Democrats eyeing the presidency have raised their voices to denounce the death penalty, a departure from their predecessors who were wary of appearing weak on crime. President Barack Obama never called for getting rid of the death penalty, and Hillary Clinton, Al Gore and Bill Clinton all supported keeping it. Today’s Democratic presidential hopefuls, by contrast, say the punishment is morally wrong and is applied with racial bias. This shift in position comes as support for the death penalty has fallen from 80 percent in the 1990s to about 50 percent today. But still, some argue Democrats are walking a tightrope by trying to take a position on capital punishment, which is “despised by the party’s progressive base but is far more popular in the crime-and-order Heartland,” Bill Whalen, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, wrote in a recent column. [NYTimes]

Happy Monday!

Topping the news: Students from the four colleges owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are posting on an anonymous Instagram about how they were mistreated by the schools’ Honor Code offices. The Instagram account’s popularity has skyrocketed, and a petition calling for the Honor Code to be reformed is making the rounds in the Latter-day Saint community. [Trib] [DNews] [Fox13]

-> Construction on the new state prison in western Salt Lake City is about 18 months behind schedule and is on track to run around 20% over budget. [Trib] [DNews] [Fox13] [ABC4]

-> Hill Air Force Base in Utah is ranked the most threatened by climate change out of any military base in the U.S., according to a letter to Congress written by members of the Pentagon. [Trib] [ABC4]

Tweets of the day: @SpencerJCox: “If you didn’t get to watch this yesterday, please do. Brent and Jennie Taylor are two of the greatest people I’ve ever met. Their story—and ultimate sacrifice—is something we must never forget.”

-> @ccjones13: “One of my students is currently writing about @MittRomney’s ancestors who fled to Mexico to avoid prosecution as polygamists, then returned to the US to escape the violence of the 1912 Mexican Revolution, then returned once the war ended.”

-> @JoeBiden: “I see that you are on the job and presidential, as always.”

-> @BenWinslow: “Something something First Amendment right to redress grievances something something... #utpol.”

-> @jessicaxfoard: “Alright, I’m just gonna say it: Utah, y’all messed up by re-electing Stewart and not replacing him with @ShireenGhorbani She’s worked harder in the last month than Stewart has in the last year. This woman cares about our community. You’ll see. She’s making change happen.”

In other news: U.S. Rep. John Curtis of Utah on Friday argued for continuing U.S. foreign aid. While some see the funding as solely benefitting other countries, it also helps the U.S. because it stabilizes other governments, prevents wars and leads to increased trade opportunities, Curtis said. [Trib] [DNews]

-> Utah Sen. Mitt Romney on Sunday remarked that the U.S. has become an “asylum magnet” and that Republicans and Democrats will need to come together to solve the pressing problem of immigration. [Trib] [DNews]

-> Brigham Young University’s law school and the dating website Match.com are coupling up, using a personality algorithm to pair students with alumni mentors. [Trib]

-> Gov. Gary Hebert declined to sign a bill that will increase monthly cellphone and landline costs by 16 cents but let it go into law without his signature. Money generated by the bill is intended to cover the costs of a massive upgrade to the state’s 911 system. [Trib]

-> Phil Lyman, a Republican state representative convicted of a misdemeanor for heading a protest ATV ride through a canyon in 2015, is arguing that increasing his monthly restitution payments from $100 to $500 is unfair. Now, federal prosecutors are defending the proposed monthly price increase and dismissing Lyman’s accusations that they collude with the news media. [Trib]

-> After the completion of an effort to double track a section of the Sugarhouse streetcar line, officials celebrated the project as providing additional service and helping with economic development. [Trib] [Fox13]

-> It’s the season for potholes on Utah’s roads, thanks to the icy water that slips into cracks in the street during the winter. [Trib]

-> Utah’s chapter of March For Our Lives met on Saturday to honor victims of gun violence, advocate for policy changes and raise more than $4,500 that will fund creative opportunities for people who are disabled or marginalized, scholarships for student activists, suicide prevention training and the organization itself. [Trib]

-> Critics of the planned inland port in northwest Salt Lake City have sharpened their opposition to the project. [Trib]

-> State lawmakers have agreed to help transition disabled adults from institutional housing to community settings to allow them to exercise more freedom and independence, potentially settling a lawsuit filed by the Disability Law Center. [Trib]

-> Tribune cartoonist Pat Bagley played around with the new planned prison’s cost overruns announced last week. [Trib]

Nationally: Following several weeks of tumultuous conversations over border security with President Donald Trump, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen resigned on Sunday. The president had asked her to stop accepting asylum seekers and close the entry ports along the Mexico border — ideas Nielsen opposed. [NYTimes] [Politico] [WaPost]

-> President Donald Trump announced via Twitter that Kevin K. McAleenan, current commissioner of the United States Customs and Border Protection, will step in as acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. [NYTimes]

-> Joe Biden, 2020 presidential hopeful and former vice president, joked around during a speech Friday about having permission to hug a woman, a possible effort to move past recent controversy over several women’s complaints that his touching made them feel uncomfortable. [NYTimes] [Politico]

-> Mick Mulvaney, acting White House chief of staff, announced that President Donald Trump’s tax returns will never be made public nor will they be released to congressional Democrats, as the issue was already settled during the 2016 presidential election. [Politico] [WaPost]

-> Cory Booker, presidential hopeful and New Jersey senator, announced that he has raised at least $5 million in the first quarter of the year for his presidential campaign — a significantly smaller figure than other Democrat frontrunners like Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Kamala Harris. [NYTimes] [Politico] [WaPost]

Got a tip? A birthday, wedding or anniversary to announce? Email us at cornflakes@sltrib.com. If you haven’t already, sign up here for our weekday email to get this sent directly to your inbox.

-- Bethany Rodgers and Sahalie Donaldson

https://twitter.com/BethRodgersSLT, https://twitter.com/SahalieD

Washington • President Donald Trump announced Monday that the U.S. is designating Iran’s Revolutionary Guard a “foreign terrorist organization,” in an effort to increase pressure on the country.

It is the first time that the U.S. has designated a part of another country as a terrorist organization.

The designation imposes sanctions that include freezes on assets the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps may have in U.S. jurisdictions and a ban on Americans doing business with it.

"This unprecedented step, led by the Department of State, recognizes the reality that Iran is not only a State Sponsor of Terrorism, but that the IRGC actively participates in, finances, and promotes terrorism as a tool of statecraft," Trump said in a statement.

Iran has threatened to retaliate for the decision.

The designation allows the U.S. to deny entry to people found to have provided the Guard with material support or prosecute them for sanctions violations. That could include European and Asian companies and businesspeople who deal with the Guard's many affiliates.

It will also complicate diplomacy. Without exclusions or waivers to the designation, U.S. troops and diplomats could be barred from contact with Iraqi or Lebanese authorities who interact with Guard officials or surrogates.

The Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies have raised concerns about the impact of the designation if the move does not allow contact with foreign officials who may have met with or communicated with Guard personnel. Those concerns have in part dissuaded previous administrations from taking the step, which has been considered for more than a decade.

Auburn University senior Samantha Cerio stared intently at the purple floor exercise mat before her. The lights of the Pete Maravich Assembly Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, reflected off the gymnast's bedazzled white, navy and orange leotard. As her teammates cheered raucously, the 22-year-old flashed a quick smile and waltzed out to kick off her floor routine, hoping to deliver a flawless performance and help the Auburn Tigers secure a spot in the NCAA women's gymnastics region final.

But within a matter of seconds, Cerio would be on the floor in agony, her nearly two-decades-long gymnastics career brought to a jarring end by what some have called the "worst sports-related injury" they've ever seen.

Cerio reportedly dislocated both knees and broke her legs Friday after attempting to blindly stick a tumbling pass, meaning she couldn't see the ground before landing, according to the Times-Picayune, which cited sources familiar with the gymnast's injuries.

"It was pretty tough to watch," Jeff Graba, Auburn's women's gymnastics coach, told the Times-Picayune. Graba noted that in all his years coaching he had never seen anything like what happened to Cerio in the middle of the NCAA's Baton Rouge region semifinal.

On Sunday, Cerio announced in a lengthy Instagram post that Friday had been her "final night as a gymnast."

"After 18 years I am hanging up my grips and leaving the chalk behind," she wrote in a post that had nearly 3,600 likes as of early Monday morning. "It may not have ended the way I had planned, but nothing ever goes as planned."

Moments before Cerio was set to take the floor, her face was a mask of concentration. The senior, who was anchoring the event for the Tigers, could be seen getting last-minute advice from coaches and a pep talk from one of her teammates. She calmly chalked the bottoms of her feet, clapped her hands to psych herself up and rapidly ran through some choreography.

"Such an impressive young lady," one of the meet's commentators said as Cerio began her routine. The native of Huntersville, North Carolina, who is majoring in aerospace engineering, was recently named SEC co-scholar athlete of the year for gymnastics and, after graduating in May, has a job lined up with Boeing in Seattle. Known for her solid performances on the floor exercise and her stellar skills on bars, Cerio was regarded as a role model by teammates, according to AuburnTigers.com, the university's news site. Graba once described her as "the heart and soul of the team."

Cerio danced over to one of the mat's corners, readying herself for her opening tumbling pass - a handspring double front with the blind landing.

"Let's see how high she flies right here," another commentator said.

The gymnast sprinted across the mat, throwing herself into a series of dizzying flips. But as she opened up on the final flip, her feet seeking the floor, everything went wrong.

Upon landing, Cerio's legs buckled violently, bending unnaturally just below the knee and sending her toppling backward into the mat. Her face contorted with pain and she appeared to be screaming.

"Ooh," a commentator shouted. Exclamations from spectators could be heard over the pounding instrumental music being played throughout the arena.

Cerio sat hunched on the floor where she fell, eyes squeezed tightly shut. Her knees protruded from her legs, which were splayed out in front of her.

"I think she may be hurt," one commentator remarked as Auburn's coaching staff ran toward Cerio.

The music shut off. The meet came to a halt. The crowd of more than 10,000 people, mostly made up of supporters from one of Auburn's rivals, Louisiana State University, fell silent.

Almost 10 minutes went by as coaches, trainers and medical personnel tended to Cerio. At one point, she was surrounded by at least 12 people.

Commentators speculated on the extent of Cerio's injuries. Her knees were being looked at, they reported. One person deemed it a "very serious leg injury." Another brought up the difficulty of a blind landing.

"You almost have to feel it or anticipate it, and I think she got there earlier than her body was ready and she hyperextended her knees," the commentator said.

As about seven people lifted Cerio off the ground and onto a waiting stretcher, the arena erupted in applause. But even as the crowd clapped, their faces were etched with worry. Cerio's legs were encased in bulky black air casts that left only her toes visible.

"She's a trooper," Graba told the Times-Picayune. "The last thing she said was, 'Go help the girls.' The girls rallied around her. They're doing this for her right now."

After her fall, Cerio's teammates clustered in a tight huddle. There were still two rotations left in the meet, and if the Tigers wanted to advance to Saturday's final, they had to stay focused and compete.

"I circled everybody together and I was like, ‘We’re not going to do this,’ " Auburn senior Abby Milliet recalled telling her teammates, according to AuburnTigers.com. " ‘We’re not going to get sad. We can be sad later because it is sad. But we’re going to do what she would want us to do and light this fire. This is time for us to have a new fire. Sam wouldn’t want us to give up. She would fight harder.’ "

Guided by the rallying cry of "Stick it for Sam," the Tigers delivered an impressive performance, finishing with their second-highest score of the year and securing a spot in the region final.

"In the back of our minds we were all thinking that we know we can do it," sophomore Drew Watson told the university's news site. "We were all just having Sam in the back of our minds in a positive way. ... We were pushing through for her."

Social media erupted with reactions to Cerio's injury, many sending the athlete prayers and encouragement. As graphic video of the landing started widely circulating, others were horrified by what happened to Cerio.

All the while, Cerio continued to cheer for Auburn.

"All gas, no breaks!" she tweeted ahead of the region final. Auburn came in fourth at the final on Saturday, bringing an end to the team's season.

On Sunday night, Cerio thanked her well-wishers and shared a quick update on her health.

“I truly appreciate all of the support and prayers that I have have received!” she tweeted. “I am doing well right now and getting lots of rest! From the bottom of my heart, thank you so much!”

The practice was the result of an informal arrangement: seven Motel 6 locations in Washington state shared the personal information of its guests with federal immigration officials on a daily basis between 2015 and 2017, authorities said. Of the 80,000 guests whose information was shared, at least nine were detained, officials said.

But on Friday the practice, which Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson said constituted an illegal invasion of privacy in a lawsuit he filed against the national hotel chain, reached a final conclusion after it agreed to a $12 million settlement with guests who had been affected.

Every guest who had their information shared with ICE is eligible for restitution. The office said it would not require claimants to disclose their immigration status.

Ferguson’s lawsuit, which was filed in January 2018, was prompted by a news report in the Phoenix New Times that uncovered the practice at some Motel 6 locations in Arizona in September 2017.

The New Times found that ICE agents made at least 20 arrests at two Motel 6 locations in a period in the seven months prior. After the outcry sparked by the report, the company apologized and issued the directive to its more than 1,400 locations that they were "prohibited from voluntarily providing daily guest lists to ICE."

But Ferguson said the practice was not limited to Arizona: He found Motel 6 locations in Washington state that were providing guest lists to federal immigration agents without reasonable suspicion, probable cause or search warrants, his office said. The information that was given to ICE included guests' names, driver's license numbers, passport, green card and other ID numbers, room numbers, dates of birth and license plate numbers, it said.

The practice violated the Consumer Protection Act and Washington state laws against discrimination, according to the lawsuit; Ferguson's office said that guests with Latino-sounding names were singled out at least some of the time.

"In anticipation of ICE's daily visits, some Motel 6 locations routinely printed their guest lists and a form, referred to as a 'law enforcement acknowledgement form,' which the ICE agents signed upon receiving the day's guest list," Ferguson's office said Friday. "At the two Everett locations, for example, ICE agents routinely visited the motels early in the morning, sometimes twice a day, from February 2015 through September 2017. ICE agents requested the day's guest list, circled guests with Latino-sounding names and returned to their vehicles."

Ferguson said that at least nine people were detained as a result of the practice, although it is unknown how many were deported.

One man from Seattle, who stayed at a Motel 6 near the Seattle-Tacoma airport for one night to wrap Christmas presents for his four children, was detained and deported after being approached by ICE agents in the hotel's parking lot. Ferguson's office did not release his name but said that he was the sole provider for his wife and their four children.

Another father, the primary breadwinner for his wife and six children, who had lived in the United States for more than 20 years, was detained after staying at a Motel 6 to pick up supplies for his grocery business.

And a Washington man who lived in the United States since he was 1 year old was detained as he was going to get milk for his baby from a car in a Motel 6 parking lot, Ferguson said. That man was released after being detained for six days, but lost his job.

A resolution that was part of the settlement stipulates that Motel 6 will not provide guest information to law enforcement authorities without "a judicially enforceable search warrant or a credible reason to believe that someone is in imminent danger," Ferguson said.

"The company has also implemented a system of additional controls to ensure corporate oversight and compliance in cases where law enforcement requests are made," said a statement from Motel 6 spokeswoman Maggie Giddens. "The safety and security of our guests, which includes protecting guest information, is our top priority, and we are pleased to be able to reach resolution in this matter."

ICE declined to comment through spokesman Richard Rocha.

“Motel 6′s actions tore families apart and violated the privacy rights of tens of thousands of Washingtonians,” Ferguson said in a statement. “Our resolution holds Motel 6 accountable for illegally handing over guests’ private information without a warrant.”

Country duo Dan + Shay continued their career-making year at the 2019 Academy of Country Music Awards on Sunday night, as they won three awards — the most of any act — and became the night’s running joke.

"I'm gonna give this to Dan + Shay so they can go home with four," Thomas Rhett declared when he picked up the trophy for male artist of the year. Host Reba McEntire declared that the show should be renamed "Dan + Shay's Excellent Adventure."

Even Dan Smyers and Shay Mooney themselves, clearly overwhelmed, were self-deprecating by the time they gave their third speech. "I think somebody got the cards mixed up," Smyers deadpanned as they accepted the award for vocal duo. They also walked away with song and single of the year for the ballad "Tequila," the smash that earned them their first Grammy for duo/group performance.

Kacey Musgraves continued her winning streak with "Golden Hour," which propelled her to four Grammys in February, including album of the year. This time, she won for ACM album and female artist of the year; and though she curiously did not get a performance slot on the three-hour telecast, she made the most of her time on stage with an empowering message.

"This award goes out to any woman, or girl — or anybody, really — that is maybe being told that her perspective or her style is too different to work," said Musgraves, perhaps in a nod to the fact that some country music gatekeepers don't appreciate her unique perspective. "Just stay at it. It'll work out."

Meanwhile, Keith Urban triumphed in the coveted entertainer of the year category, and became emotional as he thanked his wife, Nicole Kidman (beaming in the audience, as usual), and their two daughters. A complete list of winners is below; here are some of the best and worst moments from the show.

Best moments:

• Ashley McBryde’s moment of triumph with ‘Girl Goin’ Nowhere.'

McBryde, who barely scraped out a living for a decade in Nashville before she released her critically-acclaimed debut album last year, had one of those moments that artists only dream about: She got to go on national television and sing a song about people who thought she would never make it. Specifically, the stunning acoustic ballad "Girl Goin' Nowhere," inspired by a teacher who told her she would never be a country singer.

At the end of the performance, McBryde (who won new female artist of the year) was so choked up she could barely sing. "Wow," she said, as the audience gave her a thunderous standing ovation.

• The Maren Morris and Brothers Osborne collaboration.

Some ACM performances were deeply solemn, while others radiated pure infectious energy — Morris and TJ and John Osborne were definitely the latter. The three singers (who are close friends in real life) had a blast with their joyful new song "All My Favorite People," a cut off of Morris's new album, "Girl." The performance had some Nashville inside jokes, including a sign for Santa's Pub, one of Music City's favorite dive bars with epic karaoke.

• The many other duets.

Typically, country award show duets are hit or miss, but this year had a surprising number of solid pairings. Kane Brown and Khalid impressed with a remixed version of "Saturday Nights," which Khalid re-released in January. Dierks Bentley and Brandi Carlile brought down the house with "Travelin' Light," which appears on Bentley's album. Eric Church and McBryde's blended perfectly together on his song "The Snake," about the current poisonous political atmosphere.

And as an added bonus — there was some 1990s and early 2000s country! George Strait and Miranda Lambert were a hit with Strait's "Run," while Luke Combs belted out an updated rendition of "Brand New Man" with Brooks & Dunn.

• Blake Shelton’s unexpectedly dark sound.

Shelton has been coasting for awhile with radio singles that all sound vaguely the same. However, his new "God's Country" has an unexpected gothic energy that one wouldn't necessarily associate with the "Voice" coach. Yet it seems to be working. His performance, with spooky dark thunder clouds behind him, helped skyrocket the track to No. 2 on iTunes.

• Carrie Underwood’s pool party track.

Speaking of singers trying new things, you don't usually think "party song" and "Carrie Underwood." Usually, her singles revolve around "love" or "vengeance" or "murder." So props to her for going in the complete opposite direction with "Southbound," a upbeat, spring break-themed track that started at a Vegas pool (joined by her tour openers, Maddie & Tae and Runaway June) and continued into the ACMs venue, with lots of backup dancers who looked thrilled to be there.

• Little Big Town’s big moment with “The Daughters.”

The country quartet is famous for their ballads and harmonies, and their new single has the ability to stop you in your tracks when you hear the brutally honest lyrics, about all the expectations put on women: "Pose like a trophy on a shelf / Dream for everyone but not yourself. . .I've heard of God the son and God the father / I'm still looking for a God for the daughters."

Worst moments:

• The lack of female nominees and winners.

While it’s a much-discussed topic in country music these days, it’s never a good sign when the ACMs’ own host calls out the glaring lack of women featured in the show: “Did you know it snowed in Las Vegas just a few weeks ago? It was so cold it froze us women out of entertainer of the year,” Reba said dryly at the top of the broadcast, drawing “ooohhhs” from the crowd. The all-male categories were highlighted even further when only two women accepted prizes on stage the entire night: Kacey Musgraves, who won two awards, and Nicolle Galyon, who co-wrote Dan + Shay’s “Tequila.”

• Luke Bryan’s “Knockin’ Boots.”

Maybe it was because he followed a fiery Miranda Lambert, but Bryan, usually one of the most highly-hyped performers, was a swing and a miss with his new single; he didn't seem to bring his usual energy. Something tells us this song will go No. 1 anyway. . . the sign he held in the audience (for a bit during Reba's monologue) didn't lie:

• The optics of “Artist of the Decade.”

Although the ACMs gushed about how Lambert has the most ACM awards in the history of the show (32!), Aldean was the one who got a special tribute and speech on the telecast as he was named artist of the decade. Granted, Aldean is a huge star — but it looked a bit odd when they both performed medleys of their big hits, and then only Aldean got the honor.

Entertainer of the year:

• Jason Aldean
• Luke Bryan
• Kenny Chesney
• Chris Stapleton
• Keith Urban — winner

Female artist of the year:

• Miranda Lambert
• Ashley McBryde
• Maren Morris
• Kacey Musgraves — winner
• Carrie Underwood

Male artist of the year:

• Dierks Bentley
• Luke Combs
• Thomas Rhett — winner
• Chris Stapleton
• Keith Urban

Duo of the year:

• Brothers Osborne
• Dan + Shay — winner
• Florida Georgia Line
• LOCASH
• Maddie & Tae

Group of the year:

• Lady Antebellum
• LANCO
• Little Big Town
• Midland
• Old Dominion — winner

New female artist of the year:

• Danielle Bradbery
• Lindsay Ell
• Ashley McBryde — winner
• Carly Pearce

New male artist of the year:

• Jimmie Allen
• Luke Combs — winner
• Jordan Davis
• Michael Ray
• Mitchell Tenpenny

New duo or group of the year:

• High Valley
• LANCO — winner
• Runaway June

Album of the year:

• "Dan + Shay" Dan + Shay
• "Desperate Man" Eric Church
• "From A Room: Volume 2" Chris Stapleton
• "Golden Hour" Kacey Musgraves — winner
• “The Mountain” Dierks Bentley

Single of the year:

• "Down to the Honky Tonk" Jake Owen
• "Heaven" Kane Brown
• "Meant to Be" Bebe Rexha feat. Florida Georgia Line
• "Most People Are Good" Luke Bryan
• “Tequila” Dan + Shay — winner

Song of the year:

• "Break Up In the End" Cole Swindell (written by Jessie Jo Dillon, Chase McGill, Jon Nite)
• "Broken Halos" Chris Stapleton (written by Chris Stapleton, Mike Henderson)
• "Meant to Be" Bebe Rexha feat. Florida Georgia Line (written by Bebe Rexha, Tyler Hubbard, Joshua Miller, David Garcia)
• "Space Cowboy" Kacey Musgraves (written by Kacey Musgraves, Luke Laird, Shane McAnally)
• "Tequila" Dan + Shay (written by Dan Smyers, Nicolle Galyon, Jordan Reynolds) — winner
• “Yours” Russell Dickerson (written by Russell Dickerson, Parker Welling, Casey Brown)

Video of the year:

• "Babe" Sugarland feat. Taylor Swift
• "Burn Out" Midland
• "Burning Man" Dierks Bentley feat. Brothers Osborne
• "Drunk Girl" Chris Janson — winner
• "Shoot Me Straight" Brothers Osborne
• “Tequila” Dan + Shay

Music event of the year:

• "Burning Man" Dierks Bentley feat. Brothers Osborne — winner
• "Drowns the Whiskey" Jason Aldean feat. Miranda Lambert
• "Everything's Gonna Be Alright" David Lee Murphy feat. Kenny Chesney
• "Keeping Score" Dan + Shay feat. Kelly Clarkson
• “Meant to Be” Bebe Rexha feat. Florida Georgia Line

For many years, we have kept the door labeled "CAUTION: RABID BATS" tightly shut. We have not sprinkled our avocado toast with tiny pellets of lead, and have dissuaded children from becoming chimney sweeps. We have refrained from swaddling our infants in asbestos, and we have meticulously and often at great inconvenience to ourselves avoided touching live electrical wires.

We do not pick things up off the floors of abattoirs and eat them. We never put metal into the microwave. We avoid staring directly at the sun. We vaccinate children against measles. We have food inspectors to inspect food and require security clearances for access to classified information. We have had a Federal Reserve that was composed of people capable of telling the difference between inflation and deflation and who did not want to bring back the gold standard. We have had, for lack of a better word, nice things.

Are we not tired of such dull, in-the-box thinking dictated by elites who claim to possess specialized knowledge about the way things work? Have we considered that it might actually be a very pleasant experience to lose a hand to a leopard? I am sick of being told my opinion does not count because I am not an expert and think it might make the leopard loyal and grateful. How do we know that rabid bats are bad? Have you ever really seen a rabid bat? Can bats even get rabies?

That is why I am putting Herman Cain on the board of the Federal Reserve! That is why I am putting Stephen Moore on the board of the Federal Reserve. That is why, soon, I will be putting my horse Incitatus on the board of the Federal Reserve. To shake things up.

Economic adviser Larry Kudlow has described Moore as "a breath of fresh air in the Fed." He is right. Fresh ideas! Thoughts that so-called experts have spent decades discarding! Ideas so unconventional that, when you recount them to the "elites" who have spent their lives studying a given subject area, they tear out large handfuls of their hair and begin sobbing as though heartbroken.

For too long, we have been constrained by an approach that is ... good, but maybe we should try one that is ... bad. We should hear both sides. For too long, we have urged people to make arguments based on actual observable facts that are true. But have we tried also basing arguments on non-observable non-facts that aren't true? The president gazed into the sun and nothing too bad happened, except his father's birthplace moved to Germany and he has discovered that the noise of windmills can cause cancer. Which might be!

We have been trapped in one way of doing things for too long. Always putting on our spacesuits before leaving the shuttle. Only reaching into the garbage disposal when it was turned off. Demanding to see presidential candidates' tax returns. Have we considered doing things differently? Why are we so constrained?

Try this new method! Doctors hate it! It makes doctors weep with fury! Doctors scream, "Do not waste your money on this trickery!" And that's just what doctors WOULD say.

Relatedly, it looks as though the pork industry will soon be responsible for inspecting itself. Oh, look how mad the elites are! They shout, "Have you not read 'The Jungle'?" No, I have not. And I am proud of that fact.

I love to enrage the elites and defy conventional wisdom by dipping my child in mercury. I scoff in the face of such "wisdom." I am sending this camel to your bedside; he is your health care now. Here is an old pirate with a hook for a hand; he is the new National Education Association. This half-bear, half-demon from the darkest reaches of the Arctic where the sun scarcely penetrates is going to be your child's new day-care provider.

Look how their faces contort! Look how silly the elites look when they shout, "Do not put the rabid bats in charge of the Ninth Circuit!" "That lemur is not a paramedic!" "Do not unplug that, that will kill you!"

Imagine ever looking that silly! Now let's hear what those bats have to say.

Alexandra Petri is a Washington Post columnist offering a lighter take on the news and opinions of the day. She is the author of “A Field Guide to Awkward Silences.”

@petridishes

Kyle Korver wants you to know that he’s determined to listen. And he would like you to do the same. On Monday, the Utah Jazz sharpshooter posted a 2,700-word first-person essay on The Players’ Tribune about racism in the United States and in pro basketball.

Korver’s account entitled, “Privileged,” details how the 38-year-old wants to do his part in addressing systemic racism, and it comes after a highly publicized encounter on the Jazz’s home court between a white fan and Russell Westbrook, the superstar Oklahoma City Thunder guard.

Instead of letting the headlines of the last month drift away, Korver took a very raw, emotional approach to getting his points across. His essay begins with his mindset after teammate Thabo Sefolosha suffered a broken leg during an arrest in 2015 when they were both playing for the Atlanta Hawks. Korver recalls how, at the time, he felt Sefolosha was at fault for putting himself in a bad situation.

“Cringe,” Korver wrote.

Exactly four years ago, Sefolosha suffered a broken fibula and ligament damage during an arrest and missed Atlanta’s run to the conference finals that year after officers claimed he was interfering with a crime scene. In October 2015, a jury acquitted Sefolosha of misdemeanor counts of obstructing government administration, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. In April 2017, the New York City Law Department confirmed a $4 million settlement for Sefolosha after he filed a lawsuit.

Looking back on it now, Korver wrote that he felt like he let himself down by not trying to understand the why surrounding Sefolosha’s arrest.

“I probably would’ve been safe on the street that one night in New York. And Thabo wasn’t.”

That was his introduction to the broad and crucial topic that was, yet again, brought into the spotlight last month after Westbrook was involved in an incident with a Jazz fan who shouted racially-charged epithets at the former NBA MVP.

“Everyone was upset,” Korver wrote. “I was upset — and embarrassed, too. But there was another emotion in the room that day, one that was harder to put a finger on. It was almost like….. disappointment, mixed with exhaustion. Guys were just sick and tired of it all.”

The Jazz eventually handed down a lifetime ban to the fan involved. A few days later, the organization issued a retroactive ban to another fan after a video surfaced of him calling Westbrook “boy” during last year’s first-round playoff matchup between the Jazz and Thunder. Korver wrote about an “elephant in the room” that he can’t help but think about lately.

It’s that, demographically, he has more in common with the fans attending your average NBA game than most of the players he’s lining up against. Korver explained that he’s recognizing the role of his own cultural demographics and how they play into a life he describes as being more privileged.

“It’s like — I may be Thabo’s friend, or Ekpe’s [Udoh] teammate, or Russ’s colleague; I may work with those guys. And I absolutely 100% stand with them,” Korver wrote. “But I look like the other guy. And whether I like it or not? I’m beginning to understand how that means something.

“What I’m realizing is, no matter how passionately I commit to being an ally, and no matter how unwavering my support is for NBA and WNBA players of color. ... I’m still in this conversation from the privileged perspective of opting in to it. Which of course means that on the flip side, I could just as easily opt out of it. Every day, I’m given that choice — I’m granted that privilege — based on the color of my skin.”

The piece goes on to describe how Korver, despite all of his efforts to stand up to racism and all of the deep, embedded issues facing people of color, “can also fade into the crowd, and my face can blend in with the faces of those hecklers, any time I want.”

“I have to do my best to recognize when to get out of the way — in order to amplify the voices of marginalized groups that so often get lost,” wrote Korver. “But maybe more than anything? I know that, as a white man, I have to hold my fellow white men accountable. We all have to hold each other accountable.”

.@utahjazz teammates @ThaboSefolosha, @EkpeUdoh, @GeorgesNiang20 and @KyleKorver open up in a powerful roundtable on racism and the @NBA. pic.twitter.com/8LGVohNvcJ

— The Players' Tribune (@PlayersTribune) April 8, 2019

The Players’ Tribune on Monday also released a roundtable video of Korver, Udoh, Sefolosha and Georges Niang discussing the Westbrook incident and how the Jazz locker room dealt with it.

Recalling that night, Udoh said, “It’s just like we’re in a zoo almost. Just perform. Don’t say anything. Just perform and it will be alright. You know, ‘We give y’all this amount of money, just shut up and take it.’ Almost felt like that.”

Sefolosha reiterated that the incident struck a chord with him as a Jazz player, once again making him think that if he didn’t don the Jazz note each game, would he face the sort of insensitive, racially-charged screams that some opponents inside Vivint Smart Home Arena say they’ve endured over the years?

“That’s why it kind of hit home for me,” he said.

Niang agreed.

“I think that’s what hurt most is that they feel comfortable enough to say these degrading things in a place where we’re trying to make something of ourselves and make a name for our families and be role models for so many young kids,” the Jazz forward said.

In his essay, Korver went on to write about how 75 percent of NBA players are athletes of color and people of color built the NBA into what it’s become. They are why it’s such a popular, fan-centric league. He then dove into statistics showing a big disparity among black and white America. Black Americans are more than twice as likely to live in poverty as white Americans. The black imprisonment rate for drug charges is almost six times higher than that of white people picked up on drug charges. Black Americans own one-tenth of the wealth that white Americans own. This matters, says Korver, and it needs to change.

“So if you don’t want to know anything about me, outside of basketball, then listen — I get it. But if you do want to know something? Know I believe that,” Korver wrote. “Know that about me.

"If you’re wearing my jersey at a game? Know that about me. If you’re planning to buy my jersey for someone else ... know that about me. If you’re following me on social media ... know that about me. If you’re coming to Jazz games and rooting for me ... know that about me.

"And if you’re claiming my name, or likeness, for your own cause, in any way….. know that about me. Know that I believe this matters.”

South Salt Lake • Tom Mahdi is no stranger to violence.

The former tailor for Saddam Hussein’s sister, Mahdi and his family fled their Baghdad home amid war, after learning of possible retaliation against people with ties to the onetime First Family. They were refugees in Jordan and moved in 2009 to Utah, where they started a sewing and alterations shop on State Street and settled into a life of peace.

That peace was shattered Monday when a pickup truck crashed into the business’s front door, followed by a hail of police gunfire. Mahdi, alone in the rear of the shop, said he stood paralyzed as rock and dirt sprayed around him.

“I just froze,” Mahdi said through his translator and son, Sam Hassan. “It was like the end of the world. A lot of rocks and dirt and very loud booms and everything. I didn’t know what to do back there. ... Me and death — it was just like a hair. Today is like reliving the war in Iraq."

Police, who had chased the truck down State Street as the driver shot back at them, called into the window of the shop where it had crashed into the door.

“Who’s inside!” Mahdi recalls them shouting. He was pulled, shaking, through the window and onto the ground outside, where he saw the body of the truck’s driver, a man suspected in multiple armed robberies.

Salt Lake City police identified the suspect Monday afternoon as Harold Vincent Robinson, 37, of West Valley City. The Salt Lake County sheriff and Salt Lake City’s police chief, in a joint press conference, said there was no indication anyone else participated in what they described as a crime spree that stretched across much of the county and ended at Mahdi’s door.

The episode ended with a trail of gunfire from the edge of downtown Salt Lake City to the crash at Princess Alterations, 4 miles to the south. In the aftermath, drivers found themselves snaking through south central Salt Lake City.

Intersections down State Street from 500 South to 3500 South were closed much of Wednesday, as were some intersections to the east — the direction in which witnesses said the suspect was firing out his driver’s side window — while police picked up bullets and shell casings and photographed crime scenes.

The first robbery was reported at 10:06 a.m. at a Holiday Oil gas station near 2700 W. 4700 South in Taylorsville, said Salt Lake County Sheriff Rosie Rivera. About a half-hour later, at 10:37 a.m., gunfire was reported in a robbery at a 7-Eleven near 900 East and 3300 South in Millcreek, Rivera said.

Gunfire was reported again at 10:42 a.m. near West Temple and 500 South, where officers began to chase a white pickup that was fleeing from the scene, said Salt Lake City Police Chief Mike Brown.

Brown and Rivera said the driver, later identified as Robinson, was suspected in all three robberies, though it was not immediately clear how he traveled more than 5 miles on busy city streets in five minutes.

Robinson has a lengthy criminal record, though many of the charges — including counts of aggravated kidnapping and assault — that date back to 2001 have been dismissed. He pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault in 2003 and failing to obey an officer in 2012.

Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill has begun reviewing the 2003 case, which was filed in Salt Lake City, as part of the investigation into Monday’s events. He said it’s initially unclear why so many of the cases against Robinson, which span several jurisdictions, have been dismissed. Possible reasons can include problems with evidence, uncooperative witnesses or mental health concerns.

“We’ll start to piece it together," Gill said. “We’re looking at all of it.”

From downtown Salt Lake City, officers chased the truck south on State Street. Witness Mary Kime said she was driving near 700 South and State Street when she heard gunfire and saw the white truck run a red light, followed by “like 20 police cars.” She continued south as “more police just kept coming and coming,” Kime said.

Utah Department of Transportation cameras showed a white Ford, four-door pickup truck leading police on the chase.

As the driver of the truck fled south on State Street, he was leaning out the window and firing a rifle at police, Brown said.

“It reminded me of being back home in California,” said Phillip Wesley, formerly of Sacramento, who said he saw the driver shooting. “Back there [shooting out the car window] is normal.”

Police sometimes end chases for fear either the suspect or officers will crash and hurt bystanders. Officers discussed, over the police radio, ending Monday’s chase but decided the driver posed too much of a danger to be allowed to escape, Brown said.

After the truck crashed into an alteration shop near 3300 South and State Street, witnesses reported that multiple officers brandished guns and opened fire. Rivera said there were multiple officers from multiple police forces who fired at the suspect.

Amad Bilal was near the intersection, he said, when he heard about 40 shots fired. Another witness said he believed closer to 300 shots were fired. Scotty Newman was at Beans & Brews nearby when he saw police cruisers driving one after another on State Street.

“I thought it was a cop parade for some reason,” Newman said. “That’s when I heard all the shooting. ... A bunch of the cops were running down State Street, all their weapons drawn, shooting at this truck that is now crashed down the way. ... It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Robinson died after the car chase, but Rivera would not confirm how he died. A person’s body could be seen under the truck shortly after the crash. There were visible bullet holes in the truck.

A UPD officer also suffered a minor injury when the officer was hit by a bullet ricochet, Rivera said.

Mahdi said he doesn’t know how many bullets may have entered the alterations shop while he was inside; he said he only remembers the flying rock and dirt. He was pulled out immediately because the smell of gas was coming from the wrecked truck at the door, he said, and he hasn’t been able to return to the shop, which sits between two other business units in the building.

“Why were they shooting so many times?” Hassan asked. “All this shooting could have injured so many people, or killed someone. It was not necessary in my opinion. That many bullets is not required to take someone out.”

Mahdi said he was stunned to find just one body on the ground.

“I was expecting to see a war between like 20 people and the police,” he said. “When you can hear all the gunshots, you don’t expect there to be just one person.”

He saw a crowd of officers still wielding guns and looking at him.

“They had all of their guns in their hands,” he said. “They were scared and I was scared. I understand their point of view, too.”

Mahdi said the terrifying day might sound insignificant compared to a war zone — but the shock of violence after finally easing into a peaceful life has left him even more shaken, he said.

“We see death over there, but the point is, you’re still alive. No matter how much I’ve lived over there and seen over there — this was different,” he said.

Mahdi said he doesn’t know how he’ll reclaim his feeling of peace.

“Every time I close my eyes I remember everything.”

Five suspected poachers entered Kruger National Park in South Africa last week to kill rhino living there, according to authorities.

Four of the men left alive.

The fifth was killed by an elephant and later “devoured” by a pride of lions, park officials said in a statement.

“Entering Kruger National Park illegally and on foot is not wise, it holds many dangers and this incident is evidence of that,” said Glenn Phillips, managing executive of Kruger National Park.

The four alleged poachers who survived were arrested and will appear in court “in due course,” the statement said. They will remain in custody until Friday, pending bail, reported Times Live, a South African news site. Authorities have launched an investigation into the alleged poacher’s death and accomplices.

Park officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Washington Post.

Police Brig. Leonard Hlathi told Times Live that the elephant attacked “suddenly,” killing the man.

“His accomplices claimed to have carried his body to the road so that passersby could find it in the morning,” Hlathi said. “They then vanished from the park.”

The suspected poachers called the dead man’s family, which then called Don English, regional ranger for Skukuzu — the most popular game reserve in the country. English assured the family that he would “do everything possible” to recover the body, according to the park statement.

A search party, including rangers on foot and a crew with the South African National Parks air wing, scoured the area Wednesday but did not find the man. They resumed their efforts Thursday and found the man's remains in the Crocodile Bridge area of the park, near the Crocodile River.

The area, according to the Kruger National Park website, is known for its high concentration of lion prides. It also houses a larger percentage of the park’s rhino population.

All that the lions had left behind of the man was his skull and a pair of pants, authorities said.

In the park statement, Phillips commended the search party for helping the family find closure. He also offered the family his condolences.

“It is very sad to see the daughters of the deceased mourning the loss of their father, and worse still, only being able to recover very little of his remains,” Phillips said.

When the other suspected poachers were arrested, authorities seized two .375 hunting rifles and ammunition. The men were charged with firearm possession and ammunition without a license, conspiracy to poach and trespassing, Times Live reported.

South Africa is home to the continent’s largest rhino population — about 20,000 of the 25,000 living in Africa. And it holds nearly 80 percent of the world’s rhino population.

Although poaching numbers have been steadily declining in recent years, more than 8,000 rhinos have been killed in the past decade. Poaching numbers were most severe between 2013 and 2017, when more than 1,000 rhinos were killed in South Africa annually, according to statistics from Save the Rhino. Those numbers dipped below 1,000 in 2018, with 769 total poachings.

Save the Rhino reports that half of all poachings occur in Kruger National Park.

Former longtime FOX 13 anchor Hope Woodside faces multiple charges after she was arrested twice for driving under the influence of alcohol in a two-day period.

Woodside was arrested March 29 in Summit County after someone called dispatchers and complained that she was drinking alcohol and driving around the Pinebrook/Jeremy Ranch area.

A Summit County sheriff’s deputy pulled her over for a traffic violation, according to jail booking documents, and noticed an “odor of an alcoholic beverage.” The deputy conducted field sobriety tests, he wrote in booking documents, but Woodside refused a Breathalyzer.

The deputy wrote that he found a Diet Coke can with alcohol in it inside Woodside’s vehicle, along with a bottle of chardonnay that had the seal broken. Woodside allegedly admitted to drinking alcohol and driving, according to the booking statement.

She was released that day after posting $1,690 bail.

The following day, a Utah Highway Patrol trooper was called to Summit County after Woodside allegedly ran her vehicle off the road on an offramp of Interstate 80.

Woodside told the trooper that another vehicle had swerved and caused her to crash into a snowbank, according to jail records. But when Woodside got out of her car, the trooper said she stumbled and struggled to maintain her balance. He arrested her after conducting field sobriety tests and later found an open container of alcohol in her car.

Woodside was charged last week in Summit County Justice Court with two counts of DUI, both class B misdemeanors that can carry a maximum penalty of up to six months in jail. She also was charged with two counts of having an open container of alcohol, as well as minor traffic infractions.

Her attorney, Greg Skordas, declined to comment Monday.

Woodside announced last September that she would be leaving FOX 13 after a nearly 23-year run anchoring KSTU’s 9 p.m. newscast. The anchorwoman had been off the air since August 2018 while she considered her future, and told viewers in the September broadcast that she felt it was the right time to step away.

Editor’s note: The Salt Lake Tribune is a content partner with FOX 13.

After pulling the Utah Republican Party back from the brink of bankruptcy by acquiring hundreds of thousands of dollars in outstanding legal debts, Entrata CEO Dave Bateman says he will not attempt to recoup any of the money from the party.

“The debt is extinguished,” Bateman wrote Friday on an unofficial Utah GOP Facebook page.

But Bateman now is engaged in what he sees as a new effort to rescue the party — this time from what he calls an effort to “ransack” the Utah GOP’s State Central Committee (SCC), by installing members who are current Utah lawmakers or individuals who have never held a position in the party organization.

He said the party should promote candidates who represent the GOP platform. Too many candidates deny party ideals, he said, but get a pass.

“Delegates — don’t vote for any current legislator to sit on the SCC,” Bateman urged followers on Facebook. “Its [sic] antithetical to our purpose as a Party.”

Several high-ranking Republican leaders earn an automatic seat on the central committee, such as the governor, treasurer, auditor and attorney general, House speaker and Senate president. But other elected members of state government are also able to run for a seat on the central committee, which Bateman told The Tribune on Monday is “the quintessential fox guarding the hen house.”

“If legislators control the party, the party become an instrument to protect incumbents,” Bateman said, “rather than an organization that creates accountability and good governance. That’s why I fought against SB54.”

Rep. Robert Spendlove, R-Sandy, is among the candidates for State Central Committee. He said it’s important to look at the qualifications of candidates running for office at all levels.

“I have been active in the Utah Republican Party ever since I could vote,” he said. “I’ve served as a county delegate, a state delegate, at the precinct level, and now as a state legislator. I want to help the Republican Party focus on bringing in more people, identifying future leaders, and giving them the resources to succeed.”

And Senate President Stuart Adams, R-Layton, said he has encouraged people to run for State Central Committee. The ideal committee, he said, would include a blend of elected and nonelected officials.

“As we go through this central committee process, there’s a lot of people and room for everyone at the table,” Adams said. “I think we ought to have as diverse and as representative a group as we can find."

Bateman has become a key figure in Republican party politics since 2018, when he acquired the party’s outstanding legal debts stemming from several legal challenges — most of which were unsuccessful — against the state. Those lawsuit sought to overturn SB54, a 2014 law allowing partisan candidates to qualify for a primary election either by obtaining signatures or by winning the support of party delegates at convention.

Bateman wrote in his Facebook post that “under no circumstance” would he have ever attempted to collect the debt, although under the agreement he had the right to demand repayment if the party dropped its lawsuit against SB54. He said his purchase of the party’s attorney fees was a donation intended to help the Utah Republican Party escape bankruptcy and survive the chairmanship of Rob Anderson.

“We survived!” Bateman wrote.

Anderson has declined to run for a second term leading the party after two years of division and controversy stemming from SB54, allowing candidates to qualify for a primary election either by collecting signatures or by earning the support of party delegates at convention.

In March, Bateman told The Tribune he was waiting for formal confirmation from the party that its legal challenges against SB54 had ceased before excusing the debt. Those comments followed the U.S. Supreme Court declining to hear the party’s appeal over the state’s dual-path election law.

On Monday, Bateman told The Tribune that he had received that confirmation.

“Members of the SCC tasked to oversee the lawsuits notified me [that] the litigation I committed to fund had run its course,” he said.

But the fight over SB54 is not necessarily over, as hard-line members of the party’s governing State Central Committee have shown interest in other methods of challenging the law beyond the courts.

In 2016, the committee passed a new bylaw to strip some candidates of their party membership if they chose to collect signatures. Anderson ignored that bylaw, arguing that it was improperly adopted under party rules, which led to his censure last month by the State Central Committee.

Adams said he respects Bateman’s comments — adding that he is a “great asset” to the party — and that he plans to reach out and discuss the upcoming elections with him.

“I think it’s really important, not only for the Republican Party but also for the state of Utah, to try to find common ground,” he said.

Reliably red Utah will receive its third visit from a Democratic 2020 presidential candidate next week: Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Warren, known for her populist message and focus on income inequality, will host an organizing event at The Depot in Salt Lake City on April 17 as her campaign works to “build our movement for 2020,” according to the event page on Warren’s campaign website.

“Elizabeth is eager to meet voters from cities and towns across the country about issues important to them and their experience,” her campaign said in a statement sent Monday to The Salt Lake Tribune. “She’ll continue traveling to as many states as possible in the coming months and is looking forward to being in Salt Lake City.”

The event, scheduled to begin at 6 p.m., is open and free to the public, but Warren’s campaign encouraged attendees to RSVP in advance.

Warren is the most well known of the candidates in the crowded Democratic field to visit Utah so far. Former Maryland Rep. John Delaney visited the state over a year ago in January 2018 and again earlier this year. Julian Castro, the former secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President Barack Obama, spoke at an event at the University of Utah at the end of February.

“Because there are a zillion Democratic presidential candidates, obviously one of the things they’re doing at this point is trying to get out and make as many contacts to raise as much money and generate as much support as they can,” said Matthew Burbank, a political science professor at the University of Utah. “So even though Utah is not a state where most of these candidates are going to spend any time campaigning in a general election or likely even a primary election, it is a reasonable place to raise money.”

Warren launched her campaign for president at the end of February in Massachusetts, where she called for Medicare for all and the elimination of Washington lobbying. She has since called for the abolishment of the Electoral College. Warren is one of the Democratic Party’s highest-profile figures and has often been criticized by President Donald Trump. Her announcement came on the heels of an apology earlier that month over her claims of Native American identity.

Parkland, Fla. • After Manuel and Patricia Oliver lost their son in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, they assumed their neighbors would be sympathetic. So when they protested gun violence last summer by staging a “die-in” at the local Publix grocery store, they were shocked by the reaction.

Gun rights activists and some shoppers taunted and mocked them. One stepped on Patricia's hand, saying, "I'm sorry for your loss," she recalled. Another man swore at Manuel while screaming his support for the National Rifle Association.

"We were shocked there were all of these people against us, in a very rude way," said Manuel Oliver, who advocates for gun control in memory of their 17-year-old son, Joaquin. "And it was at that moment, I realized I need to be ready to find out a lot about where I live" on Election Day.

The shooting, which left 17 students and staff members dead last year, sparked a nationwide movement of marches, student walkouts and a massive voter registration campaign to demand gun control. More than 100,000 supporters converged on downtown Washington a year ago for a rally that became a defining symbol of the students' determination to upend American politics.

But the movement has had relatively little effect on voters here, who made a three-point shift toward the Democratic candidate between the 2016 presidential election and the 2018 gubernatorial election, when compared with Florida voters overall.

A Washington Post analysis of voting results shows a similar trend following other recent, large mass shootings: a modest swing toward Democratic candidates, who often champion gun control laws, with Parkland's three-point shift at the median.

"You would think, indeed, because everyone in these places knows people who know people affected by this, that that personal experience would magnify the impact," said Robert Spitzer, who has written five books on the politics of gun control. "But my general assumption is those communities' larger focus generally really isn't about politics, and it really does not profoundly change local politics."

The Post’s review examined communities that experienced seven of the deadliest mass shootings since Newtown, Connecticut, including Orlando; Las Vegas; Pittsburgh; San Bernardino, Calif. and Sutherland Springs, Texas.

The analysis used results in the first presidential or gubernatorial election after each attack compared with the one immediately preceding. In most cases, the changes were only slightly different from the trends across the state, but they varied widely.

After 26 children and staff members were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, voters in Newtown shifted two points in favor of the incumbent Democratic governor in 2014, a year when the state moved decisively to the right compared with the previous presidential election. In San Bernardino, where 14 people were killed at a county government office in 2015, voters made a 17-point shift in favor of the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, while the state swung to the left by less than 10 points.

In a separate study published by the British Journal of Political Science in February, researchers "failed to find any significant or substantively meaningful" overall effect of mass shootings on political views regarding gun control laws. However, the results showed local residents' opinions became more polarized.

"There is no aggregate movement among everyone," said Brian Schaffner, a political science professor at Tufts University and one of the study's authors. "But we saw some evidence Republicans become more conservative and Democrats become more liberal."

In Parkland, where Stoneman Douglas High School students organized a nationwide March for Our Lives campaign and gun-control advocates spent millions of dollars on statewide elections, Democrat Andrew Gillum carried five of Parkland's six precincts in Florida's gubernatorial election.

But Republican challenger Ron DeSantis, who campaigned against stricter gun laws, carried one Parkland precinct with 54 percent of the vote, roughly matching the level of support President Donald Trump received in that precinct in 2016.

Florida elected DeSantis and sent Republican Gov. Rick Scott to the U.S. Senate, strengthening the GOP Senate majority, while dimming hopes for federal action on gun laws.

"I kept hearing before the election that Democrats were going to take this race or that race in Florida, and I just kept telling myself, 'I am not seeing it,' " said Kristin Jacobs, a Florida state representative who represents Parkland.

Parents of the Parkland shooting victims also remain split on gun control. They agreed to largely avoid discussing politics when they meet as a group for emotional support.

"I'm not interested in having that discussion," said Max Schachter, who lost his 14-year-old son, Alex, in the shooting and now pushes for school safety improvements. "I work with Republicans and Democrats to make schools safer than they were when my son was murdered."

Several parents became advocates for gun control, including the Olivers, who travel nationwide with their artwork promoting tougher gun laws. But other parents have been outspoken against new gun-control measures, focusing on what they view as the systemic failure in the Feb. 14, 2018, attack.

"If it was just the gun, I would say, ‘OK, it’s the gun’s fault,’ " said Andrew Pollack, whose 18-year-old daughter, Meadow, was killed in the massacre. “But I did an investigation into every facet of how my daughter was murdered. There are multiple failures — from the sheriff, to the mental health system to the monitors at the school. How can you say it’s the gun’s fault?”

The effort to launch a gun-control movement here did yield some results. About 250 Parkland residents between ages 18 and 21 registered to vote after the shooting, ahead of Election Day, and about 57 percent of them voted — compared with a 47 percent turnout statewide among new registrants in that age group, according to an analysis by Daniel A. Smith, chairman of the political science department at the University of Florida.

In the 18-to-29 age group, Democrats in Parkland turned out in larger numbers, with 54 percent casting ballots, compared with 42 percent of Republicans and 35 percent of unaffiliated voters, said Smith, who analyzed Florida's open-source voter file.

—

In Newtown, voters shifted two points to the left between the 2012 presidential election and the 2014 governor's race. But other comparisons show a more robust advantage for Democrats, including a 20-point swing toward then- Gov. Dannel Malloy, a Democrat, in his bid for reelection in 2014 compared with four years earlier.

After the Sandy Hook shooting, Malloy successfully pushed for major changes to Connecticut gun laws, including universal background checks and a stronger assault-weapons ban.

But since that election, Newtown has remained divided politically.

In November, Newtown voters split partisan loyalties in statewide races, supporting incumbent Democratic Sen.Chris Murphy, a gun-control proponent, while also narrowly backing Republican Bob Stefanowski in the Connecticut governor's race. Stefanowski was endorsed by the NRA.

Stefanowski's anti-tax message resonated with suburban Connecticut voters, said Gary L. Rose, a political science professor at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut.

Gun-control advocates caution that the results of presidential and statewide contests can offer a limited view of the true effect a mass shooting has on the politics of a community. Often, they say, the debate over gun control plays out in a more visible way in races for state legislative or congressional elections.

In one Newtown-area state legislative district, voters last year ousted GOP incumbent Will Duff in a race that partially hinged on his vote opposing a statewide ban on bump stocks, devices that allow a gun to fire more rapidly.

Nationwide, advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety said that more than 1,000 candidates who supported gun-control measures were elected last year, including 171 congressional candidates, 15 governors and 12 state attorneys general.

Monte Frank, a Newtown attorney who became a gun-control activist after the Sandy Hook tragedy, said the gains Democrats made last year show the building potency of the movement. Now, he said, voters in Newtown and elsewhere consider a candidate's stance on firearms laws even if it they don't always rank it as a top concern.

"There is no question in my mind, in the six years since Sandy Hook, that gun violence has become a much larger factor in how people vote, especially in Newtown," Frank said. "But there are still others that still consider it as part of the overall package, and just one factor of many."

—

Only one of the seven communities in The Post analysis became more Republican after a mass shooting: Sutherland Springs.

After a gunman killed 26 people — including an unborn baby — at a Baptist church there in 2017, voters in that precinct shifted six points in favor of Republican Texas gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott, who won the election.

Many residents in Sutherland Springs dismissed questions about whether easy access to guns played a role in the massacre, noting that an armed man near the church confronted the shooter and probably saved lives.

"The ideology that came out of Parkland just wouldn't ever remotely grow legs down here in South Texas, I don't believe," Frank Pomeroy, the pastor of the church, said in an interview on "Here & Now" on WBUR radio last year. Pomeroy's 14-year-old daughter was killed in the shooting.

The Post's analysis did not include the 2013 shooting at the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C., which doesn't have gubernatorial elections. Twelve people were killed in that attack.

Voters in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, which includes Pittsburgh and its suburbs, and Clark County Nevada, which includes Las Vegas and it suburbs, largely conformed to the broader statewide shifts in their respective states. In Las Vegas, 58 people were killed. Eleven people died in Pittsburgh.

In some places, it's difficult to determine the impact that gun violence has had on the electorate because the community's politics were already changing. In Orange County, Florida, where 49 people were killed at a nightclub in Orlando in June 2016, a surging Latino population helped feed a 13-point shift toward the Democrats in November 2016 compared with the 2014 gubernatorial election. Statewide, Florida moved just 1 percent to the left during the period.

Ken Toltz, a Colorado gun-control activist, knows how complex residents' views about guns can be, even in the aftermath of a mass shooting.

In 2000, a year after the Columbine High School shooting in suburban Denver, a Democrat challenged then-Rep. Tom Tancredo, a Republican, in the congressional district where the school was located. He lost by 12 points.

After watching Colorado remain a right-of-center state for two decades, Toltz believes the politics of the gun debate are shifting because of the activism of the Parkland students.

In November, voters in the congressional district that includes Columbine and Aurora, where a gunman killed 12 people in a movie theater in 2012, ousted Republican Mike Coffman, who had been endorsed by the NRA, from Congress.

“When I look at the big picture, I see a slew of people newly active politically,” Toltz said. “And candidates themselves are campaigning on it instead of running away from it.”

Washington • Kirstjen Nielsen said Monday she still shares President Donald Trump’s goal of securing the border, a day after she resigned as Homeland Security secretary amid Trump’s frustration and bitterness over a spike in Central American migration.

Trump announced on Sunday in a tweet that U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan would be taking over as acting head of the department. The decision to name a top immigration officer to the post reflects Trump’s priority for the sprawling department founded to combat terrorism following the Sept. 11 attacks.

Nielsen had traveled to the U.S.-Mexico border on Friday with Trump to participate in a roundtable with border officers and local law enforcement. There she echoed Trump’s comments on the situation at the border, though she ducked out of the room while Trump spoke. As they toured a section of newly rebuilt barriers, Nielsen was at Trump’s side, introducing him to local officials. She returned to Washington afterward as Trump continued on a fundraising trip to California and Nevada.

But on Sunday, she wrote in her resignation letter that “it is the right time for me to step aside.” She wrote that she hoped “the next secretary will have the support of Congress and the courts in fixing the laws which have impeded our ability to fully secure America’s borders and which have contributed to discord in our nation’s discourse.”

Nielsen told reporters outside her Alexandria, Va., home Monday that she continues to support the president’s goal of securing the border.

“I will continue to support all efforts to address the humanitarian and security crisis on the border,” she said in her first public remarks since the surprise resignation, thanking the president “for the tremendous opportunity to serve this country.”

Nielsen had grown increasingly frustrated by what she saw as a lack of support from other departments and increased meddling by Trump aides on difficult immigration issues, according to three people familiar with details of her resignation. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.

She went into the White House on Sunday to meet with Trump not knowing whether she’d be fired or would resign. She ended up resigning, though she was not forced to do so, they said.

Though Trump aides were eyeing a staff shake-up at the Department of Homeland Security and had already withdrawn the nomination of another key immigration official, the development Sunday was unexpected.

Still, it was unclear how McAleenan would immediately assume the role. The agency’s undersecretary of management, Claire Grady, is technically next in line for the job, and she will need to resign — or more likely be fired — in order for McAleenan to assume the post.

“The president works very well with Kevin McAleenan. He’s done an incredible job in the administration and we expect that relationship and the work to continue,” White House spokesman Hogan Gidley told reporters Monday.

He cited McAleenan’s “extensive” knowledge of immigration issues and said the change in leadership would hopefully lead to “massive changes” at the border.

Nielsen is the latest person felled in the Trump administration’s unprecedented churn of top staff and Cabinet officials, brought about by the president’s mercurial management style, insistence on blind loyalty and rash policy announcements.

She was also the highest profile female Cabinet member, and her exit leaves DHS along with the Pentagon and even the White House staff without permanent heads. Patrick Shanahan has held the post of acting defense secretary since the former secretary, Jim Mattis, was pushed out in December over criticism of the president’s Syria withdrawal plans. Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney has held his post since January, following John Kelly’s resignation last year.

McAleenan has helped shape many of the administration’s policies to date and is considered highly competent by congressional leaders, the White House and Homeland Security officials. But it’s unclear if he can have much more of an effect on the issues at the border. The Trump administration has bumped up against legal restrictions and court rulings that have hamstrung many of its major efforts to remake border security.

Rep. Joaquin Castro, chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, was critical of Nielsen, saying she spent her tenure “championing President Trump’s cruel anti-immigrant agenda,” and he called McAleenan’s appointment “deeply disturbing.”

“He cannot be trusted as Acting DHS Secretary based on his record of prioritizing Trump’s harmful policies that undermine national security and the economy, and hurt vulnerable families and children at the border,” Castro, a Texas Democrat, said in a statement.

Tensions between the White House and Nielsen have persisted almost from the moment she became secretary, after her predecessor, Kelly, became the White House chief of staff in 2017. Nielsen was viewed as resistant to some of the harshest immigration measures supported by the president and his aides, particularly senior adviser Stephen Miller, both on matters around the border and others like protected status for some refugees.

Once Kelly left the White House, Nielsen’s days appeared to be numbered, and she had expected to be pushed out last November.

During the government shutdown over Trump’s insistence for funding for a border wall, Nielsen’s standing inside the White House appeared to rise. But in recent weeks, as a new wave of migration has taxed resources along the border and as Trump sought to regain control of the issue for his 2020 reelection campaign, tensions flared anew.

The final straw came when Trump gave Nielsen no heads-up or opportunity to discuss his decision to pull the nomination of acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Ron Vitiello — a move seen as part of a larger effort by Miller, an immigration hardliner, and his allies at the White House to clean house at the department and bring in more people who share their views, the people said.

Nielsen had wanted to discuss the move with Trump during their visit to the border Friday, but when there was no time, she asked for the meeting Sunday. She walked into it prepared to resign, depending on what she heard. The people described mounting frustrations on both sides, with Trump exasperated at the situation at the border and Nielsen frustrated by White House actions she felt were counterproductive.

Arrests along the southern border have skyrocketed recently. Border agents are on track to make 100,000 arrests and denials of entry at the southern border in March, more than half of which are families with children. A press conference to announce the most recent border numbers — scheduled to be held by McAleenan on Monday — was postponed.

Nielsen dutifully pushed Trump’s immigration policies, including funding for his border wall, and defended the administration’s practice of separating children from parents. She told a Senate committee that removing children from parents facing criminal charges happens “in the United States every day.” But she was also instrumental in ending the policy.

Under Nielsen, migrants seeking asylum are waiting in Mexico as their cases progress. She also moved to abandon longstanding regulations that dictate how long children are allowed to be held in immigration detention and requested bed space from the U.S. military for 12,000 people in an effort to detain all families who cross the border. Right now there is space for about 3,000 families, and facilities are at capacity.

Nielsen also advocated for strong cybersecurity defense and said she believed the next major terror attack would occur online — not by planes or bombs. She was tasked with helping states secure elections following Russian interference during the 2018 election.

She led the federal agency since December 2017 and was this administration’s third Homeland Security secretary. A protege of Kelly’s, he brought her to the White House after Trump named him chief of staff.

Kyle Korver has always been the kind of player, when you ask him even what seems like a routine question, he thinks it through, pausing before and as he answers, allowing all kinds of considerations to flow through his mind before finishing his thought.

In his essay, “Privileged,” posted at The Players’ Tribune, a piece that discusses racism, not just in the NBA, but in America, you can read — and feel — those thoughts caroming inside his mind, heart and soul, spilling out onto the screen in the form of something that’s too often missing in this world: unadulterated honesty.

Truth.

It is a must read.

It is what everyone should stop and think about, especially those who are part of the crowd he mentions as one, unlike more than 75 percent of NBA players, he could so easily fade into — white America.

While he differentiates between guilt and responsibility for racism and its awful effects, and overt racism — the loud, stupid kind that pronounces its idiocy to anyone within earshot — and the much more pervasive and, in ways, dangerous latent, under-the-surface sort, he makes it clear that he, after some past reluctance, wants to act out against racism, to do something, whatever he can.

This is the best part of his message, an example to the rest of us, who need to represent those worthy ideals in word and action. Don’t just shake our heads at racism, quietly being disappointed or appalled. Make a difference by doing something about it — in the way we vote, in the way we do business, in the way we interact with others, in the way we comport ourselves in every setting.

And Korver’s message at the end of his essay is powerful. He wants anyone and everyone who follows him on social media, or who cheers for him from the stands, or who buys and wears his jersey, to view him as a man who does not want to symbolize privileged white America. He does not want to be anybody’s great white hope in a league of color. He does not want to represent anything that has anything to do with anyone’s misdirected cause.

He wants to stand in line, arms locked, with the people with whom he works and plays and lives, regardless of the shade of their skin.

He says he intends on listening to everybody, and doing whatever he can to help eradicate racism in his circle. And thereby, maybe help others do the same.

He didn’t say that last part. I did.

But his example is a positive one, one that gives and spreads awareness and hope near and far for the present and future. It’s an example this country and its leaders need to see, a message they need to read, a call to action they need to heed.

Korver may rank among the best 3-point shooters in the history of the NBA. He may have made millions of dollars rotating a basketball through a hoop. At 38, he may be putting the finishing touches on a stellar pro career.

But, outside of his own family, he’s never done anything more important than putting his thoughts into written words, publishing what he wrote in this particular piece.

Please read it. And take note.

GORDON MONSON hosts “The Big Show” with Jake Scott weekdays from 3-7 p.m. on 97.5 FM and 1280 AM The Zone.

Provo • BYU’s two-deep chart at linebacker before the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl last December included six names: Sione Takitaki and Butch Pau’u in the middle, Rhett Sandlin and Adam Pulsipher at boundary and Tanner Jacobson and Riggs Powell at field.

All six were seniors.

At first glance, the cupboard at what is traditionally one of BYU’s strengths looks empty for linebackers coach Ed Lamb.

“That’s true,” the Cougars assistant head coach said during the last week of spring practices. “We’re really concerned about inexperience at the linebacker positions. And that’s always a scary position to be in as a coach.”

It might not be as bad as it appears, however.

Two players who had earned starting spots during parts of the 2018 season, field linebacker Zayne Anderson and boundary linebacker Isaiah Kaufusi, were injured and missed the bowl game. Hence, they weren’t on the depth chart when the season ended.

Both missed spring practices, but are expected to be back when preseason training camp opens in late July.

Anderson, who got an additional year of eligibility because he only played in four games last year, underwent surgery for a torn labrum in his shoulder in the middle of October, while Kaufusi had surgery to repair some torn ankle ligaments shortly after he sustained an injury in the Nov. 24 game at Utah.

“If we had a game this week, Isaiah would prepare and then play,” Lamb said March 25. “We are just being cautious because he hasn’t been back training full speed. He was just now released to play, so we feel really good about him.”

Anderson, the 215-pound speedster from Stansbury Park, will be classified as a redshirt senior and is the only senior linebacker on the roster. He said he tore his labrum in the opener at Arizona, but played through the pain against Cal and Wisconsin. He missed the Washington and McNeese State games, then decided to get the surgery after playing against Utah State.

“I will be 100 percent soon,” he said. “Maybe I could have played some in spring ball, gotten a taste of full contact and everything, but we were being safe. I will be completely good to go this summer.”

Kaufusi, a Brighton High product, finished with 50 tackles last year and will be a junior this season.

“We’re going to count on some young guys [at linebacker], but we feel really good about Zayne and Isaiah returning,” head coach Kalani Sitake said. “We’ve asked those guys who were injured to stay involved this spring, teaching and mentoring the young guys, and those two have done that.”

One of those young guys is Jackson Kaufusi, Isaiah’s younger brother. Jackson redshirted last year after returning from a church mission to Australia and is the heir apparent to Takitaki’s starting spot at middle linebacker.

“We have a lot of young talent, and it is my job to find the guys that will perform well in the games,” Lamb said, noting that middle linebacker in BYU’s 4-3 system “is probably the position that is the least settled.”

Lamb said redshirt freshmen Keenan Pili and Max Tooley and true freshman Alex Miskela are also in the mix for the starting spot.

Another option in the middle is defensive lineman Trajan Pili, a 6-2, 260-pound senior who got some reps there in the spring scrimmage.

“Some of it is having more experience out there, a guy who has been in the battles,” said defensive coordinator Ilaisa Tuiaki. “We know [Trajan Pili] is not going to flinch. But it is also about letting those young guys know that there is somebody in there to push them. … Trajan played a little bit of it last year in some of our stuff, so we are kinda putting him out there to see him, give him that experience.”

Anderson’s backup at the field LB spot, sometimes called the “flash,” is sophomore returned missionary Chaz Ah You, a converted safety.

Isaiah Kaufusi’s backup at boundary, sometimes called the “bo,” is either Tooley or AJ Lolohea, a West High product who shined in the spring scrimmage.

BYU coach Kalani Sitake sums up spring scrimmage pic.twitter.com/zASeJcxELJ

— Jay Drew (@drewjay) March 23, 2019

BYU’s projected linebackers in 2019

Flash (field) — Zayne Anderson, Sr., 6-2, 210 or Chaz Ah You, So., 6-2, 205

Mike (middle) — Jackson Kaufusi, Fr., 6-2, 220 or Keenan Pili, Fr., 6-3, 217

Bo (boundary) — Isaiah Kaufusi, Jr., 6-2, 210 or Max Tooley, Fr., 6-2, 222

Note: Other linebackers with a chance to crack the two-deep include Alex Miskela, Hirkley Latu, Matt Criddle, Drew Jensen, Payton Wilgar and AJ Lolohea.

It's become a ritual of the Trump years: Each time President Donald Trump parts ways with one of his top advisers or associates, that person then embarks on an effort to expunge the deep moral stain left behind by his or her service to Trump's depraved, corrupt, incompetent, and even sometimes criminal designs.

In the case of Kirstjen Nielsen, who has just been pushed out by Trump amid his rage over the spike in asylum seeking families at the border, this process is proving more revealing — and unsettling — than usual.

This act of expungement typically requires one of several types of self-cleansing. The now-banished party reveals that the acts he or she did carry out were done with great, anguished reluctance, or that he or she stuck around to prevent worse from happening, or that Trump demanded numerous acts that he or she just could not bring herself to commit.

Nielsen's version of this ritual runs through some of these steps. Yet in so doing, it hints at ways in which Trump could very well try to engage in conduct that is substantially more heinous and lawless.

• Stephen Miller consolidates power, but Trump is “out of ideas”

Trump fired Nielsen because he wants a "tougher" approach to the migrant crisis than Nielsen has implemented.

Along those lines, Politico reports that Nielsen's firing reflects Trump immigration adviser Stephen Miller's consolidation of power inside the administration. Miller is trying to bring in more immigration "hard-liners," because he is "frustrated by the lack of headway" that the administration has made on immigration.

That “lack of headway” is that migrants keep coming to the border — the number could reach 1 million this year. Most of them are asylum-seeking families, and Trump is in a rage about them, leading him to lurch erratically from one posture to another.

Trump declared a national emergency to build his wall and has threatened to close the southern border (neither of which would actually solve the problem), a threat he has withdrawn and then reiterated in the space of days. He is cutting off aid to Northern Triangle countries (which would make the problem worse), and is demanding that Democrats give him changes to the law he wants (which they won't do).

Now, as Politico reports, Miller is privately telling allies that the administration is at wits end:

"Last week, as Trump threatened once again to shut down the border ... Miller held a conference call with immigration activists to explain the administration's position and answer questions.

"He has told allies that the administration is out of ideas about how to stem the migrant tide at the border, according to a source familiar with the conversations."

OK, so what now? New details emerging about the firing of Nielsen provide a clue as to what Miller's increasing control might mean in practice.

• Trump wanted Nielsen to break the law

Among the most indelible moral stains that Nielsen will take into private life, of course, is her role in implementing Trump's horrific 2018 policy of family separations. We are now learning, via leaks to The New York Times, that Nielsen "hesitated for weeks" before signing the memo authorizing the policy. But Trump castigated her mercilessly in private, leading her to capitulate.

Such leaks will not have the desired cleansing effect, however, because as the Times also reports, Nielsen became a "defender" of such policies. That said, there do appear to be things Trump demanded that she would not do:

"The president called Ms. Nielsen at home early in the mornings to demand that she take action to stop migrants from entering the country, including doing things that were clearly illegal, such as blocking all migrants from seeking asylum. She repeatedly noted the limitations imposed on her department by federal laws, court settlements and international obligations.

"Those responses only infuriated Mr. Trump further."

Trump repeatedly demanded that Nielsen break the law, by closing the border to asylum-seeking entirely.

• Trump has a real agenda, and it’s extreme and crazy

It's important to appreciate that this demand of Nielsen flows from what appears to be an actual aspiration on Trump's part. In recent days, Trump has repeatedly said our country is "full," which is another way of saying the same thing: If he had his way, we would not take in a single additional asylum seeker.

Indeed, Trump has linked this assertion directly to his threat to close the border, which seems to indicate that, when he threatens to do this, he thinks he's threatening to end asylum seeking entirely. This is utter lunacy — because of geographic realities, closing official ports of entry would not prevent people from setting foot on U.S. soil, after which they can exercise their legal right to apply for it.

But Trump actually does appear to want to end this as a right. It's what he reportedly demanded that Nielsen do, and she refused.

Many other things he and Miller have done are all about progressing towards that goal in some way. In multiple ways, they've tried to restrict the ways people can apply or qualify for asylum. They've lowered the cap on refugees and used bureaucratic tactics to slash those numbers further.

Now they are pushing for changes to the law that would make it possible to detain asylum seeking families - including children - for far longer, and to more easily deport Central American migrant children.

These would not address the terrible civil conditions in home countries that are largely causing the migrations in the first place. Trump has ended aid to those countries, while doing everything possible to either slam the door on asylum seekers entirely, or to deter them from fleeing those horrific conditions by threatening unspeakable cruelties here.

None of those things has worked. But Nielsen has been fired, because Trump wants something still "tougher" than all those things. Like what? Miller says the administration is out of ideas.

But one thing we can be reasonably certain of is that if Trump could get away with it, he'd do far worse things. As The Post reports, Nielsen actually held on to her job for this perverse reason:

"Trump told aides last fall that he wanted to fire Nielsen, and he grew increasingly agitated as a large caravan of Central American migrants reached the U.S.-Mexico border near San Diego. She appeared to regain her footing after U.S. Border Patrol agents used tear gas to repel a large crowd attempting to break through a border fence - the kind of "tough" action Trump said he wanted in a DHS secretary."

Add to this the fact that Trump repeatedly instructed Nielsen to break the law, and you get an idea of what Trump might be capable of doing. What those things will look like we don't know, but we may soon find out.

It's fitting that this is happening right when an old quote from Trump - in which he called some migrants "animals" - is once again being debated. Reporters rushed forth to proclaim that Trump was only talking about MS-13 members, which isn't even clear to begin with, and doesn't seriously reckon with how determined Trump is to dehumanize asylum-seekers, and the rhetorical tricks he employs to do so.

But the circumstances around Nielsen’s firing should make it impossible for anyone to feign innocence about the depths of Trump’s depravity and inhumanity any longer.

Greg Sargent writes The Plum Line blog. He joined The Post in 2010, after stints at Talking Points Memo, New York Magazine and the New York Observer.

@theplumlinegs

If Americans ever lived in a Billy Graham nation, they do so no longer. They live now in a nation defined by Norman Vincent Peale, though few Americans today may even know this name.

It is Peale’s influence that permeates the cultural landscape. He is a founder of our secular religion of achievement and well-being. His vision is echoed in the mystical certainties of figures like Oprah Winfrey. Even the Trump presidency is confirmation that our country is now Normal Vincent Peale’s America.

Certainly, Graham was the exemplar and perhaps the culmination of a religious tide that blanketed the whole of American history until his day. Even before the nation was officially born, there was a Billy Graham-style religious revival that first fashioned a people and then prepared them for the revolution to come. Historians have called this Great Awakening the “first intercolonial event.”

During the mid-1700s, from Georgia to Maine, the urgent call to reclaim faith in God swept the rising nation. There were prominent preachers, like George Whitefield. There were massive crowds that impressed even Founding Fathers like Benjamin Franklin. There were advance teams. There was fiery newspaper coverage. Tens of thousands were converted, and a “spirit of liberty” was celebrated throughout the land — all just before the revolution that gave Americans a place among the nations of the world.

More than one historian has concluded that had there been no religious revival at the time there would have been no American Revolution — at least, not a successful one.

It was much the same after the revolution, which had damaged the cause of religion. Firebrand preachers like Charles Finney urged vast crowds to return to the God of their fathers and take their fledgling nation with them. The transforming power of this movement is hard to exaggerate. Entire towns were so impacted that they changed their names to those of biblical cities like Bethel or Shiloh. Benevolent societies arose that endure to this day.

This pattern was often repeated. War and cultural crisis were followed by raucous revivals. There would be champions of faith like Dwight Moody or Billy Sunday. Millions were impacted. The media was riveted. New institutions of faith arose. The wider nation could not help but take note.

It was this heritage of revivalistic faith that helped feed the stunning rise of Billy Graham in the late 1950s. Americans were urged to return to God and thus to the God of their fathers, to the God who ruled over the American experience. Be born again and in so doing restore the nation to its divine purpose, immense audiences were told. The appeal of this message made Graham’s crusades prime-time media events. He became the “Pastor to Presidents,” the most influential clergyman of his age.

Yet even before Graham became prominent, Norman Vincent Peale was fashioning a new faith for a new age. He was a gifted orator who in 1932 became the minister of the esteemed Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan. Initially, he preached a “born again gospel,” much as Graham would later.

Peale was eager, though, to find language to inspire his sophisticated, business-obsessed Manhattan congregation. He began moving away from biblical theology in favor of motivational psychology. He came to believe that “given a normal intelligence, an individual can make of himself about what he wants to be.” He spoke of the Sermon on the Mount as a “practical program for personality building.”

His popularity soared as he introduced the wider world to the principles of self-improvement and achievement made famous in his massive bestseller, “The Power of Positive Thinking.” The book made Peale the most famous Protestant clergyman on earth after it was released in 1952.

His chapter titles tell the tale: “Expect the Best and Get It,” “How to Create Your Own Happiness,” “Inflow of New Thoughts Can Remake You,” “I Don’t Believe in Defeat” and “How to Get People to Like You.”

He taught of a “magnetic force in your mind which by a law of attraction tends to bring the best to you.” He assured his followers that what they “imagine may ultimately become a fact if held mentally with sufficient faith.”

Peale’s own father described this theology as “a composite of Science of Mind (New Thought), metaphysics, Christian Science, medical and psychological practice, Baptist Evangelism, Methodist witnessing, and solid Dutch Reformed Calvinism.”

It is the mention of “Science of Mind” and “New Thought” that is most surprising. Clearly, Peale drew from non-Christian sources to fashion his new faith. He knew that “I am what I think I am” and “I am what God makes me” represent two different faiths. Yet he baptized the former statement and offered it as a replacement for the latter before an eager global audience.

He is father, then, to much of what we know today. When Oprah Winfrey touts the message of the bestselling book and video series “The Secret” — with its core message, “thoughts become things” — she is echoing Peale. When Donald Trump denies facts and prefers bluster, he is echoing the man who called Trump “his greatest student of all time.”

It was Peale, after all, who wrote in “The Power of Positive Thinking” that “Attitudes are more important than facts.”

Indeed, whenever the internet sizzles with admonitions like, “If you can conceive it you can achieve it,” or “Your thoughts determine your destiny,” or “Imagine your way to success,” it is doing so in praise of Peale.

Billy Graham called for lives surrendered to God and guided by faith in Jesus Christ. It was the cry of American revivals past. Peale urged men to think the thoughts that fashioned their realities, to remake themselves with words and attitudes and imaginings centered upon success and acceptance.

We live in a Norman Vincent Peale nation now.

Yet even Peale’s values sound forth from our early national past. It was the visiting French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville who in 1831 complained of American preachers, “It is often difficult to ascertain from their discourse whether the principal object of religion is to procure eternal felicity in the other-world or prosperity in this.”

Still, we should not conclude that the Billy Graham tide in American history is at an end. His brand of evangelicalism is much maligned but is ever bent upon resurrection. The heirs of Graham, believing with him that the ideas of mere men fade quickly from history, may yet rise to reclaim the field from the now triumphant heirs of Norman Vincent Peale.

Stephen Mansfield is The New York Times best-selling author of “The Faith of George W. Bush,” “The Faith of Barack Obama,” “Lincoln’s Battle With God” and “Choosing Donald Trump.” The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.

It was a quieter, spiritually focused General Conference over the weekend for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in which leaders focused their remarks on classic topics such as faith, repentance and families.

This was surprising to many, given that the past two General Conferences have featured major announcements (see here and here) about changes to church policies, such as last year’s decision to shorten the three-hour “block” of Sunday meetings to two.

It was also surprising given how many rumors had been swirling around possible reforms, with some church members speculating that the faith’s dietary code would be relaxed around coffee and tea (dream on, Starbucks aficionados), or that missionary service would be shortened to 18 months for all missionaries. Neither of those came to pass.

That’s not to say that the last week hasn’t been filled with surprising news. Just before General Conference, the church announced the reversal of a controversial policy regarding LGBT members and their families. At the conference itself, however, hard news was thin on the ground.

Here are seven main takeaways from the weekend.

• <b>Church leaders urged members to focus on developing spirituality at home. </b>The phrase “home-centered and church-supported” appears to be the new buzzword in describing the institution’s approach to instruction at all levels. The new “Come, Follow Me” curriculum is designed for home use as well as discussion in church meetings, so some of the talks discussed ways for members to implement this approach in their lives.
• <b>Apostle David Bednar may have cleared the way for greater transparency about the temple.</b> For me, one surprise of the weekend was how specifically<a href="https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2019/04/08/discover-christs-truths/"> Bednar’s talk</a> dealt with what church members can and cannot disclose in regard to the temple, the holiest site for Latter-day Saint ritual life. He quoted former prophet Ezra Taft Benson in saying that some members have erred on the side of caution in discussing the temple with their children and grandchildren, saying too little for fear they might reveal too much. In essence, Bednar clarified that young people will be better prepared for the temple if parents discuss with them everything except “the special symbols associated with sacred covenants” and “the holy information that we specifically promise in the temple not to reveal.” Using screenshots of the church’s website, he showed<a href="http://www.temple.churchofjesuschrist.org/"> some of the resources now available online</a> to help members begin these conversations. I was glad to see this. One takeaway about the temple findings from<a href="https://thenextmormons.org/"> the Next Mormons Survey</a> is that there was a correlation between feeling prepared for the temple and having a positive first experience in the initiatory and endowment.
• <b>The church called its first African American general authority.</b> Peter M. Johnson, an accounting professor who has taught at church-owned Brigham Young University and the University of Alabama, was<a href="https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2019/04/06/former-byu-football-star/"> called to be a Seventy</a>. While the church has previously called men of African descent to positions of worldwide authority, Johnson is the first from the United States.
• <b>There was, um, a 100% increase in women speakers!</b> That’s my glass-half-full take on a perpetually dismal situation. In the October 2018 General Conference, there was only one female speaker — outside of the women’s session. This time around, there were two women — but no women’s session. (I think we are supposed to view that as an improvement . . . ?) As one friend on Facebook pointed out, it’s ironic that the church keeps urging men to listen to their wives when the model it provides about the actual importance of women’s voices is for women to occupy 5% of pulpit time in conference. On the plus side, <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2019/04/07/latest-lds-general/">Sharon Eubank’s talk</a>. The first counselor in the women’s Relief Society general presidency and head of LDS Charities gave one of the best I’ve ever heard in any General Conference, managing to be both pastoral and theologically deep.
• <b>Several historic “pioneer temples” will be renovated.</b> Four 19th-century <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2019/04/07/lds-church-president/">Utah temples will undergo extensive restoration</a> to preserve their historic character. Temples in St. George, Salt Lake City, Manti, and Logan are all scheduled to be renovated, then rededicated when the projects are complete. Presumably this means that each temple will be open to the public for a brief time between its renovation and rededication.
• <b>Eight new temples will be built around the globe.</b> In the last few moments of the conference, church President <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/religion/local/2018/01/16/watch-live-russell-m-nelson-poised-to-announce-new-mormon-leadership-today-at-9-am/">Russell M. Nelson</a> asked members to remain quiet, with no “verbal outbursts” of delight or surprise, as he announced the locations for eight new temples. Six are outside the United States (Pago Pago, American Samoa; Okinawa City, Japan; Neifu, Tonga; San Pedro Sula, Honduras; Antofagasta, Chile; and Budapest, Hungary) while two will be built in the western U.S. (Tooele, Utah. and Moses Lake, Wash). There are now 162 operating LDS temples around the world, with another 47 in some stage of development.
• <b>The “covenant path” is in vogue.</b> During conference, as I heard the phrase “the covenant path” come up again and again from speakers, I wondered aloud on Twitter how it would be quantified compared to previous eras:

It didn’t take long for Brandt Malone of the Mormon News Report to provide me with an answer: according to the LDS Conference index, that phrase has only been uttered in conference 61 times . . . and 58 of them have been in this decade. And that was before this weekend.

Editor’s note • The views expressed in this opinion piece do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.

This Pat Bagley cartoon appears in The Salt Lake Tribune on Tuesday, April 9, 2019. You can check out the past 10 Bagley editorial cartoons below:

• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2019/04/05/bagley-cartoon-official/" target=_blank><u>Official Mugging</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2019/04/04/bagley-cartoon-church/"><u>Church Approved</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2019/04/03/bagley-cartoon-brexit/"><u>The Brexit Knight</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2019/04/02/bagley-cartoon-national/"><u>National Security Crisis</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2019/04/01/bagley-cartoon-troubling/"><u>Troubling Downturn</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2019/03/29/bagley-cartoon-gop-health/"><u>GOP Health Care to Die For</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2019/03/28/bagley-cartoon-medicaid/"><u>Medicaid Expansion of Our Own Design</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2019/03/27/bagley-cartoon-millenials/"><u>Millennial’s World</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2019/03/26/bagley-cartoon-our/"><u>Our National Dinosaurs</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2019/03/25/bagley-cartoon-no/"><u>No Collusion</u></a>

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