Growing up in Ogden, Taylor Booth always had designs on one day leaving the town 40 miles north of Salt Lake City to pursue his dream of becoming a professional soccer player overseas. On Jan. 31, Booth’s dream became a reality when he signed a 3 1/2-year deal with soccer club Bayern Munich.

After competing in a couple of tournaments with the United States Youth National Team, Bayern Munich — considered one of the biggest and most successful soccer clubs in Europe — invited him overseas to train for a week. Not long after, Bayern made the offer that Booth could not refuse.

“It was my goal to play in Europe so it was an amazing feeling to sign for such a successful club,” Booth told The Salt Lake Tribune.

Booth spent time with the Under-23 team for a winter training camp before joining the U-19 squad. He has yet to appear in the lineup for Bayern, but anticipates seeing action soon.

“I’m extremely excited to finally be able to play matches so I’m looking forward to the rest of the season,” Booth said.

So far, Booth is enjoying his new life in Germany. On his off days, he spends lots of time at the Hard Rock Cafe because its American atmosphere reminds him of home, he said.

When it comes to soccer, though, Booth is already getting a level of play he has not yet experienced in his career. He said the biggest change he has noticed in himself is his mentality toward the game.

“The German culture has taught me to never take a day off and to train 100% every day,” Booth said.

Not long ago, the 16-year-old Booth played for the Real Salt Lake academy team. In fact, RSL wanted to ink him to a homegrown contract. Although he chose not to do so, he gave credit to the academy for helping him improve as a soccer player.

“I give RSL a lot of credit for helping me with my youth development,” Booth said. “They are definitely one of the best academies in the U.S., if not the best. They continue to develop top players every year. So they deserve the respect they have.”

While Booth is living his dream, he is attempting take to his new life all in stride, and remembering what his parents told him when they learned he signed with Bayern.

“They were super proud of me,” Booth said, “but they realized I still have a lot of work to do. They told me to stay grounded and continue working hard.”

Dallas • Texas prisons will no longer allow clergy in the death chamber after the U.S. Supreme Court blocked the scheduled execution of a man who argued his religious freedom would be violated if his Buddhist spiritual adviser couldn’t accompany him.

Effective immediately, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice will only permit prison security staff into the death chamber, a spokesman said Wednesday. The policy change comes in response to the high court's ruling staying the execution of Patrick Murphy , a member of the "Texas 7" gang of escaped prisoners.

Texas previously allowed state-employed clergy to accompany inmates into the execution chamber, but its prison staff included only Christian and Muslim clerics.

In light of this policy, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Texas couldn't move forward with Murphy's punishment unless his Buddhist adviser or another Buddhist reverend of the state's choosing accompanied him.

"The government may not discriminate against religion generally or against particular religious denominations," the court's newest justice, Brett Kavanaugh, wrote in a concurring opinion.

Murphy's attorneys told the high court that executing the 57-year-old without his spiritual adviser in the room would violate his First Amendment right to freedom of religion. He became a Buddhist almost a decade ago while incarcerated.

One of those lawyers, David Dow, said the policy change does not address their full argument and mistakes the main thrust of the court's decision.

"Their arbitrary and, at least for now, hostile response to all religion reveals a real need for close judicial oversight of the execution protocol," Dow said

Kristin Houlé, executive director of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, called the new policy "cruel and unusual," and urged the department to reconsider.

Prison chaplains will still be able to observe executions from a witness room and meet with inmates on death row beforehand, said Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman Jeremy Desel. He declined to elaborate on the reasoning behind the policy change.

It felt, with apologies to Yogi Berra, like “deja vu all over again.”

In July, after all, it will be 15 years since a skinny guy with an odd name sang a hymn to American union. “There is not a liberal America and a conservative America,” then-Illinois state Sen. Barack Obama told the Democratic National Convention. “There is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America — there’s the United States of America.”

Last week, another skinny guy with an odd name — Beto O'Rourke — sounded a similar theme as he kicked off his presidential campaign in El Paso. "Whatever our differences," declared the former congressman, "where you live, who you love, to whom you pray, for whom you voted in the last election — let those differences not define us or divide us at this moment. Before we are anything else, we are Americans first."

He surely didn't intend it, but his evocation of that theme only pointed out how drastically the nation has changed since Obama evoked it in 2004. Back then, it played as a necessary corrective to an era of political polarization, an inspiring reminder of shared values and common heritage. Fifteen years later, it just sounds like wishful thinking.

Which says less about O'Rourke than about the country he aspires to lead.

The notion of one nation, indivisible, once seemed a bracing and defining ideal, the bedrock to which we could always return. But succeeding years have shaken that bedrock until what was once bracing and defining now feels like a sugarplum fairytale, with no bearing upon the hard reality of us, here and now. Worse, it feels like a denial of the present state of our Union, of how deeply cracked is the foundation of this house.

The division is only nominally political. To the contrary, it encompasses geography, education, class, religion, culture, sexuality and, most of all, race. Yes, it is exacerbated by politics and yes, politics — specifically, the gleeful, playing-with-matches-in-dry-tinder opportunism of the Republican president and his apologists — has frequently been its proxy.

But ultimately, this division is about the simple fact that increasingly, we don't like us.

Think of the white man who went on a bizarre rant last week because he saw a Spanish word on the menu of a Mexican restaurant in California.

Think of political leaders at every level peddling Islamophobia and racism. Think of white supremacists with Tiki torches parading in a public park.

Think of the shootings at a synagogue in Pittsburgh and a gay nightclub in Orlando. Think of the bombs sent to a cable news network and progressive politicians.

And think of how hate crimes have spiked, how bullhorns have replaced dog whistles, how bigotry has been called in from the margins and given a berth on primetime cable.

Into that fraught moment steps O'Rourke, invoking the secular faith of a nation comprising other nations and bound by a stated belief in human equality. "Before we are anything else," he says, "we are Americans first."

It stirs memories of a day before acrimony became permanent. You want to believe it because what else are you going to do? To not believe it is to make the country a failure and a lie. So you hope maybe he sees something you can't yet see. Or that maybe stubborn faith can make the thing true.

Right now, all that can be said for sure is that, last week, another skinny guy with a funny name told us we are one nation, indivisible. And maybe we are.

But that used to be a whole lot easier to believe.

Leonard Pitts is a columnist for The Miami Herald. lpitts@miamiherald.com

Singapore • New Islamic criminal laws that took effect Wednesday in Brunei that punish gay sex and adultery by stoning offenders to death have triggered an outcry from countries, rights groups and celebrities far beyond the tiny Southeast Asian nation’s shores.

The penalties were provided for under new sections of Brunei's Shariah Penal Code. Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah instituted the code in 2014 to bolster the influence of Islam in the oil-rich monarchy of around 430,000 people, two-thirds of whom are Muslim.

Even before 2014, homosexuality was already punishable in Brunei by a jail term of up to 10 years. The first stage of the Shariah Penal Code included fines or jail for offenses such as pregnancy out of wedlock or failing to pray on Fridays.

But under the new laws, those found guilty of gay sex can be stoned to death or whipped. Adulterers risk death by stoning too, while thieves face amputation of a right hand on their first offense and a left foot on their second. The laws also apply to children and foreigners, even if they are not Muslim.

"Living in Brunei, we already knew that our sexual identity is taboo and should not be expressed. We already felt belittled before the law came to place," said a 23-year-old member of the LGBTQ community who wanted to be identified only as Kun out of fear of reprisal from the authorities.

"Now with it, we feel even smaller and the ones who could potentially oppress us have more opportunity to harass us to say and do what they want," he said.

Celebrities including George Clooney, Elton John and Ellen DeGeneres have voiced opposition to the new laws, and have rallied a boycott of nine hotels in the U.S. and Europe with ties to Hassanal, who is still sultan.

"Are we really going to help fund the murder of innocent citizens?" Clooney wrote Thursday on Deadline Hollywood.

Clooney said that while you can't shame "murderous regimes," you can shame "the banks, the financiers and the institutions that do business with them."

Customers at two prestigious Paris hotels owned by the sultan expressed their support for a boycott.

Outside the Le Meurice hotel, Philippe Ménager said he was no longer comfortable going to the spa after being a regular customer for 15 years.

"I can't continue to be a frequent visitor of the hotels of this savage to preserve the jobs of the people who work at Le Meurice — who are very nice and I like them," he said.

A tourist from Norway, Anja Anderson, said she would have stayed at a hotel other than the Plaza Athenee had she heard about the boycott before making her reservation.

There has been no vocal opposition to the new penalties in Brunei, where the sultan rules as head of state with full executive authority. Public criticism of his policies is extremely rare in the country.

Hassanal, who has reigned since 1967, has previously said the Penal Code should be regarded as a form of "special guidance" from God and would be "part of the great history" of Brunei.

The United Nations said Wednesday that Secretary-General Antonio Guterres "stands clearly against any form of cruel punishment" and believes the Brunei legislation clearly violates the principles "that human rights are to be upheld in relations to every person everywhere without any kind of discrimination."

"So long as people face criminalization, bias and violence based on their sexual orientation, gender identity or sex characteristics, we must redouble our efforts to end these violations," said Guterres' spokesman, Stephane Dujarric. "Everyone is entitled to live free and equal in dignity and rights."

On Tuesday, the United States joined the United Kingdom, Germany and France in urging Brunei to halt its plans.

"The United States strongly opposes violence, criminalization and discrimination targeting vulnerable groups, including women at risk of violence, religious and ethnic minorities, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex persons," State Department deputy spokesman Robert Palladino said in a statement.

Brunei's Southeast Asian neighbors, some of whom have laws banning sex between men, were silent. But LGBTQ citizens of other nearby Muslim-majority countries were concerned about the broad penalties.

Nearly two-thirds of Malaysia's 32 million people are Muslim. They are governed by Islamic courts in family, marriage and personal issues. Last year, two Malaysian Muslim women were convicted under Islamic laws and caned for attempting to have sex with each other.

Michelle Bachelet, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, urged Brunei's government to "stop the entry into force of this Draconian new penal code."

"Any religion-based legislation must not violate human rights, including the rights of those belonging to the majority religion as well as of religious minorities and non-believers," she said in a statement on Monday.

Phil Robertson, the deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch, called on the sultan to "immediately suspend amputations, stoning, and all other rights-abusing provisions and punishments."

"Brunei's new penal code is barbaric to the core, imposing archaic punishments for acts that shouldn't even be crimes," Robertson said in a statement Wednesday.

Rachel Chhoa-Howard, Brunei researcher at Amnesty International, decried the “vicious” laws and asked the international community to condemn them.

Washington • As a country, we have become Constitutionally lazy. And timid.

Note the capitalization of "Constitutionally."

At various points in our history, we have been willing to re-examine flawed or out-of-date provisions in our founding document. Six constitutional amendments — guaranteeing the right to vote for African Americans, having voters rather than state legislatures elect our senators, abolishing the poll tax, giving the District of Columbia a say in the Electoral College, and extending the right to vote to women and younger Americans — made our republic more democratic.

The 26th Amendment, approved in 1971, to let 18-year-olds vote was the last to get through in a conventional way. The fluky 27th Amendment, ratified in 1992, had been sent to the states in 1789. It bars a sitting Congress from raising its own pay and was only approved after Gregory Watson, a sophomore at the University of Texas, discovered in the 1980s that it was still out there.

That our last amendment was something close to an accident underscores how unwilling we are to confront the need for systematic change. That's why I cheered this week when Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, joined a group of colleagues to propose an amendment providing for the election of our president by popular vote, not the Electoral College. Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., offered a comparable proposal last month. So far, at least seven Democratic presidential candidates have endorsed the idea.

Schatz is under no illusions that his proposed amendment will even get out of Congress anytime soon. But "the basic principle that the person who gets the most votes should be president of the United States" is worth fighting for, he said in an interview. There's value in staking out "clear, principled and popular positions" and pursuing them with "persistence and patience."

The view that the Electoral College is outdated and a time bomb for our democracy was once widely held across party lines. As Geoffrey Skelley noted in FiveThirtyEight, a May 1968 Gallup poll found that 66 percent of Republicans and 64 percent of Democrats approved of switching to the popular vote. Now, the Electoral College offers Republicans a built-in advantage, giving the issue a partisan edge. That's unfortunate, because faith in the fairness and representativeness of our system will continue to erode if we make it a habit of allowing popular-vote losers to ascend to the Oval Office.

Another sign that structural change is back on the public agenda: There are a variety of proposals to change the way Supreme Court justices are selected. This is a response to how partisan both the confirmation process and the court itself have become.

Pete Buttigieg, the South Bend, Indiana, mayor and presidential hopeful, has floated an intriguing way to push back against politicized jurisprudence. Membership on the court would be increased from nine to 15 members. Republican and Democratic presidents would name five each. Those ten would, in turn, select the remaining members from the appellate bench by unanimous vote.

At the least, his far-reaching restructuring might encourage openness to more modest reforms such as 18-year term limits on justices. When the Constitution was adopted, life expectancy stood at around 35. Now it's 79. Lifetime appointment means something very different today than it did in 1787.

Garrett Epps, a law professor at the University of Baltimore, noted in an email that constitutional amendments usually "come in clusters and they tend to come at moments of national optimism and feeling of confidence." (Too bad for us right now.) The three Civil War amendments — abolishing slavery, guaranteeing equal protection and the right to vote — are good examples, as are the Progressive Era amendments on women's suffrage, allowing an income tax and directly electing senators.

Epps argues that Electoral College reform is what's most urgently needed. He points to the fact we have altered "the system of presidential election and succession no fewer than four times" (through the 12th, 20th, 22nd and 25th Amendments), a reflection of our ongoing difficulties in getting it right.

The best way to honor our past is not to freeze its practices in place but to remember that our forebears were willing to undertake reform when reforms were required.

"When Americans have confronted major political, economic and social crises throughout our history, we have debated — and adopted — constitutional changes to address them," said Ganesh Sitaraman, a law professor at Vanderbilt University. "Many of the recent proposals for constitutional reforms are in line with this tradition."

Yes, and we shouldn't be afraid of them.

E.J. Dionne is on Twitter: @EJDionne.

In recent weeks we have seen catastrophic flooding across the Midwest, the devastating Cyclone Idai in southeast Africa, emergencies and/or evacuations in impoverished Native American communities in South Dakota and new reports emerge daily of the threats posed by planetary warming.

Digesting this news over the last month, one might consider two questions: Are these events interrelated? Should Utah residents care?

It is well understood that these types of extreme weather events are becoming more common and more severe because of a warmer atmosphere. The continued use of fossil fuels will increase warming. This is a fact, supported by extensive peer-reviewed literature on the topic. There is virtually no debate about it in the scientific community. So yes, these events are related.

Furthermore, many have concluded that several degrees of warming are already baked into Earth’s climate systems, which will have catastrophic impacts on human civilization, including rising sea levels, loss of glacial freshwater, more severe wildfires, food and water shortages, and collapsed ecosystems.

Last July, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration concluded that the planet will see a 4 degrees C (7 degrees F) rise in temperatures by 2100. This report was published by an administration that simultaneously claims there is no climate change, but if there is, there’s no point increasing vehicle emissions standards, the planet is going to burn regardless.

That’s the level of criminal insanity with which our federal government is currently operating. Let that sink in, because Utah’s leaders may be giving the feds a run for their money.

This brings me to the second question: Should Utah citizens care? As in, should we care deeply enough to take genuine political action? For future generations, the answer must be an emphatic yes, especially when one considers the disastrous plans to construct an inland port in the northwest quadrant of Salt Lake City, near the airport, in the middle of migratory bird habitat south of the Great Salt Lake.

This port is a cynical opportunity for a handful of landowners, several of which are large corporations, to reap significant profits. One of these companies is the multinational Rio Tinto, which apparently requires revenue beyond its $40.52 billion from last year (at the expense of wildlife habitat and air quality).

It is also an opportunity for Swiss-based rail company Stadler to establish a new plant staffed by recruits from local high schools via partnership with Salt Lake School District. Perhaps a more accurate testament to Stadler’s “commitment” to students is their insistence on tax breaks, including $10 million promised by the port authority and a $9.6 million deal with the city.

Additionally, the Utah Inland Port Authority board (made up of nine white men and two white women) has total control over future tax breaks in the 20,000 acres it administers over. That’s roughly equivalent to 1,000 City Creek Centers. Also present at board meetings: Savage, a logistics company that concedes it plans to transport coal via the port.

This is but a small sample of the troubling information that can be obtained by attending just a couple board meetings. It’s alarming to consider what is being agreed upon behind closed doors.

We should be ashamed. As frontline communities fight for survival, often impoverished communities of color that have contributed the least to this catastrophic state of affairs, we watch the ultra-wealthy, with politicians as their lapdogs, extract and destroy despite the suffering it causes.

While some struggle to make ends meet, others continue to enjoy lifestyles that cannot be sustained. It is long past time to rise up, resist, and build an alternative future. No inland port!

Ethan Petersen, Salt Lake City, is a residential direct care associate for individuals with developmental disabilities with degrees in biology and mathematics from the University of Utah. He will be entering the University of Utah School of Medicine this fall.

Washington - Appropriately, during the crescendo of this college basketball season, in which the most significant event was a shoe malfunction, a lawyer whose best-known client was a pornographic actress was indicted for threatening to shrink a shoe company’s market capitalization by making allegations about the company misbehaving in the meat market for a small number of tall “student-athletes.” What counts as misbehavior in this swamp is a murky subject.

Zion Williamson is a "one-and-done" superstar at Duke, a university (one can lose sight of this fact) that aspires to be worthy of its basketball program. There Williamson is spending the obligatory year before becoming eligible to rake in riches in the NBA, which forbids its teams to sign players directly out of high school, thereby giving institutions of higher education a year to refine future NBA talent.

In a February game, one of Williamson's Nike shoes blew apart under the torque of his 285 pounds. This injured him, not seriously but enough to furrow the brows of those who ponder the ethics of college athletics -- in a sense, a small subject. They wondered: While Williamson is serving his one-year sentence as an unpaid student-athlete, helping Duke and the National Collegiate Athletic Association make millions and more than a billion, respectively (he has 3 million followers on Instagram), an injury could ruin his prospects as a professional. So, perhaps he should be a paid student-athlete.

Nike pays Duke serious money, but not a penny -- heaven forfend -- to Williamson, to wear its stuff. (Duke, a private institution, can keep such transactions secret, but a comparable basketball factory, the University of Kentucky, recently extended its marriage to Nike for $30.6 million over eight years.) Williamson's defective shoe briefly knocked $1.1 billion off Nike's market capitalization. Michael Avenatti, former lawyer for Stormy Daniels, was apparently nine times more ambitious.

He was arrested after being recorded, according to the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, threatening to release -- on the eve of March Madness and of a Nike earnings call -- evidence that Nike has participated in a particular practice of sports apparel companies (Adidas and Under Armour also supposedly compete). They sluice money, through third parties, to "blue chip" recruits, or their families, to steer players to schools that are paid to wear the companies' goods. To lawyers for Nike, Avenatti said: "I'll go take $10 billion dollars off your client's market cap. ... I'm not f---ing around."

Recently three men were convicted of fraud and conspiracy for directing recruits to Adidas schools, on the amusing theory that the schools who welcomed these players had never noticed any of the money sloshing around, and so were somehow victims. Pure as the driven slush. Louisiana State University reached the Sweet Sixteen in 2019's March Madness without its coach, who was suspended by LSU after refusing to talk to the university about transcripts of colorful telephone conversations. The coach spoke about "a hell of a [expletive] offer" and "a [expletive] strong-ass offer" -- to whom was unclear -- concerning prospective recruits. Conceivably, the offers were not for NCAA-permitted benefits for the athlete.

The judge in another recent case compounded the comedy, ruling that although the NCAA has no "coherent definition of amateurism," it can continue to sharply limit financial aid to athletes because the judge accepts the NCAA's convenient theory about "the importance to consumer demand of maintaining a distinction between college sports and professional sports."

About the importance of equity, Rep. Mark Walker, a Republican from basketball-crazed North Carolina, has an idea: Tweak the tax code to say that “amateur sports organizations” cannot “substantially [restrict] the use of an athlete’s name, image or likeness.” So the NCAA, epicenter of the college-sports industry, would forfeit its tax exempt status -- let’s not dwell on that absurdity -- if it continues forbidding athletes from making money from their names.

An ordained minister, Walker understands mankind's fallen nature, so he knows that rivers of money from boosters and others might flow to star players for, say, endorsing a local car dealership. A believer in redemption, perhaps Walker understands that improvement of the multibillion-dollar entertainment industry that is parasitic off educational institutions must begin by forcing it to confront its foundational hypocrisy about amateurism.

In 1957, Queen Elizabeth, attending a Maryland-North Carolina football game, asked Maryland's governor, "Where do you get all those enormous players?" He replied, "Your majesty, that's a very embarrassing question." In college basketball there are many such questions.

George F. Will writes a twice-weekly column on politics and domestic and foreign affairs. He began his column with The Washington Post in 1974, and he received the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1977.

@georgewill

georgewill@washpost.com

The Salt Lake Stallions made it official on Wednesday afternoon. The Alliance of American Football franchise and the rest of the league is shutting down.

“On behalf of the Salt Lake Stallions organization, it came with great disappointment and surprise to learn that the Alliance of American Football has decided to cease operations,” Stallions president Tyler Howell said in a statement.

“We are truly grateful for everyone who supported the Stallions, and especially the 50+ talented players and coaches that gave everything they had to produce eight weeks of very good, highly entertaining football,” Howell added.

The AAF suspended operations on Tuesday after majority investor Tom Dundon, owner of the NHL’s Carolina Hurricanes, declined to fund the league any further after the NFL Players Association rejected his proposal to allow NFL players to participate in the AAF.

The Stallions are especially disappointed, Howell said, because he believed the AAF concept was working — at least on the field. He said the league introduced changes that made the game safer, it put an entertaining product on the field and it provided a developmental league for players, coaches and officials, not to mention technological innovations “that could change the way we view sports,” Howell said, in what amounted to a goodbye letter to supporters.

#ReinDown | #FullSteedAhead pic.twitter.com/pEaA0jdZ9D

— Salt Lake Stallions (@aafstallions) April 3, 2019

Howell said next step for the now-defunct franchise will be to provide refunds for ticket buyers. The Stallions, who were scheduled to play at Atlanta on Sunday before the AAF suspended operations, had one game left at Rice-Eccles Stadium, against San Antonio on April 12.

“We hope to be able to share information from the league on how to provide refunds for those who have purchased tickets to the April game and will pass that on once we obtain it,” Howell said.

Using a line-item veto, Gov. Gary Herbert rejected Wednesday spending $800,000 of tax money for what was essentially a gift by legislators to Bryson Garbett, a prominent homebuilder and former legislator, who sought it with the help of House Speaker-turned-lobbyist Greg Curtis.

As earlier reported by The Salt Lake Tribune, the $800,000 was for a sound wall — which the Utah Department of Transportation had earlier rejected — at a vacant field where Garbett plans to build 77 homes.

Buried on page 32 of SB3 — the 66-page, last-chance-for-money bill that was unveiled and passed on the last day of the Legislature — was the following directive:

“The Legislature intends that the Department of Transportation use $800,000 from the Transportation Fund to construct a sound barrier along Mountain View Corridor at 8157 South Mapleleaf Way, West Jordan.”

Actually, the wording contained an error. The property borders Bangerter Highway, not the Mountain View Corridor — a possible sign of haste in passing the directive. Herbert used that mistake to justify his line-item veto.

In a written message to the Legislature, Herbert said he wiped out the directive because “the intent language is for a sound barrier at an address that does not exist along Mountain View Corridor.” The Legislature could override the line-item veto with a two-thirds vote by both the House and Senate.

SB3 was the final bill signed by Herbert as deadlines arrived for his action on legislation passed this year. The governor also used his power for line-item vetoes to erase funding in SB3 for two bills that had failed to pass the Legislature. He signed 539 pieces of legislation from this year’s legislative session, vetoed one bill and allowed three to become law without his signature.

Property records show the address listed for the sound wall is for 26 acres of what has been farmland, now owned by Aurora Heights LC. State business records show that company’s manager and agent is Garbett — president of Garbett Homes — who served as a Republican legislator from 1982 to 1986.

Garbett said in an earlier interview that he plans to build 77 homes on the parcel. “But it’s noisy,” he said. “I don’t think you would want to live there without a sound wall.”

He noted that adjacent homes that were built previously do have sound walls.

Garbett said he approached the Utah Department of Transportation officials to seek a sound barrier. “But they said no. We thought they were treating us and that property unfairly. Everyone else [nearby] has a sound wall. Why would they not put one there? We didn't get anywhere with them.”

A UDOT spokesman earlier said the agency uses formulas to determine where to build sound barriers as new highways are constructed. Vacant fields do not qualify. He said UDOT can reconsider once an area is developed, but that usually occurs after such development is completed.

Spurned by UDOT, Garbett said he hired Curtis as a lobbyist to push his case with lawmakers.

Normally, with some exceptions, the Legislature does not order specific transportation projects. Instead, it usually has the Utah Transportation Commission review and prioritize potential projects statewide using objective criteria to help take politics out of the process. The wording in SB3 side-stepped that, and in essence ordered that Garbett be a winner.

But Curtis said in a recent interview that he had seen sound barriers funded in appropriations bills, so he decided to give it a try — arguing that neighboring properties have sound barriers, so Garbett’s land should too.

Curtis said that he went about that by “just talking with members of the Legislature. I'm not comfortable in using names” of those who helped him, nor exactly who made the proposal for him to include the language.

“I mean the bill obviously is run by the appropriations chairs, and other members of leadership are keenly aware of what goes in and doesn’t go in the bill,” Curtis said. Leaders include Senate President Stuart Adams and House Speaker Brad Wilson, who both also are developers.

The Garbett family has a long and diverse political history. In addition to Bryson Garbett’s tenure as a Republican state legislator, his wife, Jan, ran unsuccessfully as a Democrat for lieutenant governor in 2016. Jan Garbett also ran as a United Utah Party candidate for Congress last year. Garbett’s son, David, is running for mayor of Salt Lake City this year in a nonpartisan race dominated by Democrats.

Phoenix • It helps to have your own personal cheering section.

That’s what Joe Ingles had in enemy territory on Wednesday night, with a group of four Jazz fans in the front row of Talking Stick Resort Arena. With the game somewhat close down the stretch, Ingles hit two 3-point shots directly in front of those adoring fans, then pointed to them as he ran back down the court.

Those were two of the biggest shots in the 19-3 run that sealed a 118-97 Jazz victory, six points that contributed to a season-high 27 points for Ingles.

It wasn’t always that easy, though. For whatever reason, it appears Phoenix and healthy players don’t mix well.

The Jazz started the game with five players out due to injury. Dante Exum’s the long-term one, while Derrick Favors and Kyle Korver missed their second consecutive games due to their nagging back and knee issues. Jae Crowder went from probable to unable to play due to a right quad contusion, and Ricky Rubio was a late scratch due to hamstring tightness.

That meant an oddball starting five featuring Donovan Mitchell, Royce O’Neale, Joe Ingles, Thabo Sefolosha and Rudy Gobert, and the results weren’t pretty: The West-worst Suns got out to a 10-0 lead on the Jazz, who seemed to be sleepwalking through the first few minutes.

But just then, worst case scenario struck for the Suns: Devin Booker badly sprained his ankle going for a pass. A foul was called, but Booker couldn’t even attempt the free throws afterward, meaning he was ineligible to return to the game. Booker joined a Phoenix injured list that already included rookie sensation DeAndre Ayton, Tyler Johnson, T.J. Warren and Kelly Oubre.

“Our intensity didn’t drop when Book went out,” Mitchell said. “We kept the focus and urgency. We knew they were going to play us tough, and it’s hard to beat the same team three times like this. It shows our resiliency.”

The injuries set the stage for an unlikely matchup: Grayson Allen and Jimmer Fredette going head to head, guarding each other and using possessions frequently on both ends of the floor. It was Allen who won that battle, though, scoring a career-high 14 points, though he picked up five turnovers in the game.

Still, his teammates and coaches were impressed by the performance.

“I thought he did a great job on the defensive end. He really threw himself into it and competed,” Quin Snyder said. “He let the game come to him offensively. It showed a lot of poise. … His experience in the [G League] really helped him.”

A second quarter run led by Ingles wrested control of the game back to the Jazz. Ingles was on fire, scoring 17 first-half points on only seven shots, including going 4 of 4 from deep. That entertained the crowd, which featured more than just a few Jazz fans in attendance.

The second half was back-and-forth, with the Jazz maintaining the lead at all times. It’d be a stretch to say the Jazz’s healthy players always played well, but they did enough to keep the Suns at bay at key stretches: Gobert had a few key blocks scattered throughout — good for five overall — and bench players such as Georges Niang and Raul Neto played well enough to keep the Jazz alive when the stars were out.

It was really Mitchell and Ingles’ shotmaking, though, that stood out the most. Mitchell hit consecutive threes in the third, then in the fourth, drilled a deep shot, late in the 24-second clock, while being fouled. The four-point play again kept the Jazz afloat. With 4:40 left, Mitchell hit a three to give the Jazz a double-digit lead again. He finished with a game-high 29 points.

Add Mitchell’s scoring to Ingles finding his own personal sweet spot, and it was too much for the Suns.

Suns head coach Igor Kokoskov obviously knows the Jazz well, after all, he was an assistant coach for the team from 2015 to 2018. With that comes a respect for his past coworkers, including Quin Snyder — the two even coached together at the University of Missouri starting in 1999.

But it was still somewhat unexpected to hear Kokoskov begin his pregame press conference on Wednesday evening by talking for at length about how good the Jazz are, and just how deep he expects them to go into the playoffs.

“I believe that this is team is built to go to the end of May, maybe June. It reminds me in a lot of different aspects of the 2004 Detroit Pistons. They have to stay healthy. We were healthy in 2004,” Kokoskov said. He was an assistant with the Pistons from 2003 to 2008.

“The other teams in the West — I’m not saying they fear the Utah Jazz, but they don’t want to play them,” Kokoskov continued. “They know their strengths and they could easily match up with Golden State, Houston, Denver, all of those teams. It’s not just because I have a lot of friends there, people I care about. I strongly believe that they have a chance to go all the way to the end of May, and they’ve built this team to win today.”

The end of May would mean a trip to the Western Conference Finals for the Jazz, which are currently scheduled to begin on either May 14th or 15th. The NBA Finals are slated to start on May 30th. Getting to the Conference Finals would mean upsetting a higher seed at least once, and most likely twice: The Jazz are currently in the fifth seed.

Why is Kokoskov so high on the Jazz’s postseason chances?

“We have a lot of respect for this group. They play well, they play together, they play as a unit. The strength of this team is the team. They understand who they are. They’re extremely well coached. They play for each other, they’re willing to sacrifice for each other,” Kokoskov said.

Kokoskov and Ricky Rubio

Kokoskov was also the assistant coach on Snyder’s staff that Ricky Rubio worked most closely with, and the two developed a close relationship. How close? Well, close enough that Kokoskov felt comfortable leading off his answer about Rubio with a joke:

“I have an internal joke with Ricky. It’s that he’s a better person and a worse player than I thought,” Kokoskov said.

But Kokoskov does have a lot of respect for Rubio’s game.

“He’s all about winning. You have to think that he started playing professional basketball at the age of 16. He is what LeBron James was to American basketball, that’s what he was to international basketball," Kokoskov said. "The time spent with him was a great experience. He’s an extremely, extremely good player, and a special person. I’m happy for him, and you can feel his leadership.”

A 14-year-old boy who said he escaped from two kidnappers in Ohio told authorities he is from Illinois, where he went missing nearly eight years ago when his mother apparently took her own life.

Police in suburban Cincinnati's Sharonville wrote in a short incident report that the teen said Wednesday morning that he had "just escaped from two kidnappers" he described as white men with body builder-type physiques. They were in a Ford SUV with Wisconsin license plates and had been staying at a Red Roof Inn.

The boy, who identified himself as Timmothy Pitzen, told police that after his escape he "kept running across a bridge into" Kentucky.

Timmothy Pitzen was six when he disappeared in 2011 after authorities said his mother took her own life in a Rockford, Ill., hotel.

Police in the Chicago suburb of Aurora said Wednesday afternoon that the department is sending two detectives to the Cincinnati area. Aurora police don't know if the boy he has any connection to Pitzen, Aurora Police Sgt. Bill Rowley said.

Police believe Amy Fry-Pitzen, 43, picked up her son from school and took him to the zoo and a Wisconsin water park before she apparently killed herself. Her body was found with her wrists slit on May 15, 2011.

Fry-Pitzen left a note saying her son was fine. Police investigating her death said she took steps that suggest she might have, as she said in her note, dropped her son off with a friend.

At the time, police searched for Pitzen in Illinois, Wisconsin and Iowa.

"We've probably had thousands of tips of him popping up in different areas," Rowley said. "We have no idea what we're driving down there for. It could be Pitzen. It could be a hoax."

The FBI said in a Wednesday afternoon statement that its offices in Louisville and Cincinnati were working on a missing child investigation with Aurora police and police departments in Cincinnati and Newport, Kentucky, and the Hamilton County Sheriff's Office in Ohio. The FBI offered no other details.

Sharonville police said on the department's Facebook page that the information about the boy's reported escape was received by police in Campbell County, Kentucky.

"The City of Sharonville Police Department, like every other police agency in the greater Cincinnati area, was requested to check their Red Roof Inn hotels regarding this incident," the Facebook post read. "To the best of our knowledge, we have no information indicating that the missing juvenile was ever in the City of Sharonville."

Timmothy Pitzen's grandmother, Alana Anderson, told WISN-TV Wednesday that authorities have told the family very little.

“We just know a 14-year-old boy was found and went to the police,” Anderson said. “We don’t want to get our hopes up and our family’s hopes up until we know something. We just don’t want to get our hopes up. We’ve had false reports and false hopes before.”

You’ve probably seen signs warning shoppers of the upcoming change at your local Smith’s Food & Drug. As of today, the grocery store chain stopped accepting Visa credit cards due to a dispute over transaction fees, FOX 13 reports.

Smith’s will still accept Visa debit cards, MasterCard, Discover, American Express, cash, checks, cards from SNAP and WIC programs, MasterCard debit cards and health savings account cards.

Smith’s, a banner brand of The Kroger Co., operates 55 stores in Utah.

See more at FOX13.

Editor’s note: The Salt Lake Tribune and FOX 13 are content-sharing partners.

Three thoughts on the Utah Jazz’s 118-97 win over the Phoenix Suns from Salt Lake Tribune beat writer Andy Larsen.

1. With five players out, five players step up

The Jazz had a entire lineup of players out for tonight’s game: Ricky Rubio was a late scratch with hamstring soreness, Dante Exum is out due to knee surgery, Kyle Korver has knee soreness, Jae Crowder has a quad contusion, and Derrick Favors has back spasms. That lineup hasn’t played together this season, but to be honest, I think that’d be a pretty good team.

So I asked Quin Snyder who he would rely on to take some of the roles that those guys fill.

"Everyone. I think that’s part of we want to feel as a group. It doesn’t fall on any one guy. The same way when everybody’s healthy, guys just have to be who they are."

I think the Jazz did that tonight. Those five guys were out, but five players — Donovan Mitchell, Joe Ingles, Raul Neto, Georges Niang, and Grayson Allen — played above their normal levels to get the team the win anyway.

We’ll start with Mitchell. Sure, 29 points isn’t really out of the norm for him: it’s his 19th performance with 29 points or more this season. But it is the first out of those 19 games in which he took fewer than 20 shots, and it’s the game in which he had the best assist-to-turnover ratio: 6 assists to only one give away. He had the 3-point shot going, making 4-7, and then the seven FTs meant he ended up with a nice line.

Joe Ingles tied his season-high with 27 points, and he did it while only taking 13 shots going 10-13 overall and 6-8 from deep. He also had eight assists, though was turnover prone with five giveaways. But I was most impressed with the variety of shots he made tonight — it was like he was playing HORSE or Around The World. He hit spot up threes from the corner and from up top. He made layups with a high-off-the-glass arc, and checked the trusty pass-fake layup off the to-do list. He hit a pull-up three off the high pick and roll, and hit step-backs going to his right. It was just a complete performance.

Raul Neto didn’t shoot particularly well, only going 3-9, but he played more minutes than he’s used to, with 21 of them, his third-highest total of the year. He also picked up four assists, but I thought he was the most consistent defensive option at his guard spot tonight; that might help explain why the Jazz outscored the Suns by 19 points in those 21 minutes.

Neto’s plus-minus was only surpassed by Georges Niang’s, who was a +23. That’s going to be great for Niang’s net rating, which hasn’t been brilliant this year. But he got the chance to finish a close game tonight because he outplayed Thabo Sefolosha, and his 3-5 shooting from deep really helped too. I asked him what it meant to him to finish an NBA game, and in non-garbage time.

“(It was) awesome," Niang told me, while teammate Royce O’Neale chanted his name. "The coaching staff has confidence in me to close out a game, especially when these games mean so much with seeding in the playoffs.”

2. Grayson Allen played well!

But we’re going to dedicate an entire Triple Team point to the play of Grayson Allen, who had his best game of the season with a career-high 14 points in 18 minutes.

He was good! His points came through two tricks: spotting up in the corner and making threes (an important skill, to be sure), and snaking on pick and roll, getting the defender on his back, and getting an open look. He did the latter three times, getting to the rim once for an easy layup, and then hitting two 5-10 foot floaters:

But the most impressive play was this block, where he showed off his athleticism, too:

That was the thing that stood out to me and head coach Quin Snyder: for the first time, Allen wasn’t a trainwreck defensively.

“I thought he did a great job on the defensive end. He really threw himself into it and competed,” Quin Snyder said. “His experience in the D-League really helped him.”

Some of this might have been because of his defensive assignments — he spent a lot of time on Jimmer Fredette, who is pretty athletically limited. But regardless, not getting blown by, and playing smart help defense are things we haven’t really seen from Allen.

I’ve been very down on Allen all season long: the list of guys in the modern era who came into the league at age 23 and had ugly rookie seasons, then went on to be contributors is really, really short. But I’m more optimistic now than I was two weeks ago, as this game plus his 30-point performance in the SLC Stars playoff game have shown promise.

3. A lot of travels

You know that old story about Nick Van Exel and “1-2-3 Cancun"? If you don’t, basically, in the 1998 Western Conference Finals, the Jazz swept the Lakers, right? Allegedly, in the middle of this series, as the Lakers were going down, Van Exel left a team huddle by saying “1-2-3 Cancun” rather than “1-2-3 Lakers,” or “1-2-3 defense” or whatever the team normally did. The implication: Van Exel was thinking about his travels more than the upcoming games.

Perhaps an appropriate cheer in this game would have been “1-2-3-4-5-6-7 Cancun”. Not because either team wasn’t trying hard: I actually think even the Suns were giving their best efforts. But the Jazz got called for so many travels during this game — seven — that I would believe it was somehow a trick that Quin Snyder was playing.

Seven is a ton of travels: it’s the most by any team in any game this season. Before tonight, the most was six travels called, which both the Bucks and the Wolves pulled off. But they did it early in the season, when referees are at their most stringent about those kinds of things. To get seven late in the season is legitimately impressive.

Rudy Gobert had four of those. He just dragged his pivot foot a couple of times, sometimes nearly imperceptibly, something Gobert probably does way more frequently than he’s called for. For whatever reason, tonight, the referees had eagle eyes and called it.

Gobert only had seven travels all season long before tonight, and while he was fourth in the Jazz leader list of travels before the game, he now moves into the lead. Here’s the full list:

Happy Thursday!

Utah will face five competitors to host the 2020 presidential debates, the Commission on Presidential Debates announced Wednesday.

It said the other applicants are: Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn.; Hartford, Conn.; Creighton University in Omaha, Neb.; the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Mich.; and the University of Notre Dame in Indiana.

Three will be chosen for the highly watched events in the weeks leading up to the November election. In 2016, the debates between President Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were held in Hempstead, N.Y.; St. Louis, Mo; and Las Vegas. The dates and locations were announced in September 2015, almost exactly a year before the first debate.

The Utah Legislature this year appropriated $2.5 million to help lure and fund a debate.[Politico][DebateComm]

Topping the news: Four women who say prosecutors mishandled their sexual assault reports will take advantage of a new law that allows victims to petition the attorney general’s office for review. [Trib][DNews][ABC4]

-> Gov. Gary Herbert used a line-item veto to erase spending $800,000 that lawmakers had approved for a sound wall as a favor to homebuilder Bryson Garbett, a former legislator. [Trib][DNews]

-> Utah Sens. Mike Lee and Mitt Romney ask the Pentagon to keep its hands off funding for Utah’s Hill Air Force Base as they look for money to build a wall at the Mexico border. [Trib][DNews]

Tweets of the day: From @wanderingdave “It is interesting that. @GarbettforMayor 's dad can easily get funding for a sound wall for his undeveloped land while the west side neighborhoods of SLC had to tirelessly fight for their own sound wall for years. #utpol #slc”

-> From @RepBenMcAdams “Today I voted to protect Utahns from losing health care due to a pre-existing conditions. Utahns deserve reliable access to quality, affordable #healthcare. #utpol”

-> From @TheaAHolcomb “Shoutout to @hcraighall for taking the time to talk with me today about the prohibition of conversion therapy on minors. So grateful for your thoughtful discussion of why the bill matters, what happened to it, and where it's headed in the future. #utpol #utleg #stillhappening.”

Trib Talk: On this week’s episode, Tribune reporter Bethany Rodgers, Rep. Marie Poulson, D-Cottonwood Heights, and Michelle Palmer, vice president of the Private Investigators Association of Utah, join Benjamin Wood to discuss Utah’s new vehicle tracking law and the ongoing debate over when, and whether, private investigators should be allowed to trace a person’s movement. [Trib]

In other news: Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill announced that he has appointed former Moab Chief of Police and former Salt Lake County Sheriff, Jim Winder as his new chief of investigations. [Trib][DNews]

-> A Delta Air Lines official says rebuilding the Salt Lake City International Airport will give its hub a competitive advantage in the West. [Trib]

-> The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints receives official recognition in Kuwait. [Trib]

-> Pat Bagley gives his spin to the epic battle of Brexit. [Trib]

-> Tribune Columnist Robert Gehrke praises Utah lawmakers’s efforts to fight suicide in the state and cites the ways in which these measures seem to be making a difference. [Trib]

-> Early discussions are underway to revive a bill to ban conversion therapy, aimed at changing a persons sexual orientation or gender identity, on minors. Utah Gov. Gary Herbert has not excluded the possibility of a special session to work on it. [Fox13]

Nationally: President Donald Trump’s pick for Interior secretary, David Bernhardt, continued to lobby after he filed official papers promising that he would no longer do so. [NYTimes]

-> Some members of special counsel Robert S. Mueller’s team say Attorney General William P. Barr failed to fully disclose the gravity of certain portions of the Mueller report that covered investigations into the presidential campaign. [WaPost][NYTimes][Politico]

-> House Democrats requested six years of tax returns for President Donald Trump, and are preparing to issue a subpoena for the full Mueller report from the Justice Department. [WaPost][NYTimes][Politico]

-> Former Vice President Joe Biden said in a video that he would be more respectful of personal space, after four women said that how he had touched them had made them uncomfortable.[NYTimes]

-> Porous security at President Trump’s Mar-A-Lago resort was exposed after a Chinese woman carrying malware was able to bypass it. [WaPost][NYTimes]

-> House legislation to form a commission to study whether black Americans should receive reparations for slavery is getting a significant boost from Democrats on the presidential campaign trail. [TheHill]

-> Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor, Jared Kushner was identified as one of the White House officials whose security clearance was denied and reinstated. [WaPost]

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

Lee Davidson and Christina Giardinelli

twitter.com/LeeDavi82636879, twitter.com/Ninetta89

This month marks the 70th anniversary of the birth of NATO, the most successful alliance in history. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg addressed a joint session of Congress, an event that allowed American lawmakers to demonstrate that they still care about an alliance that President Donald Trump views as an anachronism. NATO’s supporters, however, should not be content to glory in past achievements. They should be thinking about how to adapt America’s alliances to a world in which the clash between liberalism and autocracy is worldwide.

The idea of globalizing U.S. alliances is not new. In 1961, John Kennedy called for a "grand and global alliance" uniting mankind against tyranny, poverty, disease, and war. During the George W. Bush years, there were calls to create a "global NATO" or a "league of democracies." These Bush-era proposals went nowhere, in part because NATO was still recovering from the wounds inflicted by the Iraq War, and because there was not an obvious threat that would unite the world's democracies. Today, however, circumstances are different.

The world is fragmenting as authoritarian powers, principally China and Russia, work to undermine, revise and perhaps upend the liberal international order built by the U.S. and its allies. Autocratic leaders in Moscow and Beijing understand that the dominance of liberal values poses an existential threat to their regimes, and that they will be more secure and geopolitically effective in a world where democracy has been weakened and autocracy is prevalent. As China and Russia seek to expand their geopolitical power and influence, they are seeking to coerce and corrupt democratic political systems. They are also exporting the tools and examples of high-tech repression to fellow dictators around the world.

Russia has interfered in elections in Europe, the U.S. and Latin America. China uses influence operations and economic coercion to bend democracies to its will from Oceania to Eastern Europe. Analysts can argue about whether this is a "new Cold War." Yet it is undoubtedly a high-stakes struggle over both the balance of power and the balance of ideas. It demands that the world's democracies band together to defend their geopolitical interests and their political institutions.

This should not - and probably will not - look like a formal military alliance encompassing the world's democracies, or even America's existing democratic allies. There are, after all, divisions within the democratic world. Some European countries are increasingly alarmed by China's growing heft and predatory behavior, others see Beijing primarily as a source of investment and trade, while still others are trying to strike a balance between these two viewpoints. And trying to formally unite America's existing alliance structures in Europe and the Asia-Pacific risks simply undermining their cohesion.

If South Korea and Japan struggle to stand together against threats from North Korea and China, how well will a "global NATO" including those countries and dozens of additional democracies function? And if many citizens of Western Europe would now be ambivalent about fighting to defend Estonia, just try getting them to defend Taiwan or the Philippines.

Rather, the key to building a stronger network of democracies is to gradually develop better cooperation against common dangers. Given that so many democracies are struggling to defend themselves against information warfare, cyberattacks and electoral meddling, there is an opportunity for additional intelligence-sharing and exchange of best-practices in responding to these threats. The Australian government, for instance, recently unearthed a vast trove of information about how China suborns corruption and influences key political actors. While Australia has presumably shared that information with its "Five Eyes" intelligence partners and closest allies, understanding how Beijing subverts democratic political systems would surely benefit fellow democracies across Europe and the Asia-Pacific. Better still would be greater coordination in responding - whether through naming and shaming, diplomatic penalties or economic sanctions - to authoritarian efforts to subvert democratic processes.

Democracies across the world also have growing experience with authoritarian economic coercion and aggression short of war; they can work together to build resilience and push back against these tactics. Finally, the more the democracies can join forces to support liberalizing movements in authoritarian countries, and to pressure democratic governments that are backsliding into authoritarianism, the better they can preserve a global climate in which autocracies are isolated and marginalized. The goal is to build, over time, a common recognition that the world's democracies truly are in it together, and to develop patterns of cooperation to beat back the authoritarian threat.

There has been some progress already. The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (or "Quad") initiated in 2007 between the U.S., Australia, India and Japan is a democratic, multilateral group that is gradually doing more to preserve what the Trump administration calls the "free and open Indo-Pacific." The U.K. and France have joined America, Australia, Japan and other Pacific powers in defending freedom of navigation in the South China Sea. The new trade deal between the EU and Japan trade deal is an effort to unite democracies on both sides of Eurasia against authoritarian mercantilism as well as resurgent American protectionism. And as NATO focuses more on nonconventional threats such as cyberattacks and information warfare, there will be opportunities to cooperate with democracies beyond any official alliance.

Of course, these efforts would have greater impact if the world's foremost democracy did not seem so ambivalent about leading the democratic world. The Trump administration deserves credit for re-energizing the Quad and pushing the NATO allies to take the Chinese threat seriously. Yet the president deserves blame not simply for questioning the defense commitments that hold U.S. alliances together, but also for denigrating democratic norms and procedures, fawning over powerful autocrats, and often treating issues of democracy promotion and human rights as mere distractions. The Trump administration calls this "principled realism." But it's no way to catalyze the global democratic response that today's authoritarian challenge demands.

Hal Brands is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist, the Henry Kissinger Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, and senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. Most recently, he is the co-author of “The Lessons of Tragedy: Statecraft and World Order.”

May Jeffs had enough of prophets.

Her grandfather and an uncle were presidents of the polygamous Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Their orders dictated what Jeffs could eat, wear, watch and listen to, along with where she could go and whom she could see.

“I was like, ‘I don’t want to ever be tied to something that controls me like that again,’” Jeffs said.

Her older brother had joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She saw how he and her sister-in-law, who was born into the mainstream faith, made mistakes and weren’t sent away to repent or worried that they would go to hell.

“They used their religion to help them,” Jeffs said, “instead of being used by their religion.”

Jeffs is one of perhaps thousands of people who have left polygamous or fundamentalist Mormon churches through the years. No one knows how many of them join the much-larger, 16 million-member Salt Lake City-based church.

In interviews, former fundamentalists like Jeffs describe the obstacles they had to overcome before joining the LDS Church. Some of those hurdles were created by their experiences in fundamentalism. Sometimes they were placed there by the LDS Church.

Even most fundamentalists refer to it as “The Church” since the faith they grew up in took its teachings from Mormon founder Joseph Smith. The fundamentalists already have familiarity, for instance, with the church’s texts.

Ben Thomas left the FLDS in 2013. Like Jeffs, he was weary of taking religious orders and wary of joining another denomination that demanded such obedience.

He investigated multiple churches, he said, but “just kept feeling like I was missing something.”

Thomas’ wife — he never married a second — and eight children did not follow him out of the FLDS. He and his wife divorced. His relationships with his kids were strained. Thomas prayed and decided if he couldn’t provide them salvation in this life, he needed to do so in the next.

In spring 2016, Thomas called a friend of his in Sandy who was a member of the LDS Church. That friend sent missionaries to see Thomas.

When the missionaries asked if he could accept then-church President Thomas S. Monson as his prophet, Thomas stumbled.

“It triggered so many feelings in me,” Thomas said, “just that keyword ‘prophet.’”

Thomas prayed about that question for a few more weeks before telling the missionaries yes, he said. Thomas was baptized in June 2016. He remarried about a year later in the Mount Timpanogos Temple in American Fork.

The conversions to mainstream Mormonism of Thomas and Jeffs were made simpler because they were never polygamists. Some who were in plural marriages have reported having to go through extra interviews with a Latter-day Saint general authority to ensure they weren’t planning to continue with polygamy, which the LDS Church officially abandoned in 1890.

James Thompson was a widower, remarried and then married a plural wife, too, while he was a member of the Apostolic United Brethren, also known as the Allred Group. In a written history he provided to The Salt Lake Tribune, Thompson described how his legal wife divorced him, and she and their two sons joined the mainstream church.

In spring 2003, James Thompson had stopped worshipping with the AUB and decided he wanted his other children to have the spiritual opportunities afforded to Latter-day Saints. Two young sons were ready to join, but missionaries told them they would have to move out of Thompson’s home or wait until they were 18.

Thompson was furious at the prospect of his sons having to choose their father or a faith. He eventually had a meeting with Latter-day Saint apostle Joseph B. Wirthlin. Thompson argued that his sons were being held back spiritually for decisions their dad had made. The boys soon were baptized.

Thompson joined the church not long afterward.

“I now had two of the best missionaries within my own house,” Thompson wrote.

Thompson also wrote to the governing First Presidency, asking leaders not to force converts to move out of homes, especially children, just because there may be polygamists living there.

Lawrence Barlow considered joining the LDS Church but opted against it. Barlow had been in the FLDS but had never been a polygamist.

That hardly means he doesn’t believe in polygamy. During an interview with a Latter-day Saint general authority in 2014, Barlow said he pointed out polygamy is still in the faith’s sacred canon, specifically the Doctrine and Covenants. Barlow also said he had a difficult time accepting Monson, who died in January 2018, as God’s only mouthpiece on Earth.

“I know who my creator is,” Barlow said. “I don’t need anyone’s stamp of approval.”

Barlow still has an affinity for the LDS Church. Within two weeks of that interview, Barlow’s wife had a massive stroke from which she’s still recovering. The general authority put Barlow’s family on the prayer rolls — a gesture Barlow still appreciates.

“I have a deep love and respect,” Barlow said, “for people living the gospel as best they know how.”

After seeing how her brother and sister-in-law practiced their religion, May Jeffs met with Latter-day Saint missionaries. While the proselytizers revered Monson, Jeffs said, they made clear their emphasis was on Christian teachings.

“I knew who Jesus Christ was growing up,” Jeffs said, “but we didn’t really learn about him.”

Jeffs, who was still in high school, also attended a youth handcart trek and saw how Latter-day Saint culture was far less rigid than FLDS culture.

She got baptized her senior year, served a mission in Minneapolis and is now a 21-year-old student attending Utah Valley University in Orem.

Like Thomas and Thompson, joining the LDS Church hasn’t solved all the family problems in her life. People who leave the FLDS are considered apostates — those who join the mainstream faith even more so because they are viewed as having rejected the salvation offered to them through the FLDS prophet.

Still, Jeffs believes becoming a mainstream Latter-day Saint is for everyone. “But everyone has to have their own journey.”

Dear Ann Cannon • I love following dogs on Instagram, but since I got a puppy a year ago, the pet-stagram that used to make me so happy now makes me feel bad about my failures as a dog mom. I know social media presents a skewed perspective on everyone’s life, but how can I enjoy looking at other people’s adorable puppers without feeling bad about how my relationship with my pet isn’t as insta-worthy?

— Down in the Dumps

Dear Down • Your question reminds me of an experience our family had when the kids were growing up, so I hope you’ll excuse me for a minute while I take a little detour.

We acquired a dog in the hopes that she would teach our boys some responsibility. But what happened, of course, is that the mom (i.e. “me”) ended up learning some responsibility. I was the one who mostly fed the dog, walked the dog, picked up after dog and told the dog to get off the couch — or at least to get off the couch when we walked into the living room.

In other words, I was her selfless caretaker. But did she appreciate me? Did she even like me? Um, no. I was low human on that dog’s totem pole. She liked the mailman better than she liked me. I was wounded, frankly. Dogs — even dogs I don’t know — usually give me high fives. I’d never had the experience of a dog telling me to get out of its business, yo. The only reason I bring this up is to say that I feel your pain. Also, I’m guessing your dog likes you way better than my dog liked me. So take some comfort from that.

Which brings me to the REAL point I want to make. As you yourself have pointed out, it’s a mistake to compare your situation to the things you see on social media. Images — even the ones that purport to be “real life” — are always curated. Aggressively remind yourself of that fact every time you scroll through your Instagram feed. And if you still feel bad, delete your account.

Dear Ann Cannon • Our family has been going for many years on this multi-family camping trip in the summer. We were not part of the original group, but we were thrilled to be included a few years after the tradition started. Every family does not make it every year and the group goes from six families to 10 or 12, depending on the year. Our kids have all grown up together. As a group we have supported and celebrated each other through the turns of life, including graduations, car accidents, cancer, med school, aging parents, and deaths, and I believe we are all looking forward to weddings, grandkids and all the other accomplishments that life brings. It’s a pleasure to be part of this group.

But it is hurtful, really makes me feel bad, when some group members post things on social media, calling out just a few of the families as the important or best or the only ones that count. It makes me feel even worse when my adult kids see the same posts and ask me about them. It feels like no matter what our family does to contribute, we aren’t really part of the group. I know that I am not the only one that feels this way. I am tempted to say something, but to be honest I wonder if it is worth is.

— Hurt

Dear Hurt • Your question reminds me of a recent conversation I had with a young man. His widowed father married a woman who regularly expresses gratitude online for the fact that she and her new husband have at last (!) found their “soulmates.” While this young man wants his father to be happy, he frankly feels wounded by the implication that his deceased mother was somehow his father’s starter wife. The truth is that words — either spoken or written — can and do hurt.

Should you say something? I don’t know. I probably wouldn’t in your situation, although I’m not sure why I wouldn’t. Saying something may be preferable to letting things fester. If you do decide to say something, however, don’t do it online where things tend to blow up. Speak to individuals privately.

Good luck.

Ann Cannon is The Tribune’s advice columnist. Got a question for Ann? Email her at askann@sltrib.com or visit the Ask Ann Cannon page on Facebook.

Klondike Bluffs, where a heavenly mountain bike area north of Moab was developed barely a decade ago, appears to be going to hell — if it hasn’t arrived there already.

These public lands, sandwiched between U.S. 191 and Arches National Park, remain premier places to ride and view dinosaur tracks, but dispersed camping has taken a serious toll on the land and degraded the visitor experience.

Campers drive over soft soils in search of sites to pitch a tent, flatten vegetation, and leave behind mounds of fetid waste, according to the Bureau of Land Management’s environmental assessment of a proposal to consolidate dispersed camping into designated sites.

“The end goal is to provide sustainable camping opportunities where visitors have a good experience and resources are protected,” said agency spokeswoman Lisa Bryant. “It has gotten to the point that we have impacts to human health and safety. It’s just not sustainable. We want to create a situation where people want to camp there.”

The BLM is seeking public input on the assessment through April 15.

With skyrocketing recreational use, dispersed camping is spreading, some might say metastasizing, around Moab’s biking and climbing destinations, but it is particularly messy at the busy Klondike Bluffs, which also boasts popular dinosaur fossil sites, such as the Copper Ridge Sauropod Trail.

“Once a place is popular, it is not providing good service to let it be a free-for-all,” said Moab business leader Ashley Korenblat, owner of Western Spirit Cycling. “If you have nostalgia for a backcountry place, you might have to drive farther and walk in on your feet.”

In the past decade, recreational visits have more than doubled to 3 million people a year on the 1.8 million acres the BLM’s Moab Field Office administers around Canyonlands and Arches National parks, along the Colorado River and under the La Sal Mountains.

But the infrastructure to accommodate that action has hardly kept pace. Visitors, meanwhile, like to camp near the places they ride, climb, BASE jump, slackline and hike. As a result, Klondike Bluffs and places along Mineral Bottom Road and Hell Roaring Canyon have become overrun with car campers.

Designated camping — once funding is secured — would improve the experience for everyone, according to Korenblat, a leading proponent of human-powered recreation on public land.

“If you are camping near a recreation asset, it would be good to know no one is going to come through your campsite," she said. “In those situations, you want to know what to expect and what the rules are, and you can have a great time.”

On busy weekends at Klondike, no one knows what to expect. Campers’ vehicles frequently clog the Copper Ridge trailhead parking lot so there is nowhere for fossil seekers to park.

“Recreationists utilizing the area for biking or for dinosaur-site viewing have complained that the level of dispersed camping has damaged their recreation experience,” states the BLM’s environmental assessment. “Bikers especially have complained that a 'world-class resource’ (biking trails) are being diminished by the presence of dispersed campers all along the trails.”

Those campers, of course, are fellow cyclists who flock to public lands outside Moab. Klondike is among six places the BLM designated as “mountain bike focus areas” in its 2008 Moab management plan. Since then, a nonprofit called Grand County Trail Mix has developed 150 miles of trails, including 12 trails covering 53 miles at Klondike Bluffs.

The Klondike trails now attract bikers by the thousands, many from Salt Lake County and Colorado.

“We have all been blindsided by how quickly the business escalated,” said Scott Escott, Trail Mix’s former trails coordinator. He welcomed the BLM’s plans to designate camping sites and provide amenities because the bentonite and clay soils there are easily damaged when rain hits.

“There is an incredible amount of damage being done because of the soil conditions,” he said. “I’m glad to see this happening and dispersed camping is going away.”

Klondike is broken into two units separated by a swath of state trust lands. The campground, which includes fire rings, toilets and picnic tables, would go in the north unit, but the BLM has yet to figure out where exactly.

“We are going to identify designated sites that avoid cultural and paleo resources,” Bryant said. “That will be the first step, and then we’ll start looking for a good site for the campground.”

A similar situation unfolded along the Colorado River, upstream from Moab, where dispersed camping was the norm for years before a string of fee campgrounds helped turn State Road 128 into a well-ordered recreation corridor. The BLM’s Moab office now operates 29 campgrounds that handle about 90,000 visitors. Officials don’t really know how many are dispersed camping; they just know it’s a lot, and the sites are proliferating along with their impacts.

“Camping occurs wherever a user likes, regardless of its impact on resources or on other recreation users,” the Klondike assessment states. “While motorized vehicle use is restricted to designated roads, many users feel entitled to drive wherever they wish in pursuit of a campsite.”

A campground and designated sites would not only protect the landscape, officials say, but also would make for a more enjoyable visit.

“Camping in a campground would provide more privacy for campers because an assigned space of land would be allocated to each campsite,” they wrote in the assessment. “Campers would not have to put up with people camping right next to them, as is currently the case."

To avoid disturbing raptors, campsites would be located away from rock formations that offer suitable nesting habitat for birds of prey. Dogs would have to be leashed to avoid bothering kit foxes, a rare nocturnal predator whose habitat overlaps with Klondike Bluffs. The plan would ban gathering firewood at Klondike Bluffs and leaving human feces in the wild.

The Klondike proposal is part a recently completed plan to build five campgrounds providing 105 sites that would cost $20 a night. The other four are on the Mineral Bottom Road; Black Ridge Road, 12 miles south of Moab; Cameo Cliffs, 25 miles south of Moab; and Utah Rims, near the Westwater Road south of Interstate 70.

But before any work begins on any of these projects, the BLM must line up funding, which has been scarce despite booming recreational use on Utah’s public lands.

Thanks to our increasingly infamous senator, Mike Lee, I now understand better why we must defund Planned Parenthood.

In his otherworldly speech against the Green New Deal, he explained that we need more people to fall in love and increase our population so that they, not us, can solve the problems we refuse to face. How can that happen if Planned Parenthood is funded, right?

Lee’s speech exemplifies some of the outcomes of our defunded public education system in Utah, where he and others argue against teaching the science of climate change and evolution, the value of decent standards in education and, of course, against 21st century sex education.

While there are many problems with the senator’s argument, there is one glaring piece of counter evidence: Lee represents Utah, where we have a higher than the national average birth rate and are still unable to solve in any significant way our problems with air and water quality.

We march “forward” in his model, degrading our environment with depleted uranium, shrinking public lands and selling drilling and mining rights at the expense of our environment.

Clearly, the senator does not want to solve any of these problems because he insists on doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results. And we, the people of Utah, believe him and continue to vote for him.

Time for a change?

Christina Gringeri, Salt Lake City

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