What has Mike Lee actually done for his constituents lately? He has gotten passed and signed three bills, two of which were land swaps. The latest was renaming the veteran’s center in North Ogden after Brent Taylor.
I checked Lee’s website and he has introduced 158 pieces of legislation. Thirteen of these went to committee according to the website. That is not a very high percentage of success. I guess I am asking, what has Mike Lee done for us lately?
Winfred Pauley, Sandy
My husband, Matt, and I became parents to twin boys in 2015, just days before the LDS Church announced its policy about children of same-sex couples.
Since then, we’ve seen some remarkable actions taking place among members. My stepfather wrote to his former neighbor, Dallin H. Oaks, urging him to view the matter in a new light. My mother – not typically one to rock the boat – spoke openly of her difficulty in reconciling the church’s position.
My best friend’s parents began diverting their tithing contributions to LGBT causes. The bishop in our new neighborhood took initiative to keep tabs on us and visit us.
On my mission, I remember telling people not to judge the LDS Church by the actions of its fallible members, and that they could rely on church leadership not to lead them astray. In this case, though, it seems those flawed members have held their leadership accountable to acting like Christians. I’m proud of them, and grateful, for that.
Rich Warner III, Salt Lake City
Everybody complains about Donald Trump, politicians and the beer laws. I would like to complain about my West Jordan water bill.
The water bill has gradually increased since January. There are no water leaks, there are only two of us and I am definitely not watering. My actual residential water usage in March in monetary terms was $20.29. So why is my bill $110.28?
The water base, storm drain and sewer all went up. What is a water base? My concern is what will happen in the summer when I am watering?
Maybe I should get a load of gravel and cactuses. Or hope that Publishers Clearing House shows up with the $7,000 a week for life so I can afford West Jordan water.
Christine Anderson, West Jordan
Pay for a Utah Division of Child and Family Service caseworker starts at around $15 an hour. You can work at McDonald’s or drive a bus for equivalent money.
I am not trying to degrade the service a McDonald’s worker or bus driver brings, but the amount of responsibility and/or liability a DCFS worker has, compared to those other two professions, is by no means the same.
You have young adults responding to serious situations, who average six months of experience, who are fresh out of college, making sometimes life-altering decisions for children. You can’t tell me that six months is enough to be fully trained and ready for those kinds of decisions.
So what are we waiting for? What will it take to value a DCFS caseworker? Are we waiting for the child death toll to drastically increase before we begin to pay them? Are we waiting for the 60 percent turnover rate to increase to 100 percent? Or are we waiting for the workers to go on strike?
What is it — what are we waiting for, legislators?
Dennis Sellis, Orem
A lot of information was passed along by leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to its members over the weekend. This includes those of us who only watched/listened to parts of confurnz.
It would be impossible to summarize all of it in the space allotted here, but let me give it a shot. Keep in mind that this is only a generalization of the conference theme. Every conference has one.
Just to mention a few, the themes of these two-day gatherings have over time been missionary work, temple work, love for enemies (except in times of war when we get enlisted to kill them), apostasy, ministering, service, tithing/money — and on and on.
The theme of the most recent conference seems to be preparing for the Second Coming, when any number of frightful things are supposed to happen. Oh, and the usual “Satan is a jerk” warnings.
The whole “end times” thing has been kicked around by Mormons since the church started nearly 200 years ago. The Second Coming has always been just around the corner.
Jesus’ original followers believed that he would come back before now. Just imagine their reaction if they’d been told it would be at least another 2,000 years.
“Are you kidding us? Gee whiz” — or whatever the Aramaic/Hebrew version of that would be.
News of the last days is always delivered as a warning at best and a threat at worst — as in a theocratic version of “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town. “He sees you when you're sinning. He knows if you are baked. He knows if you've been bad or good … ”
As a kid, I hoped only that it wouldn’t happen until I’d had a chance to reach a significant milestone. For example, the Old Man said I could have a BB gun when I turned 10. It seemed like forever until that day.
In the meantime, I’d get dragged to church and have to listen to someone say that we were in the very last of the absolutely last days, possibly even in the last few hours.
Not once did I ever think, “Oh, boy. The Lord is coming.” Instead, I’d sit there and fume, “Well, he better not show up until after I get my BB gun.”
The same thing happened with a shotgun, motorcycle, driver license, making out with my first girlfriend, etc. There couldn’t possibly be an opportune moment for him to show up.
After years of hearing the dire end times predictions, I’ve stopped listening to them. They’ve lost their ability to scare or annoy me. I figure it will happen when it does.
By the way, this isn’t just a Christian fret. Most faiths have an end time belief. Hell, even nonbelievers still have it. Leave Jesus out of it and consider the eventuality of an asteroid the size of Africa smacking us. Could happen. At any moment.
There is an end time for all of us. It’s called death. Makes sense then to live the life that makes you happy instead of worried. You’ll never know when it will happen. Hopefully, though, you’ll already have your BB gun.
Robert Kirby is The Salt Lake Tribune’s humor columnist. Follow Kirby on Facebook.
Washington • President Donald Trump and White House allies pressing for a harder line on immigration sped up their campaign Monday to clean house at the Department of Homeland Security with a mission far wider than just the departure of Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.
The dismantling of the government’s immigration leadership is being orchestrated by Trump adviser Stephen Miller, the impetus behind some of the administration’s most controversial policies, according to three people familiar with the matter. Beyond changing names and faces, Trump is considering separating migrant families at the border again, resuming the practice that drew so much outrage last year, the same people said.
The shake-up is a result of Trump’s frustration with the increasing number of migrants at the border and his diminishing options for action. Court challenges, immigration laws and his own advisers have blocked several of his proposals as his re-election campaign looms. The White House has lashed out by demanding new leadership, although a new team is likely to face the same obstacles.
The head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, L. Francis Cissna, and Homeland Security General Counsel John M. Mitnick are expected to be pushed out of their positions, the officials said. Nielsen submitted her resignation Sunday after meeting with Trump at the White House, and three days earlier, the administration withdrew the nomination of Ron Vitiello to lead Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Other longtime civil servants in agency posts are also on the chopping block, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
Adding to the turmoil, the director of the Secret Service is being forced out of his job, but that departure is said to be unrelated to the immigration upheaval.
Leading senators from both parties were displeased.
"The purge of senior leadership at the Department of Homeland Security is unprecedented and a threat to our national security," declared Democrat Dianne Feinstein of California. "President Trump is trying to remake DHS into his own personal anti-immigration agency."
Republican Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, criticized Congress for a crisis at the border but also said, "I am concerned with a growing leadership void within the department tasked with addressing some of the most significant problems facing the nation."
Nielsen has dutifully carried out the administration's orders but often had to explain to Trump the legal limits of what he wanted to do. And he didn't like it.
She did months of diplomatic work with Central America and Mexico and brokered an arrangement in which asylum seekers were to wait in Mexico for their asylum cases to play out, an effort meant in part to discourage false claims. She moved to abandon long-standing regulations that dictate how long children are allowed to be held in immigration detention and was working to find space to detain all families who cross the border . She limited what public benefits migrants can receive and put regulations in place to circumvent immigration law and deny asylum to anyone caught crossing the border illegally.
And she took ownership over the most divisive of all the decisions, the separation of families at the border.
Nearly everything has been challenged or watered down by the courts. Just Monday, a judge blocked the administration from forcing asylum seekers to wait in Mexico, giving lawyers a few days before putting the block into effect.
"DHS is really between a rock and hard place," said Doris Meissner, the former commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service and fellow at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute.
There are some options not yet exhausted by Trump, including giving judges more deference in asylum cases and allocating more resources to diminish backlogs, she said. But the White House has shown little interest in those ideas because they conflict with its assessment that those seeking refuge are trying to cheat the system.
Nielsen finally had enough and resigned Sunday, in part because she hadn't been informed about the sudden decision to withdraw Vitiello's nomination, according to people familiar with her decision.
She was also pushing back at an effort to house an "immigration" or "border czar" within Homeland Security, they said. She wanted the person to be based at the White House and help coordinate immigration policy between the Justice Department, Health and Human Services and DHS, all of which have a piece of the complex puzzle. But the people said Miller was pushing to house the czar at DHS, in part over frustration with the rising number of migrants. There were more than 100,000 expected in March, border officials said, the highest tally in 12 years.
Trump announced Sunday that Kevin McAleenan, commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, would take over for Nielsen at Homeland Security on an acting basis. McAleenan had impressed Trump's inner circle, specifically son-in-law Jared Kushner, with his extensive border knowledge.
Trump spokesman Hogan Gidley expressed hope that McAleenan's experience would lead to "massive changes" at the border.
But McAleenan is not an ideologue or politician. He refers to migrants as "vulnerable families" who need more humanitarian treatment, not as beefy dudes with tattoos trying to game the system, as Trump suggests. He's pushed for asylum changes to make screenings faster and cases decided more rapidly.
Democrats said McAleenan should have told them about the death of a child in U.S. custody in December, but he largely has escaped the ire over family separations even though it was his agency that separated the children.
Gil Kerlikowske, who led Customs and Border Protection from 2014 to 2017, said illegal crossings can go up and down on a number of factors that are difficult to predict. He noted that stepped-up Mexican enforcement helped end a surge of Central American families coming to the U.S. in 2014.
"I don't envy anybody in that position because these are policies that are White House policies, not DHS," said Kerlikowske, who promoted McAleenan to be his top deputy. "I couldn't have been more disappointed" to see Vitiello's nomination pulled, he said, describing Vitiello as "a 30-year Border Patrol, deputy chief and you're saying, 'Well, you're not really tough enough?' I find that kind of amazing."
Trump has seemed to be grasping at anything to stem the tide of migrants. That includes reinstating family separations, a policy that previously prompted international outrage and could mean he would have to violate his own executive order and possibly run afoul of a federal judge overseeing reunifications. The government just said in court filings it would take up to two years to reunify all the children already separated from their families.
"The administration has been well beyond the bounds of the law for some time with respect to asylum and family separation. There's no place for them to go that won't continue to break the law," said Lee Gelernt, the American Civil Liberties Union official whose lawsuit on behalf of a separated mother led to the reunifications.
Nielsen's departure threw into sharp focus just how few full-time leaders are at the sprawling department of more than 240,000 people. There's no confirmed secretary, no deputy secretary, no head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, no formal head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, no head of Customs and Border Protection once McAleenan moves over, and no head of the science and technology branch. In addition, the deputy undersecretary for management at the agency, Claire Grady, will have to be moved aside for Trump to install McAleenan as acting secretary.
Associated Press writers Lisa Mascaro, Zeke Miller, Catherine Lucey in Washington and Elliot Spagat in El Paso, Texas, contributed to this report.
A dispute over the leader of a Utah polygamous church has escalated in Montana, where parents expect a school run by the sect to lose half its students.
Pines Academy in Pinesdale, Mont., has been operated by the polygamous Apostolic United Brethren (AUB) and is so synonymous with the town that the school is the first photo you see when you search Google for “Pinesdale, Montana.” A note sent home to parents March 14 informed them of changes that appear to ensure only people loyal to AUB President Lynn Thompson teach at the school.
Teachers must pass an interview and be “blessed” and “set apart” by AUB representatives to work there next year. The AUB’s governing council also wants the religious curriculum of Pines Academy, which teaches kindergarten through sixth grade, to be more like the schools it operates in Utah, according to information provided to Pinesdale families.
The recent criteria for good standing in the AUB, Pinesdale residents say, has been pledging support for Thompson and viewing him as the source of the AUB’s power and authority from God, referred to as priesthood.
That’s a deal breaker for Lex Herbert, who used to worship with the AUB. He said sending his children to Pines Academy is no longer an option for him and his two wives. They do not have confidence in an all-pro-Thompson faculty and see it as the latest effort to isolate critics of the sect’s leaders.
“They’ve made it clear they want to run the school so they can teach their exclusive views of priesthood and priesthood authority,” Herbert said this week in a phone interview. He has three children who would be of age for Pines Academy in the fall.
Herbert said he and other concerned parents have met to discuss forming a new school. Some families also might opt to home-school their children, he added, or send them to public schools.
A daughter and two nieces accused Thompson of fondling or molesting them as girls. An audit also found evidence Thompson embezzled AUB funds before he ascended to the top post.
The accusations have divided AUB members across the American West. The fissure has been most acute in Pinesdale, population 972, which was founded by AUB members in the 1960s as a place to practice polygamy without fear of prosecution. Bigamy is a misdemeanor in Montana, and state statutes do not forbid living with spiritual wives as they do in Utah, where bigamy is a felony.
Pines Academy has 124 students this year. Herbert is among the parents who believe half the pupils won’t return to the school in August. The school has about 30 teachers. It’s unclear how many of them can return or will be needed if enrollment declines.
Pines Academy Principal Vilate Stoker, who has not supported Thompson, has already said she will not return for another school year.
An AUB spokesman did not return messages seeking comment this week.
In November, Dave Jessop, a AUB lay leader in Pinesdale who has led the effort to change Pines Academy policies, spoke to The Salt Lake Tribune about what were then only proposals.
Jessop said the goal was not to expel the people who don’t support Thompson but to ensure Pines Academy is teaching students the AUB’s religion.
“If we are going to draw closer to God, which is our hope and our purpose,” Jessop said, “we want to do right.”
Jessop, in November, also said any hard feelings over shifts at the school are the results of decisions made by those who don’t want to abide by the changes.
"There’s some anger and bitterness on their part,” he said. “All the hostility that I've ever seen has come from them.”
Besides requiring teachers to pass an ecclesiastical interview, Pines Academy’s governing board plans to change the religious instruction to better conform with the views of AUB leadership, according to information provided to parents during public forums. Since the division over Thompson, students had been receiving general instruction in the Bible and Mormon scripture. More nuanced discussions, particularly over anything that might have implications for whether to follow Thompson, were avoided.
Sidestepping Thompson in the classroom made Pines Academy one of the last venues in Pinesdale where people on all sides of the divide could still cooperate.
“A lot of people,” Herbert said, “believe the school was one of the last strands holding people together.”
Current and former AUB followers still operate Pinesdale’s municipal government.
Kent Jessop, 42, said he “leans toward” not sending his children to Pines Academy in August, but no decision has been made yet. He has five children who will be in kindergarten through sixth grade and said he might work with other families to create a new school or send his children to public school.
While he doesn’t like the direction AUB is going, he said Pines Academy still holds some appeal.
“I know that the kids will be cared for,” Jessop said. “I know that the teachers will do their best.”
But he worries about a “trickle down” effect of the new requirement for teachers. He worries parents will eventually need to have similar qualifications to send their children to Pines Academy.
Before giving final approval to a new set of guidelines for what Utah students should learn about sex, the state school board made a few last-minute changes Thursday to ensure the focus in classrooms will remain on chastity.
Members approved an added line asking teachers to “discuss the risks of indiscriminate sexual behavior on overall health.” They debated whether the updated standards said too little to encourage getting married before having children — what one called “the success sequence.” And they changed language so that lessons that earlier read only “including abstinence” would instead be “stressing abstinence.”
“We are a pro-family state, and we need to keep that in mind,” said Utah Board of Education member Lisa Cummins, who also said the standards should do more to require parents be involved in the discussions.
Sex education has always been a flashpoint in this conservative state, though health classes focus on more topics. With the vote Thursday, the teaching guidelines have now passed the last hurdle and will next be studied and put in place in public K-12 schools across Utah.
It will be the first comprehensive update to health education standards in the state in more than 20 years.
It’s taken more than two years just to get to this finished draft.
Utah state code currently permits an “abstinence-based” sex education program, which promotes celibacy as the most effective way to prevent pregnancy or disease. Teachers are prohibited from encouraging "premarital or extramarital sexual activity.” That hasn’t changed with the new standards, but they do include a bit more information on evaluating the different methods of contraception, including condoms and birth control pills.
During the board’s nearly four-hour discussion last week, member Jennie Earl questioned whether the standard for talking about those methods should say they “prevent” sexually transmitted diseases or only “reduce” the risk of contracting one. “I just want it to be medically accurate,” she said.
Earl, who represents northern Utah, brought up more than a dozen other recommended amendments, most focused on affirming parental rights. Most were defeated.
The standards tell students that if they need help or guidance for any health concern, but particularly abuse, they should talk to a “trusted adult,” which is defined to include parents, clergy, coaches and more. Earl suggested the text should read “parent or trusted adult” to be clear that the state puts parents first. The discussion displayed the ideological breakdown of the board with the more conservative members agreeing with Earl and the more liberal and moderate members siding against.
Board member Jennifer Graviet, whose district includes Ogden, responded: “When you’re looking for someone to trust, it’s not about a title or role.” Students, she added, come from diverse family backgrounds where some have a single parent, are raised by grandparents or don’t have a responsible or engaged caregiver at all; some experience abuse in their own homes. So the term “trusted adult,” Graviet said, applies universally.
Alisa Ellis, a board member representing Heber City, contended, though, that the language puts “family as an afterthought” and supported an amendment to add a paragraph at the start of the standards for every grade level to have students involve their parents in conversations about sex.
Graviet said that’s “headed down a slippery slope” where math and English classes don’t have the same requirement to discuss the Pythagorean Theorem or the moral of a novel with a kid’s mom or dad. Still, the addition passed.
Whatever the board changes, urged Terry Shoemaker, representing the Utah School Boards Association, the standards need to get done and move forward.
“We need this to be finished,” he said. You're talking through the nuances of some things in ways I think you're overdoing it. … You're expected to be careful about these things, and I appreciate that, but this needs to be done because this has been sitting on the table for quite some time now.”
The board of education voted to review the health standards in July 2017, and a writing committee has met more than 30 times to draft new ones. There have been six public hearings for parents and teachers to weigh in, too. The board has also collected more than 1,000 comments.
The approved guidelines cover six sections of education, including mental and emotional health and nutrition. For the first time, the new standards will include lessons for kindergarten through second grade. Parents will still be required to “opt in” their kids for the sex education units in middle and high school.
Some of the bigger changes include a discussion on addiction to pornography and a new note that says “recovery is possible.” The board is also pushing lessons on kindness before any discussion of bullying. And teachers will be starting some basic anatomy lessons in elementary school to help kids who may need to report that they’re being touched inappropriately.
Three members, including Cummins, still voted against the standards, saying the discussion of sex should happen in the home and not in the classroom. “Many of these go beyond the scope of the school’s job,” added board member Alisa Ellis.
But 12 members voted in favor, and the room erupted in applause at the passage.
President Donald Trump rarely sends staff members packing without a parting jab. On occasion, as with Linda McMahon, the former Small Business Administration chief, he praises them as they’re headed out the door. But either way, Trump seems keenly aware of the public’s perception of the constant departures from his administration. “He’s always thinking optics,” said former White House staffer Cliff Sims, who wrote a book about the Trump White House. This week, Trump announced the exit of U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielson with a curt tweet. On several occasions, the president has blindsided his own aides by announcing someone’s exit. It’s important to Trump to look like he’s in control of the staff changes, one anonymous source told Politico. “He jumps everyone who wants to leave so that it makes it look like the president is the one doing the rejecting, not the other way around,” the source said. [Politico]
Happy Tuesday!
Topping the news: Several anonymous sources told the Deseret News and the Tribune that Jon Huntsman Jr., former Utah governor currently serving as U.S. ambassador for Russia, may run for governor during the 2020 election. If he does, it will be Huntsman’s third term in the position, as he won the office in 2004 and was re-elected in 2008. [Trib] [DNews]
-> Elizabeth Warren, 2020 presidential hopeful and well-known senator from Massachusetts, is hosting an organizing event in Utah next week — the third Democratic candidate to do so this year despite the state’s predominantly red status. [Trib] [DNews] [KUTV]
->Entrata CEO Dave Bateman has been a key player in Utah Republican politics since 2018 when he helped pull the party away from bankruptcy by taking on its legal debts. Bateman recently said he does not plan to recoup any of that money. Instead, he is encouraging new leadership on the Utah GOP’s State Central Committee. [Trib]
Tweets of the day: @aedwardslevy: “Storm Clouds Descending Upon DC Unsure If They Are Metaphorical.”
-> @pourmecoffee: “Acting Cabinet members should have to wear a colorful vest.”
-> @BenWinslow: “I’ve been interviewing witnesses to the downtown portion of today’s shooting and crime spree. Quite frankly, it is a miracle no one was killed. @fox13 #SLC #Utah.”
-> @BasicProvoBro: “We were interviewed by @NPR last night and I just set up an interview with @nytimes. The wide-scale publicity attests how powerful the @restorehonorbyu movement is. - Accountability - Advocacy - Protection- Empowerment. Positive change is on the horizon Provo!!!”
-> @madsbarr: “I’m glad BYU is taking students seriously about reforming the honor code but when I was a student, I wrote letters and emails and made phone calls to BYU administrators and was ignored. When I did get a response I was told I was ‘too emotional.’”
-> @NormOrnstein: “Anyone who thought Mitt Romney would be an adult in the room, a voice of reason and courage, was naive to the point of embarrassment.”
Happy Birthday: to Utah Rep. Carl Albrecht
In other news: The state treasurer announced that the government has about $54.8 million of properties on hand that was lost during 2018. The properties are awaiting claim by their rightful owners. [Trib]
-> Tribune columnist Robert Gehrke penned an editorial arguing that Brigham Young University has a right to keep its Honor Code — the rules of conduct implemented by the Latter-day Saint owned school. But the school should enforce the code in a way more respectful of students. [Trib]
-> Tribune cartoonist Pat Bagley offered his take on radical extremism with help from a cartoon version of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. [Trib]
Nationally: Several senior officials in the Trump administration say the president wants to restart the zero-tolerance policy that separated children from their parents at the border despite its suspension several months back after immense public pressure. [NYTimes] [WaPost] [NBC News]
-> A U.S. judge from California blocked President Donald Trump’s push to force individuals seeking asylum to wait in Mexico while their cases are considered in immigration court. [Politico] [WaPost]
-> In wake of the forced resignation of U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, several other top officials from the department will likely also be replaced. [NYTimes] [WaPost]
-> Actress Felicity Huffman along with 12 other parents and one coach included in the sweeping college admissions scandal plan to plead guilty to the charges. [NYTimes] [WaPost]
-> During a town hall in Iowa, Sen. Bernie Sanders told the audience that he does not support an open border policy. Instead, the Vermont senator emphasized, he favors comprehensive immigration reform. [Politico]
-> Rep. Eric Swalwell of California announced his Democratic candidacy for the 2020 presidential election Monday night. [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
Megan Huff never played in the NCAA Tournament during her Utah women’s basketball career and her team was too depleted to participate in the WNIT this season.
Even so, WNBA scouts have plenty of material to use in judging Huff against good competition. She’s expected to become the sixth former Ute drafted into the league in 14 seasons, with the three-round event scheduled Wednesday night.
Huff thrived in a conference that sent five teams into the NCAA Tournament’s Sweet 16 and produced the WNIT champion. Her averages of 19.6 points and 9.9 rebounds remained almost the same, in and out of Pac-12 play, during Utah’s 20-10 season. The 6-foot-3 forward was one of the Pac-12′s most consistent players, even though opponents knew she was by far Utah’s biggest offensive threat.
“She's been phenomenal,” Ute coach Lynne Roberts said late in the season, explaining that Huff's steady performance against defenses designed to stop her “speaks to not just talent, but mentality. … She'll be a pro for a long time.”
Where in the world she plays is the next question. She’s sure to get an opportunity with one of the WNBA’s 12 teams, but making a roster is a challenge for a third-round pick. That’s where Huff is projected. Draftsite.com listed her as the No. 27 overall pick, early in the third round, and ESPN.com slotted her 32nd.
“Megan Huff is a skilled post player that I’ve really enjoyed watching,” Minnesota Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve said in a predraft teleconference. “... Megan’s skill set is really interesting, a big that can shoot the three. She has some agility; just an overall good basketball player.”
Reeve places Huff is a category of players with “a skill set, but can they athletically be able to translate to the WNBA and still do those things?”
In a three-game stretch in late January against top-tier teams, Huff may have been the Pac-12′s top performer. She posted 24 points and nine rebounds in a win over a California team that made the NCAA field and featured Kristine Anigwe, who’s expected to go in the top four Wednesday. Huff had 17 points and 13 rebounds in an upset of Stanford, which became an Elite Eight team with Alanna Smith, another projected top-10 pick. That victory gave the Utes a No. 14 ranking with an 18-1 record, before they faded.
Utah lost at eventual Final Four participant Oregon, but Huff scored 38 points. Her only poor offensive games of the season were a 1-of-13 shooting day in a loss at Arizona and a 3-of-15 showing against Washington in the first round of the Pac-12 tournament. By then, Utah was down to seven active players, due mostly to injuries, and Roberts halted the team's season rather than further wear down her players.
She also knew there was more basketball in Huff’s future.
Washington • Attorney General William Barr testified Tuesday that he believes he will be able to release special counsel Robert Mueller’s report “within a week,” and he will color-code the information that is redacted so the public knows why various material is being veiled.
The assertion came during Barr’s appearance before members of the House Appropriations Committee, where questions on his handling of the report are expected speckle what otherwise would have been a routine budget hearing.
Barr had told lawmakers previously that his department was scrubbing Mueller’s report with an eye on releasing it by mid-April.
"This process is going along very well, and my original timetable of being able to release this by mid-April stands, and I think that, from my standpoint, within a week, I will be in a position to release the report to the public," Barr said.
Barr's handling of the nearly 400-page document already has sparked political spats, and Democrats are likely to press him to turn it over to lawmakers in full. In his opening statement, Rep. José Serrano, chairman of the Appropriations Commerce, Justice, Science Subcommittee, signaled that the report would be a significant topic of discussion Tuesday.
"We could not hold this hearing without mentioning the elephant in the room," he said, adding that it would be a "serious blow to our system" if the report was not released in full.
So far, Barr has offered only a four-page synopsis of Mueller’s principal conclusions — asserting the special counsel did not find anyone on President Donald Trump’s campaign conspired with Russia to interfere in the 2016 election and did not reach a conclusion on whether Trump sought to obstruct justice. Barr wrote in that synopsis that he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein weighed the evidence themselves and determined they could not make a case that Trump obstructed justice.
Democrats, in particular, have criticized Barr's bare-bones description of Mueller's findings, and some on Mueller's team have told associates they are frustrated with the limited information made available so far about their work. Barr said Tuesday that Mueller's team "did not play a role in drafting" his letter to Congress that revealed their principal conclusions, though he added "we offered him the opportunity to review it before we sent it out, and he declined that."
Barr could mollify some angst when he releases the report, though it will be redacted in some measure. Barr has told lawmakers that he will keep from public view grand jury material, information that could reveal investigators' sources and methods, information that could affect ongoing investigations, and details that would impact the privacy of people "peripheral" to Mueller's investigation. He said Tuesday he will color code the redactions and provide "explanatory notes" so people know the reason that various sections of the report are not being disclosed.
Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., chairwoman of the appropriations committee, said that Barr's quick release of Mueller's conclusions was "more suspicious than impressive," and she called on him to make minimal redactions to the report itself.
"I understand that portions of it must be redacted as a matter of law, but my hope is that you will stop there and bring transparency to this process as soon as possible," Lowey said. "The American people deserve the facts."
House Judiciary Committee Democrats, mindful that their colleagues on the Appropriations panel are not as familiar with the nuance of Mueller's investigation, have provided them with a list of suggested questions for the attorney general, an aide said. Only one member of the subcommittee that will question Barr on Tuesday also sits on any of the six House committees examining Trump, his finances and his foreign contacts.
Democrats are likely to question Barr on the extent of the material he will hold back. They are also likely to inquire about any conversations he has had with the White House about the report.
Barr has told lawmakers that Trump would have the right to assert executive privilege over certain pieces, but because the president had stated publicly he would defer to the attorney general, Barr had no plans to submit Mueller's work to the White House for a privilege review.
Barr will appear at the hearing Tuesday with Lee Lofthus, the Justice Department's assistant attorney general for administration. Barr's opening statement, which was released Monday, makes no mention of the special counsel investigation, but instead focuses on the reason the hearing was convened: the Justice Department budget.
Barr said in the statement that Trump's $29.2 billion budget proposal for the department in fiscal year 2020 "reflects a commitment to the Department's priorities of reducing violent crime, enforcing the nation's immigration laws, combating the opioid epidemic, and addressing national security threats to this great nation." He touted the department's two years of record-breaking prosecutions of violent crime — including prosecuting more people on firearms charges in fiscal year 2018 than ever before — as well as its efforts to combat overdose deaths.
Such deaths, Barr said, "may have finally stopped rising," according to 2017 and 2018 data from the Centers for Disease Control, though he said the area remained a high priority for the Justice Department.
Barr has said he is able to testify before the Senate and House Judiciary committees on May 1 and May 2. They have primary responsibility for inquiring into his handling of the Mueller report. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, wrote Monday on Twitter that he also believes Mueller himself should testify at some point.
Ennis, Mont. • Wildlife officials say a teen survived a bear attack with relatively minor injuries in southwestern Montana.
Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks say it was likely a grizzly bear that attacked the 17-year-old south of Ennis Sunday. Morgan Jacobsen of FWP says the teen was visiting Montana from Utah.
The agency says he was out looking for shed antlers when he heard a "thump" behind him and saw the bear charge.
The agency says he didn't have time to use his bear spray and the bear pushed him up against a tree. It eventually pinned him face down on the ground. The boy said he was able to reach over his shoulder and spray the bear and it left.
The agency says the bear’s behavior is typical of surprise close encounters.
Salt Lake City is the 24th-best place to live in America, according to U.S. News & World Report, in part because it’s not just a “religious community” anymore.
Utah’s capital — home to the headquarters of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — has fallen off in the rankings over the past two years. It was 10th in 2017 and 15th in 2018.
That has less to do with any changes happening in Salt Lake City and more to do with changes to the list.
“One factor contributing to Salt Lake City’s difference in rankings looking at the last three years is the introduction of 25 additional metro areas to the list in 2018,” said U.S. News real estate editor Devon Thorsby. “These additions are slightly smaller in population, and in many cases score particularly high for affordability, where Salt Lake City has historically performed best.
"Not only has affordability become more competitive as a category, but Salt Lake City’s cost of living has climbed slightly in the last year.”
But it remains one of the country’s best places to live, U.S. News said, because “while remnants of its Mormon heritage — including the striking Salt Lake Temple — are still prominent downtown, Salt Lake City is not as devout as it once was. The Latter-day Saints’ health code won’t keep you from enjoying a cup of coffee in the morning, and many restaurants now have a liquor license. Today, Salt Lake City offers much more than a strong religious community.”
The magazine lauds the city’s access to “five national parks” and “several world-class ski resorts," along with “everything from professional sports like Utah Jazz basketball to kid-approved attractions like the Loveland Living Planet Aquarium.”
And the area's “job opportunities are as enticing to newcomers as its entertainment options.”
For the second year in a row, Austin, Texas, was at the top of the list. Two cities in Utah's neighbor to the east, Colorado, were second (Denver) and third (Colorado Springs).
Among the cities that moved past Salt Lake City in the rankings are San Francisco (up 13 spots to No. 7); Asheville, N.C. (up eight spots to No. 16); and Sarasota, Fla. (up 16 spots to No. 18).
The list is focused on the nation’s 125 most populated metro areas and used data from the U.S. Census Bureau, FBI, Bureau of Labor Statistics and U.S. News’ “internal resources” — its rankings of the nation’s best high schools, best hospitals and more. It categorized the data into five indexes — job market (20%), value (25%), quality of life (30%), desirability (15%), which asked people if they want to move to a place, and net migration (10%), which factors whether people have been moving to a city.
Salt Lake City’s quality-of-life number remained the same from 2018 to 2019 (a 6.9 on the U.S. News index). Net migration (from a 6.4 to a 6.6) and job market (6.9 to 7.0) both improved slightly year to year; housing affordability (7.9 to 7.4) was down, as was overall desirability (6.7 to 6.4).
The 25 best places to live in America are:
1. Austin, Texas.
2. Denver.
3. Colorado Springs, Colo.
4. Fayetteville, Ark.
5. Des Moines, Iowa.
6. Minneapolis-St. Paul.
7. San Francisco.
8. Portland, Ore.
9. Seattle.
10. Raleigh/Durham, N.C.
11. Huntsville, Ala.
12. Madison, Wis.
13. Grand Rapids, Mich.
14. San Jose, Calif.
15. Nashville, Tenn.
16. Asheville, N.C.
17. Boise, Idaho.
18. Sarasota, Fla.
19. Washington, D.C.
20. Charlotte, N.C.
21. Dallas/Fort Worth
22. Greenville, S.C.
23. Portland, Maine
24. Salt Lake City.
25. Melbourne, Fla.
Washington • The problem with putting Stephen Moore and Herman Cain on the Federal Reserve Board — as President Trump aims to do — isn’t merely that these lackeys have been wrong about nearly every economic claim they’ve ever made.
They're also rabid conspiracy theorists, at least when such theorizing has proved convenient to their partisan agenda.
That Trump would choose candidates with such proclivities should be no surprise. After all, in addition to the alternative-factualizing that the president is perhaps best known for (birtherism, crowd size, carcinogenic windmills), he has also regularly attacked government economic statistics, such as the unemployment rate, calling them phony, fake or cooked to make Democrats look good.
Unless those same, independently produced statistics made him look good, of course. “They may have been phony in the past, but it’s very real now,” then-White House press secretary Sean Spicer quoted Trump as saying about employment numbers his boss had previously questioned.
Moore is a career political operative whose singular motivation is helping Republicans cut taxes. In service of that goal, he sometimes fabricates economic factoids entirely, including during a Thursday radio interview in which he falsely claimed that wages just began to grow for the first time in 20 years. Usually though, he either cherry-picks or misrepresents (real) government data — e.g., by not adjusting figures for inflation, or claiming that a decline in soybean prices driven by China’s decision to stop buying from American farmers means that prices across the U.S. economy overall are falling. (They are not.)
Cain, on the other hand, does not appear to have sufficient facility with economic statistics to know which cherries to pick. During a recent episode of his web show, he appeared genuinely confused by the differences between, say, jobs vacant and jobs filled. (This is arguably an important thing to know if you're on the Federal Reserve Board, where half the legal mandate concerns maximizing the number of jobs filled.)
But when all else fails — that is, when they run out of real numbers to spin or mischaracterize — both Moore and Cain have a tendency to invoke Trump-style data trutherism: that is, to simply claim the official government data are phony.
During the depths of the financial crisis, for instance, Moore urged the Fed to raise interest rates — an action that would have hurt the U.S. economy, and by extension the Democrat then sitting in the White House. Moore declared that such measures were necessary because "hyperinflation" was nigh.
The scary hyperinflation never arrived. Rather than acknowledge his error, however, Moore joined the leagues of conspiracy theorists who argued that official government price data were bogus.
"Nobody believes the statistics out of Washington and often for good reasons," Moore wrote in a 2014 Fox News column, one of several public comments during the Obama era in which he suggested the official inflation numbers were artificially low. "A 2% inflation rate. Ha."
Cain for his part has questioned not only the veracity of the official government price data but also — like Trump — the official unemployment data.
In fall 2012, some right-wing, conspiracy nuts claimed that the independent Bureau of Labor Statistics was releasing doctored data to help President Barack Obama's re-election chances. More than a year later, Cain was still propagating this false claim.
"They faked the pre-election unemployment report & the employee who did it says he was under orders from superiors," Cain said in one of multiple tweets promoting an episode of "The Herman Cain Show" that has since been taken down.
To be clear, such comments were not nuanced critiques of whether various government surveys or data collection efforts capture the best possible measures of economic activity, or whether the methodology could be improved upon. These would be legitimate questions for discussion and, indeed, have been debated by actual economists.
No: What Moore, Cain and Trump espouse is merely lazy conspiracy theorizing.
Moore has actually taken things a step further, calling for the elimination of the entire Commerce and Labor departments, and other departments that he claims "don't do much that's useful." As Moore surely knows, this would mean eliminating the independently run statistical agencies — including the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Census Bureau, Bureau of Economic Analysis — that collect and tabulate nearly all major economic data releases.
This is a strange position for anyone who calls himself an economist, let alone someone in contention for a seat on the Fed board, to adopt. The Fed relies on such government data to evaluate how the economy is performing and calibrate monetary policy — as do investors, businesses and families when making critical decisions every day.
There's an old economics joke about "torturing the data until it confesses." What happens if you just execute the data instead?
Catherine Rampell’s email address is crampell@washpost.com. Follow her on Twitter, @crampell.
A new marketing campaign from a Provo-based swimsuit company looks to celebrate each day’s “little victories” in 12 video interviews with Utah women “from all walks of life.”
The problem? Nine of the women are blonde and all appear to be white.
“‘All walks of life’ should include different ethnicities, races, and backgrounds,” a commenter wrote on the blog post on the website of business Kortni Jeane. “This feels shortsighted to me.”
Several women of color on Twitter and Instagram agreed and asked the company why there were no women of color included in the campaign.
The response? It’s more difficult than you’d think to find models who are also people of color in Utah, the company said.
“We did a model call just two weeks ago with over 200 applicants and none of which were of color,” the company said in a now-deleted response to criticisms on Instagram. “Honestly harder than it may seem but if you know anyone in Utah willing to put a swimsuit on please send them our way.”
That’s when Stacy Horton, 28, took to Twitter to prove a point, calling on women and men of color in Utah to drop a picture of themselves in her thread.
More than 100 did.
“@KortniJeane here is a thread of 100+ beautiful multicultural men, women, and children that live in the Utah area,” she wrote to the company on Twitter. “Reach out, include us, enhance your company with values that are accepting of everyone no matter the color or size. It's 2019, "harder than it seems" is no excuse.”
@KortniJeane here is a thread of 100+ beautiful multicultural men, women, and children that live in the Utah area. Reach out, include us, enhance your company with values that are accepting of everyone no matter the color or size. It's 2019, "harder than it seems" is no excuse.
— Stace (@stace_belle) March 31, 2019
Kortni Niccoli, the company’s owner and founder, said she was surprised by the backlash to the campaign on social media.
“The campaign was focused on people’s stories and their background and they all came from incredible, different walks of life, and so I was focused not on the color of anyone’s skin or their outward appearance but it was more their stories and I wanted to share a message of celebrating women,” she said. “So it was a shock ... having a backlash on diversity and body image when the campaign was meant to do the opposite.”
Niccoli said the company strives to include diversity but acknowledged it could do more to reach out to women of color. In the future, she said, she’ll be more “gung-ho” about doing so.
“I love to be pushed and I love to hear people’s concerns and comments and feedback because my company wouldn’t be able to grow and reach all walks of life if I didn’t have that feedback and didn’t have people pushing me to be better,” she said.
Utah companies are behind the curve when it comes to representing diverse groups, according to Arul Mishra and Himanshu Mishra, marketing professors at the University of Utah. But it makes business sense for companies to start thinking more critically about who they portray in advertisements, they said.
“Businesses reap benefits when different groups of consumers can relate to the advertising message,” they said in an email. “If people cannot connect to those represented in advertisements and marketing efforts, they would not be interested in the message. No business would want to lose out on a sizable chunk of their audience by not representing them in their marketing efforts.”
But even as booming population growth alters the state’s demographics, there’s a persistent myth of a blonde-haired, blue-eyed, white Utah — one that doesn’t hold up to the lived experiences of many of the state’s residents.
And marketing like Kortni Jeane’s perpetuates that fallacy, said Alessandra Cuneo, 28, making “a group that’s already minimized” feel even more invisible.
“I think it’s really damaging,” she said. “It still creates kind of an us versus them mentality, right?”
Cuneo, who is Latina, weighed in on the issue on Twitter and told The Salt Lake Tribune she’d like to see Utah boutiques represent more people of all shapes, sizes and backgrounds — hiring not only more people of color but also more plus-size models and members of the LGBTQ community.
Horton agreed, noting that while she’s almost come to expect poor representation from businesses in Utah, she was mostly upset by Kortni Jeane’s initial response to questions and criticisms from women about its lack of representation: it deleted their questions.
“I think having that diversity and having those different colors and different shapes in whatever business you’re running is going to attract different people and that brings in more business,” Horton said. “And so it just baffles me when people are so almost defensive when someone asks about it.”
The same week that Kortni Jeane launched its new ad campaign, the Utah-based boutique Piper & Scoot came under fire for posting a marketing video online that featured a cast of white-presenting models dancing to rapper Cardi B’s “I Like it.”
I KNOW @iamcardib would dog walk Piper and Scoot if she saw this pic.twitter.com/noPYc8OlS6
— Ky (@kybair) April 1, 2019
The video appears to have since been deleted from Instagram and the only evidence of it remains from a Twitter user who said she made a screen recording of the video from Piper & Scoot’s YouTube channel. Her original recording, which she shared with The Salt Lake Tribune, shows the video was titled “Piper & Scoot: Bridesmaid Collection 2019” but does not have the company’s branding.
Several commenters on the video posted on Twitter again asked where the women of color were, pointing out that they thought it was a poor choice to use a woman of color’s song in an advertisement that appeared to highlight no people of color.
“I just feel like these boutiques don’t really think about it,” Horton said. “They’re not out to attack. But there is importance in it.”
Piper & Scoot did not respond to requests for comment.
While Cuneo and Horton said it’s important for businesses to represent diverse groups, they also noted that there’s a difference between inclusion and tokenization, or a merely symbolic effort to be inclusive to members of minority groups.
Businesses can walk that line by hiring more than a single diverse model in their marketing campaigns, Cuneo said, to ensure their attempts feel authentic and not just like a box they were looking to check off.
Some organizations have also overcome obstacles to representing diverse groups in part by hiring diverse staff, according to Arul Mishra and Himanshu Mishra.
“Understanding how humans uniquely view themselves is not an easy task,” they said in an email. “Understanding it and then customizing the marketing efforts to customers takes commitment.”
Video: The Washington Post’s Editorial Board warns that President Trump will pursue cruel and legally questionable immigration policies even without his inept Homeland Security secretary. (The Washington Post)
Washington • “I have determined,” Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen wrote in her resignation letter Sunday night, “that it is the right time for me to step aside.”
And how did she come to this determination?
Well, maybe it was that her boss, the president, had just demanded her resignation and then tweeted news of her ouster to his nearly 60 million followers.
This was vintage Nielsen: boldly asserting the dubious in the face of the obvious. During her rocky tenure, she secured the homeland against facts and decency alike as she struggled in vain to suck up to President Trump and thereby keep her job.
It ended badly. It always does. Trump publicly mocked Attorney General Jeff Sessions before firing him. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was reportedly fired while sitting on the toilet. Trump changes Cabinet secretaries like suits and will soon have temporary appointees in half a dozen Cabinet-level jobs. An honest help-wanted ad for a Trump Cabinet position would go like this:
"Flailing administration seeks Cabinet secretary willing to sacrifice dignity for employer's vanity. No relevant experience needed. Successful candidate must be morally flexible. Familiarity with abusive personalities a plus. Willingness to be publicly humiliated required. Employee will be fired in about 12 months and thereafter be permanently unemployable. Non-disclosure agreement mandatory. Interested candidates should contact the prison warden."
Yet the 46-year-old Nielsen, who reportedly never supervised more than 15 people before taking over the 240,000-person department, thought she'd be different. And in a sense she was: Nobody debased herself quite as often as Nielsen did in her quest to keep the job, defending Trump after the "s---hole countries" and Charlottesville scandals, enduring frequent rebukes from Trump and leaks about her imminent firing, embracing his incendiary language and enduring his extralegal instincts, swallowing her moral misgivings to embrace the family-separation policy (while denying any such policy existed), and implausibly claiming that children weren't being put in cages. Excerpts from a hearing last month:
Lawmaker: "Are we still using cages for children?"
Nielsen: "Sir, we don't use cages. ..."
Lawmaker: "I've seen the cages. I just want you to admit that the cages exist."
Nielsen: "Sir, they're not cages. ..."
Another lawmaker: "What is a chain-link fence enclosed into a chamber on a concrete floor? ... Is that a cage?"
Nielsen: "It's a detention space."
By that time, Nielsen had already made her famous counterfactual assertion: "We do not have a policy of separating families at the border. Period." She later stood next to Trump as he signed an order rescinding the policy they supposedly didn't have.
When multiple witnesses described a meeting at which Trump said he wanted more immigrants from Norway and called Haiti and African nations "s---hole countries," Nielsen, who attended the meeting, said, "I don't recall him saying the exact phrase."
At a hearing, a senator asked her rhetorically, "Norway is a predominantly white country, isn't it?"
"I actually do not know that, sir," Nielsen replied, though allowing she could "imagine" that to be true.
Another thing Nielsen professed not to know: the conclusion by the U.S. intelligence community that Russia interfered in the 2016 elections to boost Trump. "I'm not aware of that," she said. At another point, she said she did not know how many children had been detained at the southern border. Yet another time, she declined to contradict Trump's false claim that there were "never so many apprehensions ever in our history" at the border as there are now.
So dedicated was Nielsen to avoiding any contradiction of Trump that she echoed his view that there were "very fine people" on both sides in Charlottesville. "I think what's important about that conversation is, it's not that one side is right, one side is wrong," Nielsen said of the white supremacists and counterdemonstrators.
No amount of public disgrace could deter her from serving the president's whims. During the family-separation imbroglio, she dined at a Mexican restaurant, where hecklers pounced. Nancy Pelosi called her actions "morally reprehensible." Even her high-school classmates called for her resignation.
The indignities piled up. Inside the White House, Stephen Miller, 33, and Jared Kushner, 38, reportedly agitated for her ouster. Trump let her twist in the wind, saying in November he'd make a decision about her "shortly." Nielsen redoubled her suck-up efforts.
A month ago, Politico reported success: Her relationship with Trump had "turned a corner," and "cabinet colleagues and Republican allies now describe her as a rising star" who has "managed to forge a stable relationship with Trump." Said one source: Everything "has totally calmed down."
Totally.
Follow Dana Milbank on Twitter, @Milbank.
It isn’t often that a person reads two commentaries in one edition of The Salt Lake Tribune that say clearly and indisputably what needs to be said. I had that experience April 5.
The commentary by Ron Molen, a retired architect, headlined, “How do reasonable people become gun zealots?” describes the "choke-hold" (my terminology) the NRA has on our Legislature.
And the commentary by Dr. Doug Douville, headlined “No good reasons for rejection of Medicaid,” clearly and factually disputes every reason members of the Legislature set forth for rejection of Medicaid.
I have a challenge for any legislator (good, bad or indifferent). Write a commentary editorial of approximately the same length in clear, precise and simple language disputing the above-mentioned columns explaining your side of the story. It is my sentiment that you cannot do it.
Julia J. Erickson, Salt Lake City
Utah starting center Jayce Johnson is in the NCAA transfer portal, ESPN and other outlets reported Tuesday.
The 7-foot center, who averaged 7.1 points and a team-high 7.7 rebounds this past season, is said to be weary of Larry Krystkowiak’s demanding style of coaching and would like a bigger offensive role, The Salt Lake Tribune has learned.
The move into the portal doesn’t necessarily mean Johnson will transfer, but enables other schools to contact him as he considers his options. Johnson’s teammates are encouraging him to stay at Utah, according to Alex Markham of Ute Nation on the Rivals network.
Krystkowiak is scheduled to do postseason media interviews later this week. Publicly, Krystkowiak praised Johnson’s attitude and effort at various times during the season. “He’s the easiest guy in the world for all of us to be cheering for,” he said in late January. “He may not be dazzling people right now with his offense, and we’d like to see those shots go in, but he’s really doing a hell of a job on the defensive end, rebounding and being a presence at the rim and he’s playing with a lot of energy. … If you respect the game and you’re focusing on those things, the offense will eventually come.”
Johnson’s departure would leave the Utes with three freshman post players in 2019-20: Lahat Thioune, who redshirted after breaking his foot in preseason practice; Branden Carlson, a returned missionary from Bingham High School; and 7-4 Matt Van Komen, of Pleasant Grove. Novak Topalovic backed up Johnson in 2018-19, as a senior.
Brandon Morley, who played in 16 games as a transfer from Salt Lake Community College, previously entered the transfer portal. So did guard Charles Jones Jr., who appeared in 27 games, having come from the College of Southern Idaho.
Johnson averaged 21.9 minutes, playing mostly as a starter in 29 games this past season as the Utes went 17-14. Due to an ankle injury, he missed Utah’s wins over USC and UCLA to conclude the regular season, but then played one of his better games in a loss to Oregon in the quarterfinals of the Pac-12 tournament. Johnson posted nine points, 12 rebounds and four blocked shots against the Ducks, who reached the NCAA Tournament’s Sweet 16.
The Southern California native’s other season highlights included 13 points and 13 rebounds in a win at USC and 17 points and 10 boards in a victory over Arizona at Huntsman Center. He also had 11 points and 13 rebounds in a home-court loss to Oregon.
Those breakout games partly illustrate Johnson’s offensive inconsistency, and the Pac-12 tournament game was a rare case of his providing much rim protection for a Ute defense that ranked in the bottom third of Division I in efficiency, according to the kenpom.com analytics.
Johnson took 5.0 field-goal attempts per game, almost all from close range, while shooting 59.7 percent. He shot only 40 percent from the free-throw line, missing opportunities to increase his scoring average.
Nearly 100 soldiers from Utah’s National Guard returned home Tuesday morning almost a year after deploying — and they were greeted by smiles, hugs and a few tears.
The state’s Echo Battery, 1st Battalion, 145th Field Artillery, nicknamed “Big Red," served a 10-month mission to the Middle East, providing security support and conducting artillery missions. They deployed last June. Capt. Jared Sorensen, commander of the group, said the job was “an opportunity to become better trained, better educated and stronger both physically and mentally.”
The guard members arrived at the air base in Salt Lake City just after 9 a.m. and were quickly surrounded by family and friends.
Ogden • The city of Ogden has been dropped from a federal lawsuit over a man’s death in the Weber County Jail.
The Standard-Examiner reported Monday that court papers filed last week indicate the city and an Ogden police officer were dismissed as defendants.
Litigation against Weber County will continue.
Michelle Shafer filed a lawsuit in Salt Lake City last year against the county, Ogden and several officers.
Ogden police arrested her son, Ashley Jessop, in February 2016 after a disturbance at an apartment complex.
He was hospitalized and died within the next week.
Shafer's suit had said the arresting officer and jail staff ignored Jessop's disclosure of feeling suicidal and being on psychiatric medication.
Acute kidney injury, liver disease and gastrointestinal bleeding were listed as causes of death.
