a Washington Post columnist covering national politics. She joined The Post in 2010 from Time magazine and has also worked at the Los Angeles Times.

We take it for granted. Historically, though, the phenomenon of the neutral civil service — apolitical government employees, chosen and promoted on merit, working on behalf of the state rather than a person or party — is vanishingly rare. Take a step back from the other crises of this summer and think about it.

In Europe, the idea of a professional civil service appeared relatively late, around the 18th century. The United States didn't have a federal civil service for most of its first hundred years. The British seized on the idea of civil service exams only when they faced a sudden need to administer an empire; they may well have been influenced by China, which had been administering such exams for two millennia, and which was widely admired for that reason at the time.

At most other times and in most other places, state employees have been chosen according to systems of patronage, what Americans once called “spoils.” Even now, all around the world, most people get government jobs because they know (or know someone who knows) a person in power. Aside from being inefficient — patronage systems don’t promote people for their competence or knowledge — they are easily corrupted. I was once told of an Asian country in which people pay hefty fees to the foreign minister to become ambassadors.

Of course, the United States still has some patronage: Every new president gets to make about 4,000 appointments, a number far higher than anything a British prime minister could dream of. But most of the rest of the 1.8 million people who work full-time for the U.S. federal government, from the Foreign Service to the forest service to the Justice Department and the FBI, are neutral, expected to loyally serve every president and every member of every Cabinet. This system has some disadvantages — civil servants who know their briefs can run rings around politicians who don’t — but it has enormous, overwhelming advantages.

Think about whether you want your water's cleanliness to be measured by an expert or by someone's cousin. Think about whether you want your tax forms read by people looking for information they can use as a political tool against you. There are reasons a neutral, professional civil service, as well as one that is small and efficient, is intimately connected to any definition of good government.

But to function, an apolitical civil service needs an apolitical ethos. Laws aren’t enough: The majority of the people who work for the state need to believe that they are employees of their country, not of a particular person. They need at least some patriotic motivation, because these are not jobs that you do for the money alone. And here is the tricky part: While this kind of ethos can take a long time to build — decades, even centuries — it can be destroyed overnight. All it takes is one leader to sack everyone and stuff the system with loyalists. Then it’s gone — and what follows is invariably worse.

Hugo Chávez took revenge on civil servants who refused to support him, and that was the beginning of the end of democracy in Venezuela. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan used the aftermath of an attempted putsch to sack 150,000 public officials and arrest 50,000 more, ushering in an era of fear and chaos in Turkey.

This is the background that you need to understand why the long-term, possibly irreversible damage that President Donald Trump's administration is doing to America's civil servants matters so much; why his campaign to undermine public faith in the integrity of the FBI and the Justice Department is so dangerous; why it matters that Fox News is supporting it; and why even the minor forms of Cabinet corruption or incompetence that are now suddenly common are so dispiriting for the people who work for the departments of the environment, housing or veterans affairs.

This goes well beyond the routine critique of "bureaucrats," some of which is doubtlessly deserved, or the normal attempts to curb "waste, fraud and abuse," which are always worth pursuing. It's very possible that many government departments are too big or unwieldy. But the Trump White House isn't reforming those departments. It's carrying out a wholesale, rapid destruction of civil service culture, which helps nobody.

A few in Congress are fighting back: Pressure from the Senate, plus Washington Post reporting, just helped to persuade the administration to install a professional (with a Pentagon background) at the head of the Department of Veterans Affairs. It’s time for everyone else to wake up. If we want clean water and safe streets — not to mention more complicated things, like a counterintelligence service that can detect foreign spies — then we should demand that our government appoint people for their qualifications, not their red Make America Great Again hats.

Anne Applebaum is a Washington Post columnist, covering national politics and foreign policy, with a special focus on Europe and Russia. She is also a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and a professor of practice at the London School of Economics. She is a former member of The Washington Post’s editorial board.

A popular brand of crayons contains toxic levels of asbestos, according to a consumer advocacy group that is calling on retailers such as Dollar Tree and Amazon.com to pull the items from their shelves.

The U.S. Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG) Education Fund says Playskool crayons tested positive for asbestos, which can lead to lung cancer and mesothelioma if inhaled or ingested. The group tested 36-packs of crayons purchased at a Dollar Tree store in Chicago but noted that they are also being sold online at Amazon, eBay and DollarDays.com. (Jeff Bezos, the founder and chief executive of Amazon, owns The Washington Post.)

"There is no reason to be exposing kids to a known carcinogen, especially in crayons," said Kara Cook-Schultz, toxics director for U.S. PIRG.

A spokeswoman for Playskool's parent company, Hasbro, said it is conducting a "thorough investigation" into the claims. Leap Year Publishing, the Massachusetts-based manufacturer of the crayons, said it is also reviewing its lab tests.

Dollar Tree executives, meanwhile, said independent tests have indicated that its crayons do not contain asbestos.

"The safety of our customers and associates is our top priority," Randy Guiler, vice president of investor relations, wrote in an email. "We are aware of the report and have since re-verified that each of the listed products successfully passed inspection and testing."

Amazon, eBay and DollarDays.com did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The findings come three years after a report from the Environmental Working Group Action Fund found that four brands of crayons manufactured in China contained toxic asbestos fibers. Amazon, Toys R Us, Party City and Dollar Tree stopped selling the crayons as a result. (The affected brands were Saban's Power Rangers Super Megaforce Crayons; Disney Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Crayons; Nickelodeon's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Crayons; and Amscan Crayons.)

Although federal laws regulate the amount of asbestos in drinking water, schools and some consumer products, there are no regulations on the amount of asbestos allowed in children's products, according to Cook-Schultz.

The group also tested five other crayon brands — Crayola; Target’s Up & Up; Cra-Z-Art; Disney Junior Mickey and the Roadster Racers; and Roseart — that were found to be asbestos-free.

U.S. PIRG publishes an annual report on toy safety, which has led to more than 150 product recalls and regulatory actions over the past 30 years. In November, Target pulled two types of fidget spinners from its shelves after the group found that they contained as much as 330 times the federal legal limit for lead in children’s products.

Major technology companies including Apple, Facebook and YouTube deleted years of content from conservative conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his Infowars platforms over allegations of hate speech, a sudden clampdown that is fueling the growing debate over how big technology companies choose to censor.

The move was unusual for its sweep and speed, suggesting a new assertiveness by technology companies that in the past have worked to avoid alienating conservatives, who often assert that left-leaning Silicon Valley is biased against them. The removals appeared to be prompted by more users flagging Infowars content for policy violations.

Jones' shows long have sparked complaints because of many elaborate and unsupported claims, including that mass shootings such as the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary may have been staged and that the government orchestrated the Sept. 11 attacks. In July, YouTube banned one of his videos from June entitled “How to Prevent Liberalism,” which depicts a man shoving a kid to the ground.

But in acting against Jones in recent days, the technology companies cited unspecified violations of their rules against hateful language. Facebook said in a statement Monday it was removing four of Jones' pages "for glorifying violence, which violates our graphic violence policy, and using dehumanizing language to describe people who are transgender, Muslims and immigrants, which violates our hate speech policies."

Facebook, YouTube and Twitter have long clung to the claim that they are neutral platforms and that they don't want to be in the business of deciding what is true or false. The action echoed the abrupt removal of the accounts of some white supremacists a year ago, a few days after the far-right rallies in Charlottesville, Virginia. But companies are increasingly willing to limit free speech, after the backlash from Charlottesville and Russian manipulation.

The recent actions by the technology companies also highlight the opaque nature of their decision-making, with most not publicly specifying what content by Jones violated their policies or how they decided what posts to block and which to leave online. Jones has treaded close to some definitions of hate speech for years, and it wasn't clear from the companies if or when he finally crossed the line.

Both Facebook and YouTube said that Jones had posted new objectionable content over the weekend that influenced their decision to take the content down.

YouTube said in a statement, "When users violate these policies repeatedly, like our policies against hate speech and harassment or our terms prohibiting circumvention of our enforcement measures, we terminate their accounts."

"Apple does not tolerate hate speech, and we have clear guidelines that creators and developers must follow to ensure we provide a safe environment for all of our users," Apple said in a statement. "We believe in representing a wide range of views, so long as people are respectful to those with differing opinions."

The actions came in a cascade, starting with Spotify removing some podcasts last week. Then, late Sunday, Apple removed the majority of Jones' podcasts from iTunes and its podcast apps. On Monday morning, Facebook followed by blocking four of Jones's pages, and then YouTube deleted his Infowars page, with 2.4 million followers. Both companies had already temporarily suspended InfoWars since late July.

The backlash was swift, with Jones saying in a text message to The Washington Post Monday morning that the removal of his shows amounted to an assault against "the First Amendment in this country as we know it." He blamed China, Democrats, "establishment" Republicans and mainstream news organizations for seeking to mount a "counter-strike against the global awakening."

He warned, "You sold the country out, and now you're going to pay for it."

Some rallied to his side, including those who do not ordinarily support Jones but expressed worry about the power Silicon Valley has rapidly developed to squelch unpopular voices without formal due process or alternatives that are capable of commanding similarly large audiences.

Legal experts said the issues raised by the companies' actions are complex.

“While private platforms aren’t bound by the restrictions of the First Amendment — generally only the government is — there’s a question about how much discretion they should choose to exercise over what speech they allow to flow through them,” said Jonathan Zittrain, faculty director of Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. “That question can’t be wisely answered without noting how unfortunately central just a few intermediaries are — like Apple for podcasts, or YouTube, Facebook and Twitter for videos and links.”

But technology has also enabled the rise of such polarizing personalities as Jones and Milo Yiannopoulos, who may have struggled to develop large audiences in an era before widespread adoption of social media.

Conservatives have expressed particular fear about the power of technology companies, arguing that the predominantly liberal workforce in Silicon Valley and other industry centers such as Seattle puts them at a disadvantage in the battle for ideas in crucial online spheres.

"Conservatives are increasingly concerned that InfoWars is not the end point for those who want to ban speech. It's just the beginning," said Brent Bozell, President of the conservative Media Research Center based in Reston, Virginia. "I don't support Alex Jones and what InfoWars produces. He's not a conservative. However, banning him and his outlet is wrong. It's not just a slippery slope, it's a dangerous cliff that these social media companies are jumping off."

Twitter stood out Monday as the one of the few social media platforms to not take action against Jones. Twitter has come under particular attack from conservatives who claimed that the company is targeting them as its seeks to weed out fake accounts and automated bot networks. Twitter declined to comment.

Jones, 44, heads what amounts to a sprawling conspiracy theory empire from his base in Austin, Texas, home to The Alex Jones Show, and a variety of Infowars online platforms. That includes a website, Infowars.com, not affected by the actions of recent days.

Jones gained influence in recent years through his support of President Donald Trump, but he also has drawn intense criticism for spreading provocative theories without providing evidence to support them. He claimed that the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School was "completely fake with actors" and now faces defamation lawsuits brought by some of the families whose children were killed there.

He also promoted the false conspiracy theory known as "Pizzagate," involving allegations of a child sex-abuse ring tied to Democratic party officials, eventually prompting a man to fire an AR-15 rifle inside of a pizza restaurant in Washington, D.C. YouTube sanctioned Jones earlier this year for raising questions about whether the teen survivors of the Parkland, Florida, shooting were actors, but didn't delete his channels.

Technology companies have faced growing public pressure since July 18, when Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, speaking on the tech podcast Recode Decode, defended his company's decision to leave Jones' content up. "The approach that we've taken to false news is not to say, you can't say something wrong on the internet," he said. "I think that that would be too extreme." Zuckerberg then drew a parallel to Holocaust deniers, saying that they weren't "intentionally getting it wrong."

Since then, Silicon Valley companies have received a flood new of reports from users who flagged Jones' content as hate speech, according to people familiar with the companies' deliberations. On July 24, YouTube issued a 90-day strike against Jones for videos that the company said included hate speech against Muslims and transgender people. Facebook followed suit and issued a 30-day ban.

"You are starting to see these platforms act as a coherent field," said Daniel Kreiss, a professor at the school of media and journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "They are likely all having similar internal debates and watching what each other are doing. There is safety in numbers in that."

After Jones' video channels were banned, he turned to Twitter to direct fans to his podcasts, which were distributed on iTunes, Spotify, and the podcast distribution company Stitcher. Spotify and Stitcher combed through their archive of podcasts and moved last week to ban some.

Sleeping Giants, a social-media activist group that has pressed tech companies to enforce policies on abusive content, praised Apple's move. "Last week, we asked @Apple how the harassment of Sandy Hook parents and Vegas shooting victims didn't violate their Terms of Service. Tonight, they decided that it did. Massive kudos to @Apple for doing what most tech companies have so far refused to do," the group said in a tweet late Sunday.

Some at the tech companies said it appeared felt as if Jones was purposefully trying to test the companies and their policies, by walking right up to a line that they haven't quite made clear, according to three people familiar with deliberations. Executives defend the decision not to share exactly what content violated a policy because they fear it will prompt people to test it.

Sleeping Giants criticized other tech platforms including Facebook and YouTube for announcing their latest moved against Jones only after Apple did. “To say they’re now ‘silencing voices’ is to ignore the fact that they allowed them to be amplified in the first place,” the organization tweeted on Monday.

The president’s legal team continues its back-and-forth with investigators looking at Russia’s influence and involvement in the 2016 election. The two sides have been at odds over questions special counsel Robert Mueller would like to ask President Donald Trump for months. Salt Lake City will look to hire an employee to focus specifically on making sure underserved people are counted during the 2020 U.S. Census as federal officials plan to ask about immigration status. And an officer was not justified in shooting a woman suspected of breaking into cars in southern Utah this summer.

Happy Tuesday.

President Donald Trump’s legal team is pushing back against the special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election as the investigation approaches the president. Robert Mueller wants to ask Trump about possible obstruction of justice related to the investigation, according to the Washington Post and Rudolph Giuliani, Trump’s attorney in the matter. Trump has called on Attorney General Jeff Sessions to end the investigation that has led to charges against multiple campaign officials. [WaPost]

Topping the news: Salt Lake City recently approved funding for a full-time employee to work specifically on coordinating the 2020 U.S. Census and ensuring hard-to-count populations are contacted. The action comes in response to President Donald Trump’s announcement the census will include questions about immigration status. [Trib]

-> After months of arguing between Holladay city officials over whether to approve a high-density mixed development at a vacant field that was once a mall, the city notified an opposed community group that its 8,000-signature petition to vote on the issue is ineligible for a spot on November’s ballot. A judge will now decide whether a special election should be held to decide the matter. [Trib]

-> Enoch Police Corporal Jeremy Dunn was not justified when he shot a woman at a Parowan truck stop on June 28, Iron County prosecutors said Monday. The woman was suspected of breaking into cars and was combative, the video shows. But she didn’t pose an immediate threat when Dunn shot her twice. [Trib]

Tweets of the day: From @jimsciutto: “I have seen some cold stares in my life but watching Paul Manafort stare down his former deputy, arms crossed, as Rick Gates recounted the long list of his alleged crimes was remarkable.”

-> From @kenklippenstein: “Alex Jones flew too close to the chemtrails”

-> From @byrdinator: “Reminder for a particular department of the US government: ‘off the record no comment’ is not a thing.”

-> From @MEPFuller: “Governor Jerry Brown must allow the Squirtle Squad to put out the California widlfires. Squirtles can also be used as fighting pets. Very effective against ground type Pokémon too - no Brainer!”

Happy Birthday: To Daryn Frischknecht, communications director for Rep. Chris Stewart.

In other news: Members of Utah’s Asian community are worried that a plan to build more than 650 residential units, two hotels, an office tower and a retail space in downtown Salt Lake City would effectively wipe away the historic Japantown neighborhood. [Trib]

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, considered a Democratic presidential front-runner for 2020, made a campaign-style swing through the West this summer that included a fundraising event at an upscale Salt Lake City restaurant. [DNews]

-> Robert Gehrke demands a rematch after finishing second in the Tribune’s race to find the fastest method of downtown transportation. [Trib]

-> More than 20 young people ages 4 to 22, from countries including Mexico, Peru and Kenya, took the oath of citizenship and were naturalized as U.S. citizens at a ceremony in West Jordan. [Trib] [DNews] [ABC4] [KSL]

-> Five animal rights activists, who face 60 years in prison after allegedly taking a dying piglet from a factory farm in 2017, demanded that they be allowed to inspect the facility to see if living conditions have improved. [Fox13]

-> Pat Bagley thinks Trump’s decision to roll back emission standards will affect Utah’s already poor air quality. [Trib]

Nationally: The Trump administration announced it will reimpose economic sanctions against Iran that were lifted in 2015, putting into question relations with both Iran and America’s European allies. [NYTimes] [NPR] [TheGuardian]

-> Rick Gates, Paul Manafort’s former business partner, testified that he had been involved in criminal activity with President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman. Gates said he and Manafort had also worked for pro-Russia political forces in Ukraine. [NYTimes] [WaPost] [Politico]

-> Media platforms including YouTube, Spotify, Facebook and Apple removed podcasts by right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who runs the website Infowars, for violating policy and community standards by promoting violence and hate speech. [NYTimes] [WaPost] [LATimes] [TheGuardian]

Got a tip? A birthday, wedding or anniversary to announce? Send us a note to cornflakes@sltrib.com.

-- Connor Richards and Taylor W. Anderson

Twitter.com/crichards1995 and Twitter.com/TaylorWAnderson

Alexandria, Va. • Rick Gates — the star witness against President Donald Trump’s ex-campaign manager — admitted in federal court Monday that he committed a host of crimes with his former boss, and confessed to stealing from him and others.

In his first hour on the witness stand, Gates catalogued years of crimes, saying most of his wrongdoing was committed on behalf of his former boss, Paul Manafort, while other crimes were for his own benefit, including the theft of hundreds thousands of dollars. Gates also made clear he was testifying against Manafort in the hopes of receiving a lesser prison sentence, having pleaded guilty in February as part of a deal with Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

Manafort’s trial in Alexandria is the first to arise out the Mueller probe and marks a major public test of that investigation’s credibility. Mueller’s team is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, and whether any Trump associates conspired with those efforts.

During the trial's first week, Trump lashed out publicly against Mueller and said the entire effort should be stopped "right now."

Inside the courthouse Monday, Gates' testimony against Manafort marked a shattering end to a relationship that made the two political consultants millions of dollars working for foreign politicians, and led them both to prominent positions on the Trump campaign.

Wearing a blue suit and gold tie, Gates strode to the witness stand in Alexandria, Virginia, federal court shortly after 4 p.m., and did not waste much time before cutting to the heart of the issue.

"Did you commit crimes with Mr. Manafort?" prosecutor Greg Andres asked Gates.

"Yes," Gates responded.

For most of his testimony, Gates did not look at Manafort, while the defendant stared intently at his former business partner.

Presented with a copy of the plea agreement he signed, Gates said he conspired with Manafort to falsify Manafort's tax returns.

Andres asked Gates whether he understood that his lies and omissions were illegal.

"Yes," Gates said.

When asked why he had lied, Gates said he had done so at Manafort's request.

Gates said he and Manafort had 15 foreign accounts they did not report to the federal government, and they knew it was illegal.

"Mr. Manafort directed me" to not report those accounts, Gates testified.

Gates also said Manfort had directed him to report money wired from his foreign bank accounts as loans, rather than as income, to reduce Manafort's taxable income. By reporting it as a loan, Gates explained, Manafort could defer the amount of taxes he owed.

Gates said that even while he was committing crimes with his boss, he was also stealing from him.

He testified that he had control over some of the Cyprus bank accounts that held Manafort's money, and created phony bills to siphon off hundreds of thousands of dollars.

"I added money to expense reports and created expense reports" that were not accurate, he said, to pad his salary by "several hundred thousand" dollars.

That testimony likely explains one of the minor mysteries of the first week of the Manafort trial.

As employees of various stores and service providers testified last week about Manafort's spending millions of dollars on suits, home entertainment systems, and cars, some of the witnesses were shown phony invoices from those firms. The witnesses said they had never seen the fake bills before.

Gates, 46, testified that he had embezzled from other employers as well and that he volunteered that information to investigators once he began cooperating.

Gates said he also told prosecutors he had lied in a deposition in a civil case against Manafort involving a private equity fund.

As part of his plea deal, Gates said prosecutors agreed not to pursue charges on those matters, and drop a second indictment against him in Alexandria accusing him of bank and tax fraud. Gates said he was guilty of those crimes, having wired money from Cyprus through the United Kingdom to the U.S. without paying taxes on it for himself. He also admitted wiring money from Cyprus for Manafort that was not declared as income.

Asked if he got any personal benefit from Manafort's falsified loan applications, Gates responded, "No, I did not."

Repeatedly, Gates insisted that most of his crimes were committed at Manafort's explicit instruction. At one point, he rattled off the names of a dozen overseas companies he said Manafort controlled; on prompting from prosecutors he identified three more. The money in them "came from income from political consulting in Ukraine," he said.

Gates described for the jury how the two first met — at a Christmas party at Manafort’s house, when Gates was working as an intern.

Gates said as he worked for Manafort over the years, his duties increased, but he still considered himself merely "an employee of the firm," and he believed Manafort thought of him the same way. The two did not socialize outside of work, Gates said.

When the lawyers interrupted the questioning for a sidebar with U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis, Gates sat in the witness chair, staring straight ahead, not looking at Manafort. Manafort took a few notes and seemed at one point to chuckle to himself.

Manafort and Gates were indicted together last year on dozens of charges that they conspired together to hide millions of dollars from the IRS in foreign bank accounts, and when their cash flow dried up, submitting false information to banks to get loans.

In February, Gates decided to plead guilty to lying to the FBI and conspiring against the United States, as part of a deal struck with prosecutors to provide evidence against his longtime business partner.

In assessing Gates, the six-man, six-woman jury will have to decide whether they believe an admitted liar when he says many of his lies were ordered by his boss.

The jury began hearing evidence in the Manafort case last week, starting with the details of Manafort’s seven-figure lifestyle. They also heard testimony from Manafort’s former accountant and bookkeeper about how Manafort, with help from Gates, repeatedly denied having foreign accounts to report to the IRS, sought to reclassify payments as loans so he didn’t have to pay taxes on the payments, and altered information in loan applications.

Manafort's defense strategy has been to argue that he may have made mistakes in his taxes, but he did not lie, and the real criminal in the case is Gates.

That strategy played out Monday as prosecutors and defense lawyers sparred over the testimony of one of Manafort's accountants, Cindy Laporta. Laporta testified Friday that she knowingly submitted false information to the IRS and to banks so her client could save money in taxes or qualify for loans.

She was granted use immunity to testify against her former client — meaning she won’t be charged with any crimes based on the admissions she made on the witness stand about her role.

Manafort's lawyer, Kevin Downing, tried to undercut the prosecutors' case by getting Laporta to concede that Manafort's finances were complicated, and that Gates was deeply involved in the process.

How Manafort's New York properties were classified on his taxes changed some years, and she agreed that keeping track of those changes was "difficult to follow."

Manafort's trial is expected to last another two weeks, but the judge pressed prosecutors to move quickly through their witnesses.

Tension between the judge and the prosecution team boiled over again late Monday as prosecutors attempted to introduce Gates' passport as evidence of his travels to Ukraine and Cyprus. Judge Ellis interrupted them.

"Let's get to the heart of the matter," he scowled.

"Judge, we've been at the heart …" prosecutor Andres interrupted.

"Just listen to me!" Ellis bellowed from the bench.

Ellis told Andres he was looking for ways to "expedite." Andres responded, "We're doing everything we can to move the trial along."

After sending the jury out of the courtroom, Judge Ellis tore into Andres for what he called unnecessary questions about billionaires involved in Ukrainian politics.

Andres pushed back angrily, prompting a heated argument that went on for more than 10 minutes.

Ellis repeatedly criticized Andres for not making eye contact with the judge, saying "look at me" and suggesting Andres "looked down as if to say, 'that's BS.' "

Andres responded with frustration saying, "You continue to interpret our reactions in some way," when the lawyers don't do the same to the judge.

Ellis disputed that he had limited prosecutors significantly or interrupted them often, saying the record would support him on that.

"I will stand by the record as well," Andres retorted.

"All right, then you will lose," Ellis responded.

Prosecutors did not finish their questioning of Gates on Monday, and he is scheduled to return to the witness stand Tuesday.

Separately, Manafort faces a second trial in the District in September on charges that he failed to register as a lobbyist for a foreign government and conspired to tamper with a witness in the case. The conduct surrounding those charges allegedly occurred after his indictment, so Manafort's bail was revoked and he has been living in a federal jail in Alexandria while he fights the two cases against him.

The Washington Post’s Justin Jouvenal contributed to this report.

After a quickly moving wildfire southeast of Indianola in Sanpete County claimed at least two structures — and firefighters were trying to to save nearly 200 still standing in its path — officials have ordered new evacuations.

The Hilltop Fire sparked Monday afternoon in “very, very dry” timber, brush and short grass. Officials believe humans caused the blaze. It grew rapidly from 50 acres to an estimated 1,400, according to a news release from state fire officials.

The fire was threatening about 500 people near Indianola, Blackhawk Estates and Milburn, nearly 40 percent of the population in that area, according to a news release from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The agency has approved funding to help fight the fire.

On Tuesday evening, new evacuation orders were given for Hideaway Valley, south of South Ridge Road, and west of Shadow Canyon Road, south of Indianola. Mandatory evacuations remained in place for residents living in Blackhawk Estates, areas north of Hilltop Road and areas west of Milburn Road.

Firefighters hadn’t contained any of the fire as of Tuesday afternoon, when winds picked up and temperatures rose. As of Tuesday night, the fire was “torching” trees in bursts of flame that can jump to other vegetation, said Leanne Fox, spokeswoman for Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands.

While fire officials have requested additional crews, they are low on the priority list for resources because of other fires burning in the West, Fox said.

Fortunately, Fox said, local crews have pledged fire engines to the fight. She said officials requested additional hand crews, but so far one is assigned to the fire.

A helicopter has been dispatched to fight the fire, and Fox said resources from Salt Lake City are available.

Utah Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox lives on a farm in nearby Fairview and has been tweeting about the firefighting — and, the Sanpete County Sheriff’s Office said, helping to set irrigation lines.

#hilltopfire Spencer Cox is in that field helping set irrigation line. pic.twitter.com/QW22pvtWtv

— Sanpete Sheriff (@SanpeteSheriff) August 7, 2018

Cox tweeted Tuesday morning that volunteer Sanpete County fire departments completed “amazing aggressive saves” of two homes. He tweeted that his farm isn’t in danger.

Wow. Can feel the heat from here. pic.twitter.com/BSCnCA5tml

— Spencer Cox (@SpencerJCox) August 7, 2018

Since before the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump’s Hollywood Walk of Fame star has seen just about everything. It was smashed into pieces — twice. It was vandalized with a swastika, enclosed with a miniature border wall, defaced with profanity and graced with the presence of a gold-painted toilet telling passersby to “TAKE A TRUMP.”

Trump supporters have fought back, defending the star. Late last month, hours after a man destroyed the star with a pickax, a fierce brawl ensued, leaving one person kicked in the head and another bleeding from the face.

The site has become a symbol not only of the nation's celebrity president but of the polarization surrounding him. And a nearby city council has had enough of it.

On Monday night, the West Hollywood City Council voted unanimously in favor of a resolution to ask for the removal of Trump's star, due to the president's "disturbing treatment of women and other actions that do not meet the shared values of the City of West Hollywood, the region, state, and country." It cited President Donald Trump's lewd comments on the Access Hollywood tape, his policy of separating families at the border, and his denial of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Since the city of West Hollywood does not have any control over the Walk of Fame, the council's resolution simply urges the City Council of Los Angeles and the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce to remove the star.

"These are the sort of icons and images that define us as Americans," West Hollywood Mayor John Duran told The Washington Post late Monday night. "To think that we would pay tribute to someone who's causing such a horrible disaster to our country's values."

Trump received his star on the Walk of Fame in 2007 for his work as the producer of the Miss Universe Pageant. His is one of more than 2,500 coral terrazzo and brass stars on the two-mile stretch of the popular Hollywood tourist attraction. Each year a committee sifts through about 200 nominations to select 20 to 24 new stars to add to the Walk of Fame.

The city council of West Hollywood, which neighbors Los Angeles, has “never felt compelled to intervene” in decisions regarding the Walk of Fame, Duran said. The council didn’t make such calls for star removal when scores of powerful men in Hollywood were accused of misconduct amid the #MeToo movement. It did not pass a similar resolution to eliminate the star of Bill Cosby after the disgraced comedian was convicted of sexual assault.

"They've had their day in court, they've had their trial," Duran said of men like Cosby. But this time is different, Duran said, because Trump is the "leader of the free world." "There's a sense of lawlessness that is occurring that is largely being orchestrated by the president." The council passed the resolution not because Trump is a conservative or Republican, Duran said, but because he has created a "constitutional crisis."

In light of the revelations of the #MeToo movement, the city's resolution also asks that the officials overseeing the Walk of Fame consider revisiting the qualifications for earning a star. West Hollywood Mayor Pro Tempore John D'Amico, who introduced the proposal, thinks the Walk of Fame "needs to do a deep dive into their history" and consider what other stars should be removed, he said in an interview with The Post.

Duran acknowledges that the resolution is, at this point, purely symbolic. Leron Gubler, the president of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, which oversees the Walk of Fame, said in a statement to CNN that it will refer the issue to the group's Executive Committee for consideration at its next meeting. "As of now, there are no plans to remove any stars from the Hollywood Walk of Fame," Gubler said.

Despite previous demands to remove Cosby and Trump's stars, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce has refused to do so.

"The answer is no," Gubler said in 2015 in response to inquiries about the Cosby and Trump stars. "The Hollywood Walk of Fame is a registered historic landmark. Once a star has been added to the Walk, it is considered a part of the historic fabric of the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Because of this, we have never removed a star from the Walk."

So the council's resolution is not likely to do much in the immediate future. Still, the move drew a rowdy crowd of an estimated 100 people to city hall Monday night, where residents were encouraged to weigh in on the debate.

Emotions ran high. Insults were shouted across the room. At one point, Duran had to remind those in the audience to have a civilized debate, even though today's politics may "seem uncivilized."

Among those who spoke during the public comment portion of the meeting was a 24-year-old named Austin Mikel Clay, who introduced himself by saying, "You may know me as the man who actually destroyed Donald Trump's star."

Clay turned himself into police after he swung a pickax at Trump's star at 3 a.m. late last month. He is now facing a felony charge of vandalism and is expected to be arraigned next week.

Wearing a black blazer and white button-down shirt, Clay said he felt Trump's star was a threat to public safety. "With all the violence that's erupting over the star in its current condition, I could see someone getting seriously hurt."

He called Trump "unethical" and "fraudulent," and criticized him for "putting children in cages," and removing them from their parents at the border."He is racist. He's a bigot," Clay said.

"I would like to preserve the integrity of the Walk of Fame as an honorable landmark for the American landscape," Clay said.

A number of Trump supporters at the meeting condemned the resolution. "He earned it," said one woman, who described herself as a Latina supporter of the president. "It needs to be respected. Be proud of that star."

"You want to remove stars? Start with all the pedophilia in Hollywood," she added.

A transgender man, James Wen, stepped up to the microphone to decry the president's move to ban transgender members of the military. "Stars in the military are awarded to great leaders, great generals," Wen said. "This is our commander in chief and when a commander in chief, when a general is not becoming of their position, they are either asked to resign or a star is removed. It is time to have the star removed."

As Wen walked back to his seat, Duran said he heard someone in the audience yell out to Wen, "You're actually a woman. Start acting like a girl."

In a video of the meeting, Duran is seen pounding a gavel on the table in front of him.

"Excuse me. We do not speak to members of the transgender community with such horrible remarks," he said, prompting a round of applause from the audience.

Later in the meeting, Duran said that some of the comments made by Trump supporters in the audience "are a reflection of that anger and angst and divisiveness" in the country right now.

Their behavior “pretty much solidified that what we’re doing is right,” Duran said.

For some, a trip to Mexico in December could be a well-deserved vacation. For the Utah Jazz, traveling south will be a business trip.

The Jazz will play the Orlando Magic in Mexico City in a regular season game on Dec. 15, the NBA announced Tuesday. The game is the second of a two-game series in which the Magic will also play the Chicago Bulls in the Arena Ciudad de Mexico.

League sources on Tuesday night confirmed to The Tribune a report from ESPN that the Jazz will host the Portland Trail Blazers as part of the NBA’s annual slate of Christmas Day games. The league on Wednesday will release the first week of regular season matchups, plus the full schedule of games on both Christmas Day and Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Utah played in Mexico City in 2003 in a preseason game against the Dallas Mavericks, and played two October games there in 1996: one against Dallas, and one against the Phoenix Suns. The Jazz won the 2003 contest and split the 1996 games.

“The Utah Jazz are excited to play in Mexico City and are proud to represent our fans and the NBA on a global stage,” Jazz president Steve Starks said in a statement. “Our organization thanks the NBA and the people of Mexico City for this unique opportunity.”

The Jazz have traveled to other locales for preseason games before: 2009 matchups against the Chicago Bulls and Real Madrid took place in London’s O2 Arena. In 1990, they played two contests to open the regular season in Tokyo against the Phoenix Suns.

But this is the latest in-season international Jazz game ever (excluding the team’s annual trips to Toronto). The contest will count as an away game for the Jazz and a home game for the Magic.

The game will be broadcast on ESPN. It’s the third consecutive season that the NBA has hosted two regular-season games in Mexico City, as part of an outreach effort to grow the league’s Mexican audience. The league also has hinted that it plans to start a G-League franchise in Mexico City.

Mexico City is closer to Salt Lake City than Orlando is by about 250 miles. And the NBA usually tries to accommodate internationally traveling teams with travel days scheduled around the game itself. The full NBA schedule is released later in August.