The White House wanted to “dump” the refugees on “sanctuary cities.” (Of course, this president forgets that he is the president of the United States, not just the president of Republicans, so he said he wanted to “dump” them on Democratic states.)

Of course, Utah would likely be considered a “Republican State” but, because Utah is truly a “family values state,” I’m pretty sure that, as a sanctuary-minded state, we would welcome these unfortunate people only seeking to make a better life for their families.

Holly Rio, Draper

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Paris • With its iconic cathedral scorched but still standing, France on Tuesday launched an investigation into what triggered the Notre Dame inferno and how a fire that had probably started by accident could gut the symbol of a nation.

As the smoke cleared from the sky Tuesday, it was almost possible to look head-on at the church — to see its carved statues and two rectangular bell towers — and imagine that all was intact. Much of the valuable art and relics had been saved. Even the exquisite stained glass windows remained in place, seemingly immune to the previous day’s flames.

But that belied the somber accounting of all that had been lost, and how the religious and architectural landmark at Paris’s center had been altered. The church’s trademark steeple, part of the Parisian skyline since the mid-1800s, had been swallowed in the flames. Char and smoke marks licked portions of the walls. And the roof — with its centuries-old wood — had been destroyed like tinder, leaving gaping holes that let sunlight shine into the cathedral Tuesday.

Officials warned that Notre Dame may still have gravely dangerous vulnerabilities, especially in the soaring vault. But a few government officials ventured inside, and camera footage showed charred rubble in front of the still-intact pews.

In an evening address to the nation, French President Emmanuel Macron described the firefighters as heroic and said he hoped the country would reconstruct Notre Dame within five years — a shorter timetable than that put forward by experts.

"We now have to get things done," Macron said. "We will act, and we will succeed."

He said the rebuilt cathedral would be "even more beautiful."

From around the world, more than $700 million in private donations poured in for reconstruction, while Parisians and tourists lined the banks of the Seine, bearing witness from a distance after police closed bridges that give access to the site.

France's interior minister said more than 500 firefighters had been mobilized Monday to help extinguish flames that had filled the sky with smoke. But questions remained about whether any warning signs had been missed.

Paris Prosecutor Rémy Heitz laid out a timeline in which an alarm went off at 6:20 p.m., but no evidence of fire was found. Only when a second alarm went off — 23 minutes later — was fire detected.

"In the meantime, the church was evacuated because a Mass just started a bit earlier," Heitz said.

A spokesman for the Paris prosecutor's office later clarified that it was church staffers, not firefighters, who looked into the initial alarm.

Patrick Chauvet, the Notre Dame rector, told French radio that the cathedral's "fire watchers" were on constant lookout and three times each day made "assessments" in the vulnerable area under the wooden roof.

"In terms of security, I doubt we could have done more," Chauvet said.

Buildings such as Notre Dame — full of hidden nooks and passages, and composed of ancient timber and other old materials — are seen by fire prevention experts as particularly risky, especially when they are under renovation. Stewart Kidd, a consultant on heritage buildings in Britain, said that in old structures, by the time flames become visible, "they may have been burning for an hour" in unseen spaces.

And when there is construction, Kidd said, "the building is exposed to all sorts of dangerous activity."

French officials said they do not suspect foul play. Heitz said there were no indications that the blaze was started deliberately. Investigators plan to interview people from the five companies that were doing renovation work at the site. Before the fire, part of the Gothic structure had been encased in scaffolding.

The Notre Dame cathedral was built over centuries, starting in 1163. It was partially consumed in just hours Monday, as thousands of Parisians and tourists stood sentinel, some singing "Ave Maria" and weeping at the sight.

"Parisians lose their lady," read one French headline. In Strasbourg, the city's great cathedral, also named Notre Dame, tolled its bell for 15 minutes Tuesday morning in solidarity.

There were no deaths in the Paris fire, but two police officers and one firefighter were injured, officials said.

Culture Minister Franck Riester said on French radio early Tuesday that much of the cathedral's art and artifacts had been saved. The 8,000-pipe grand organ survived the flames — though whether it had suffered water damage was still to be determined. Riester also confirmed that firefighters had rescued the church's two most hallowed relics: the crown of thorns said to have been worn by Jesus and a tunic of Saint Louis, a 13th-century French king.

The objects would be transferred from Paris City Hall to the Louvre Museum, Riester said.

"It was necessary to bring them out through the smoke," Paris Fire Commander Jean-Claude Gallet told BFMTV. He said firefighters rushed into the chamber of the cathedral at the height of the fire to make the rescue.

The cathedral's stained-glass rose windows, an ensemble that dates to the 12th and 13th centuries, are also most likely intact, said André Finot, a cathedral spokesman.

"It's a bit of a miracle. We're very relieved," he told BFMTV.

Vittorio Sgarbi, a Rome-based art historian, said that Notre Dame, even before the fire, had been an architectural mishmash — some parts original, but many parts added or replaced.

"This is going to be a fateful event in the story of a non-authentic building, a sort of laboratory," Sgarbi said.

Even as the fire still burned, France was making plans to rebuild the church. Experts predicted that reconstruction could take a decade or longer — in contrast to Macron's goal of five years.

The effort was supported by Pope Francis, who on Tuesday called the fire a "catastrophe" and described on Twitter a desire that the damage be "transformed into hope with reconstruction."

On Tuesday morning, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo floated the idea of an "international donor's conference" that would unite philanthropists and restoration experts in Paris to raise money for targeted purposes in rebuilding Notre Dame.

Many philanthropists needed little prompting. French luxury magnate François-Henri Pinault declared that his family would dedicate about $113 million to the effort. The family of Bernard Arnault, chief executive of the LVMH conglomerate and the richest man in Europe, pledged $226 million. The Bettencourt Meyers family behind L'Oreal matched that offer. Companies including Apple and the French oil giant Total also made pledges.

"I am not religious myself; I'm an atheist," said Charles Gosse, 23, a business school student who launched an online funding campaign and quickly raised $27,000. "But this is beyond religion. It is a national monument like the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe."

In their account of the fire and the rescue effort, firefighters told local media that after the first call came in, they had to get through rush-hour traffic clogging streets along the banks of the Seine.

The flames quickly spread from the top level of the nave, eating up one beam, then another, in a portion of the roof called "the forest" because each massive support was shaped from an entire tree. The 750-ton spire, which was originally constructed in the 13th century and rebuilt in the 19th out of oak covered with lead, toppled shortly before 8 p.m.

At the height of the battle against the blaze, which raged for about nine hours, firefighters trained 18 hoses on the church, according to local media accounts. They pumped water straight from the Seine, the grand river that traverses Paris and flows near Notre Dame.

A number of the people who came to see the building on Tuesday said their faith prompted them to come. France, though officially secular, remains predominantly Catholic, and even many nonbelievers are still baptized and married in churches.

"I've been a Parisian for 62 years," said city native Alix Constant, a medical secretary. "When I saw the images of the fire, I had the need to see it with my own eyes. And even more so because I'm a practicing Catholic."

Longtime Paris residents said they had a hard time comprehending the destruction.

"I'm a believer," said Carine Mazzoni, 48, a lawyer who said her son was confirmed at Notre Dame. "It's Easter week. It's a symbol of Paris and a Catholic symbol. It's the history of the world that's united in this building."

Birnbaum reported from Brussels. The Washington Post’s Griff Witte and Quentin Ariès in Paris and Stefano Pitrelli in Rome contributed to this report.

Utah basketball coach Larry Krystkowiak is adding to his staff by hiring a charter member of the Assistant Coaches Hall of Fame.

Donny Daniels, who spent 11 years as a Utah assistant to the late Rick Majerus, is stepping down from full-time coaching at Gonzaga after nine seasons. He will become Utah’s director of basketball operations in a move toward retirement, he told The Spokesman-Review of Spokane, Wash.

Daniels, 64, said he didn’t know when he would start working at Utah. The school has not announced the hiring, leaving questions about his exact title and whether a new position is being created for Daniels, as sources say might be the case.

Otherwise, Daniels in essence would replace DeMarlo Slocum, who moved to UNLV last week after working at Utah as an assistant coach for all of Krystkowiak’s eight seasons. And in that scenario, Daniels’ arrival would mean a move for Chris Jones into full-time coaching. By NCAA rules, the director of basketball operations is not allowed to recruit off-campus or have direct contact with players during practices or games. A promotion would enable Jones to coach his son, Olympus High School guard Rylan Jones, who’s joining the program this summer.

Daniels, however, would be allowed to counsel Utah’s players off the court. That’s an important role, especially with his extensive background in basketball. The director of basketball operations also can sit on the bench and advise coaches during games.

“It’s almost like the perfect transition,” Daniels said. “I’ll basically be another set of eyes. I was very comfortable retiring and and not doing anything until about a month ago when this opportunity came up.”

Daniels spent 1990-2000 at Utah, including the Final Four season of 1998, before becoming Cal State Fullerton’s head coach. Jones and Ute assistant coach Tommy Connor played for Utah in that period.

As an assistant at UCLA and Gonzaga, Daniels appeared in four more Final Fours. Daniels has made 12 trips to the NCAA Tournament’s Sweet 16, including this past season when the Bulldogs played in the first and second rounds at Vivint Smart Home Arena. Daniels will be among 12 inductees into the Assistant Coaches Hall of Fame next month in Atlanta.

Daniels’ son, Eric, is a Utah Valley University assistant coach. His future is undetermined, with UVU coach Mark Pope having moved to BYU and Mark Madsen being hired as Pope’s replacement.

This story will be updated.

Denver • Dropping her kids off at school used to be the hardest part of Kacey Ruegsegger Johnson’s day. She would cry most mornings as they left the car and relied on texted photos from their teachers to make it through the day.

Now, the mother of four — and Columbine shooting survivor — sees mornings as an opportunity. She wakes early, makes breakfast and strives to send a clear message before her kids leave home: I adore you.

Twenty years after teenage gunmen attacked Columbine High School, Ruegsegger Johnson and other alumni of the Littleton, Colorado, school have become parents. The emotional toll of the shooting that killed 12 classmates and a teacher has been amplified by fears about their own kids’ safety, spiking each time yet another shooter enters yet another school.

"I'm grateful I have the chance to be a mom. I know some of my classmates weren't given that opportunity," Ruegsegger Johnson said, tears springing to her eyes. "There are parts of the world I wish our kids never had to know about. I wish that there would never be a day I had to tell them the things I've been through."

As the survivors of Columbine entered adulthood, they watched the attacks at their school and so many others — Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, Parkland — alter the American classroom.

Drills teaching students to "lock down" inside classrooms became routine. Schools formed teams to assess threats, particularly from students. Security firms forged a multibillion-dollar industry, introducing surveillance video, panic buttons and upgraded doors and locks. And police changed their strategies for responding to a gunman intent only on killing.

Security measures came into play just days before the 20th anniversary of the massacre, when a possible threat Tuesday locked down Columbine and other Denver-area high schools. All students were safe and left their classes, officials later said, adding that the lockdowns were tied to an FBI investigation but didn't provide details.

Some of the Columbine survivors find comfort in students being shielded by high fences or locked doors. Others find themselves frustrated by the ready acceptance of active-shooter drills in schools.

Now, many of these students-turned-parents grapple with crippling fear dwarfing pride as their children walk into their own schools.

Ruegsegger Johnson has developed her own ritual for the school drop-off. On a recent sunny spring morning, she helped her kids find their book bags and tie their shoes before ushering them to the car. She prayed aloud as they neared the school, giving thanks for a beautiful morning and asking for a day of learning and friendship.

As always, she made a silent addition: Keep them safe.

___

The prospect of Amy Over's 13-year-old daughter starting high school could have triggered a panic attack in the not-too-distant past. But now she's focused on helping the girl prepare for the unexpected.

She coaches her daughter when she ventures to places outside her mom's control: Where is the closest exit? What street are you on? Who is around you?

"I never want my kids to feel an ounce of pain, the way that I felt pain," Over said. "I know that that's something that I can't control. And I think that's hard on me."

Over was in the Columbine cafeteria when the gunmen approached the school, targeting students eating lunch outside. She escaped with no physical injuries, but has struggled emotionally for years.

Therapy and family support helped. But waving goodbye to her daughter on the first day of preschool triggered a panic attack — the first of many. She was diagnosed with chronic panic disorder, resumed therapy and found new strategies for her life as a mother of two.

Over's daughter, Brie, was 11 when her mother first told her about Columbine, a few days before the anniversary. That April 20, they visited the school for a memorial ceremony that included a reading of the names of the 13 people killed. Afterward, the Overs walked together through the quiet school.

Here is where she hid in the cafeteria, Amy Over showed her daughter. And that is the staircase where she last saw her basketball coach, Dave Sanders, who died in a classroom awaiting rescue after valiantly trying to help evacuate the school.

For Over, opening up to her daughter was cathartic and so they have continued to attend annual memorial events, now imbued with a gentler tone with the girl by her side.

"It's a day of reflection," Over said. "It's a day of love and hope. And I get to share that with my daughter."

___

Though it sometimes seems mass shootings inside schools are a commonplace occurrence, they are relatively rare, and statistics show the number has not substantially increased since 2000.

But that is of little consolation to a swath of American parents. About 2 in 10 parents said they are not at all or not very confident in their children's safety while at school, while a third of parents are very or extremely confident, according to a March survey by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Austin Eubanks, who survived being shot in the Columbine library, is among those who doesn't fear the schools his sons, ages 13 and 9, attend.

Instead, he laments that active-shooter drills, video surveillance and armed guards are all too routine for them — as natural as a tornado drill was for him growing up in Oklahoma.

"We are so unwilling to actually make meaningful progress on eradicating the issue," said Eubanks, who remains scarred by watching his best friend, Corey DePooter, die. "So we're just going to focus on teaching kids to hide better, regardless of the emotional impact that that bears on their life. To me, that's pretty sad."

Isolation, depression, addiction and suicide are among the larger dangers he sees facing his kids' generation, and he knows firsthand the damage those can cause.

For more than a decade after the attack, Eubanks was addicted to prescription pain medication. He got sober in 2011 and began repairing his family, including his relationship with his sons and their mother. He works at an addiction treatment facility and travels the country telling his story.

At home in Colorado, he tries to help his sons become attuned to pain others may be feeling. He encourages them to talk to an adult when peers seem so angry or afraid that they may need help. He tries to remember that — for them — all of the changes in schools are just normal.

He was horrified by videos that Marjory Stoneman Douglas students shot in Parkland, Florida, as they hid inside a classroom while a gunman moved through the halls of the high school. He has urged his own boys to always try to escape first — whatever it takes — even if the drills advise staying put.

"These are my children, and what I care about most is their safety," he said. "And I know that for them, in a situation like that, getting away from it as quickly as possible is the best likelihood of success."

___

When Kacey Ruegsegger Johnson's daughter Mallory was 8, a classmate saw her mom on a Denver news station. Mallory had a question: Was her mother famous?

Ruegsegger Johnson knew it was time for the conversation she and her husband had anticipated for years. During a family vacation, she pulled her oldest daughter aside for a private talk — the one that finally explained the scars marking Ruegsegger Johnson's right shoulder and why she was unable to reach up toward high shelves or use her right arm to lift the kids.

In 1999, Kacey Ruegsegger was reading a magazine in the school library when a teacher entered, shouting that someone had a gun. The junior crouched under a computer desk, pulling a chair in front of her body. She felt well-hidden, but the shooters' taunting voices and the sound of gunshots grew louder and got closer. Then one of the gunmen leaned down and fired a shotgun at her.

The blast shredded her right shoulder. She tried not to move or cry out, praying the shooter would believe she was dead and walk away. When the pair left the library, other students helped her flee.

For the last 20 years, she has lived with post-traumatic stress disorder, along with physical pain. She worked as a nurse until the injuries to her arm forced her to stop.

Ruegsegger Johnson was thrilled to become a mother, but struggled to leave her infant daughter at daycare during church services. She considered home schooling, terrified that sending her children into a school was akin to exposing them to danger.

Leaning on her religious faith and family support, she worked hard to push the terror down as her children got older. She avoided media coverage of school violence and became a resource for other survivors of shootings. She grew tired of living in fear and unwilling to let her past affect her kids' experience.

Though she still struggles occasionally, she resolved to make mornings before school a positive time, focused on building her children up. And she finds at least some comfort in their school's evacuation plans and security measures. She told her children that lockdown drills were like fire drills — practice to keep them safe from an unlikely danger.

But when Mallory confessed to feeling afraid that "a bad person" could still find her in the evacuation location used during one drill, Ruegsegger Johnson flashed back to herself crouched under that computer desk in the Columbine library.

"The bad guys found me, and I thought I had a really great hiding spot," she said. "So what am I going to say to a little girl who has that same fear that the bad guy might find her? It was a really hard moment for me."

Breed reported from Cary, North Carolina. Associated Press researcher Jennifer Farrar in New York and writer Reese Dunklin in Dallas contributed to this report.

Happy Wednesday! President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign raised $30 million during the first three months of the year, getting off to a fast fundraising start while his potential Democratic rivals stockpile cash for a long and expensive primary. Trump now has more than $40 million in the bank to seek a second term. [Politico]

Topping the news: Utah Rep. Ben McAdams raised $300,000 in the first three months of the year but Rep. Rob Bishop raised nothing as he doesn’t plan to seek re-election. [Trib]

-> A new study released by Business Roundtable shows that one out of every five jobs in Utah are supported by international trade and that the state’s exports to Mexico and Canada increased by 378 percent since the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect. [Trib]

-> While digging their heels in against SB54, a divisive issue for Utah’s GOP, Davis County Republicans chose a group of moderate, self-defined “bridge builders,” to represent them in the state central committee. [Trib]

Tweets of the day: From: @MadelainePisani: “'As Amy Walter ... put it, reporters talking about polls are a lot like preteens talking about sex.' Walter: ‘They know all the words. They talk about it a lot. But they have no idea what they’re talking about.' @amyewalter is a national treasure."

-> From @MountainFarmer: “Love it. I know we need the rain, but if only it would let up a bit to get some work in the fields done!! #UtahFarmLife.”

Happy Birthday: to former gubernatorial spokesman Marty Carpenter, attorney Randy Dryer and Taylorsville Mayor Kristie Overson.

In other news: Gov. Gary Herbert has appointed Kerry Gibson, a former Republican lawmaker and the current deputy director for the Utah Department of Natural Resources, as commissioner for the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food. [Trib]

-> Ogden and Saint George are the latest cities in Utah to join the e-scooter craze that has -- until recently -- been centralized mostly in Salt Lake City. [Trib]

-> Robert Gehrke says Sen. Elizabeth Warren won’t be the last presidential hopeful to visit Utah thanks to the state joining others for a primary on Super Tuesday 2020. [Trib]

-> Pat Bagley offers his take on President Trump. [Trib]

-> Sen. Mitt Romney sponsored a bill that would help facilitate the provision of running water to a number of families in the Navajo Nation. [DNews]

-> Utah Senate President Stuart Adams, R-Layton, led a mock Senate that allowed third graders of At Windridge Elementary School to learn about the state lawmaking process. [DNews]

-> Environmentalist groups in Utah are not satisfied with lawmakers’ solutions to regional haze, saying the latest measure is nothing more than a reenactment of previous legislation that was rejected by the Environmental Protection Agency. [Fox13]

Nationally: In the second veto of his presidency, Donald Trump blocks legislation that would have put an end to U.S. support for the Saudi-lead military campaign in Yemen. [WaPost][NYTimes]

-> Campaign finance reports show freshmen House Democrats are making early fundraising efforts to protect their seats. [Politico]

-> A decision made by Attorney General William Barr will block asylum seekers from posting bail while awaiting for their claims to be processed, a move that could cause them to remain detained for months or even years. [WaPost]

-> The Justice Department continued to investigate Wikileaks even after secretly indicting the group’s founder Julian Assange. [NYTimes]

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

-- Thomas Burr and Christina Giardinelli

Phoenix • President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed a plan to cut back on the use of water from the Colorado River, which serves 40 million people in the U.S. West.

The Colorado River drought contingency plan aims to keep two key reservoirs, Lakes Powell and Mead, from falling so low they cannot deliver water or produce hydropower. It was negotiated among the seven states that draw water from the river.

Mexico also agreed to store water in Lake Mead on the Arizona-Nevada border if the U.S. legislation was approved by April 22.

The legislation was supported by all 14 senators from the Colorado River basin states, though Trump announced his action in a tweet that singled out Arizona Republican Sen. Martha McSally, who is in a tough fight for re-election next year.

“Thanks to @SenMcSallyAZ for getting it done,” Trump wrote. “Big deal for Arizona!”

Just signed a critical bill to formalize drought contingency plans for the Colorado River. Thanks to @SenMcSallyAZ for getting it done. Big deal for Arizona!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 16, 2019

Arizona has the lowest-priority access to Colorado River water and will be hit hardest. The state negotiated a separate agreement to provide other water sources and new groundwater infrastructure for farmers in Pinal County between Phoenix and Tucson.

Arizona and Nevada agreed to keep water in Lake Mead when it falls to certain levels. The cuts eventually would loop in California if the reservoir drops far enough.

The Metropolitan Water District, which supplies drinking water to millions in Southern California, agreed to shoulder California's share of cutbacks if they're needed. That pledge cut out the Imperial Irrigation District, which has the largest entitlement to Colorado River water and had said it would only participate in the arrangement if it secured money to resolve environmental problems at the shrinking Salton Sea.

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, celebrated the approval as "a monumental, bipartisan achievement."

State water managers and federal officials have cited a prolonged drought, climate change and increasing demand for the river's flows as reasons to cut back on water usage.

The drought plan calls for cutbacks through 2026. The states are scheduled to begin negotiations soon over even more severe cuts to deal with a long-term shortage in water on the Colorado River.

Calls to Utah’s suicide hotline and other crisis services continue to increase, but state funding hasn’t grown to match the demand — and it’s creating concern for how long counselors will be able to staff the phones, according to a critical audit released Wednesday.

The new report from the Office of the Legislative Auditor General found that the biggest mental health resources in the state, which are offered through the University of Utah, are now operating at a $1 million deficit. That includes a 24-hour lifeline that gets more than 5,000 calls a month and the SafeUT app that puts students in touch with trained therapists. Both are anticipated to get even more use over the next year.

“The volume growth will likely go beyond our ability to keep up,” wrote Ross VanVranken, executive director of the U.’s Neuropsychiatric Institute, in a response to the audit.

By 2020, without more money and more employees, the report estimates the crisis programs will be $3 million in the red while answers to calls could lag and some people might have to redial to get through. A delay in response could potentially stop someone from seeking help.

That’s particularly troubling for Utah, as the audit points out, where the suicide rate has risen 34% over the past decade to be the fifth-highest in the nation.

Right now the crisis services are housed under the university’s neuropsychiatric institute. In addition to running a statewide number for the national suicide prevention hotline — the only place in Utah to do so — the facility also staffs the Salt Lake County lifeline, answers a warm line that helps people with less acute concerns but who need someone to listen, provides outreach teams to go out into the community for in-person intervention, and runs a 162-bed inpatient hospital that is “generally at or over capacity.”

The operations fall under the University of Utah’s massive health care system — which absorbs some of the financial loss. But it’s not necessarily a sustainable model, according to the audit.

It cost $99 million to run and staff all of those crisis programs in the last fiscal year. That’s up nearly $20 million from even two years ago because of the growing need.

The U.’s health care network is covering roughly $8 million a year in IT and human resources expenses. And it’s paying off a $37 million bond that remains after expanding the hospital by 72 beds in 2014.

Community partners — including state appropriations, Salt Lake County and the Utah Division of Substance Abuse and Mental Health — contribute about $6 million combined each year.

Still, the crisis resources are falling short of meeting their expenses at the same time the demand is increasing.

“The workload for crisis center services continues to increase,” said Wayne Kidd, the audit supervisor, during a meeting at the Legislature on Wednesday to discuss the findings. “But there are future funding concerns.”

VanVranken responded: “Whether we can fund it all is always going to be the question.

“How do you hire enough people to stay in front of this? You can’t have a crisis center where no one answers the phone.”

The Salt Lake Tribune will update this developing story.

For all the pageantry associated with horse racing, there is a dark side.

Sometimes it comes when accidents on the track hurt or even kill jockeys and horses. Cruel realities also arrive for horses that aren’t good enough for racing, or whose owners decide the animals are no longer worth the investment.

For 25 thoroughbreds recently sold to a facility in Texas for eventual slaughter, presumably in Mexico, it looked like the finish line. Then, on Tuesday, the farm that bred the horses announced it had bought the animals from the facility and would be sending them to a ranch near Duchesne.

UPDATE 4.16.19 at 11 am pic.twitter.com/iqT6LgSOxh

— Barton Thoroughbreds (@_teambarton) April 16, 2019

How the horses arrived in Texas is unclear. The horses were bred by Barton Thoroughbreds, based in Santa Ynez, Calif., and with a ranch in Duchesne. In a tweet Tuesday, Barton said it originally had sold the horses to a trainer called Running Horse LLC. Neither representatives there nor at Barton immediately returned messages seeking comment Wednesday.

It’s illegal to slaughter horses in the United States. However, livestock brokers with a permit from the the U.S. Department of Agriculture can ship an allotted amount of horses to slaughter houses in Canada and Mexico.

The 25 Barton-bred horses were at one such farm, Kaufman Kill Pen in Texas. It posts photos of horses on its Facebook page every day, giving people a chance to buy and adopt the horses before they can go to slaughter.

Margaret Ransom, a freelance horse racing writer in Pasadena, Calif., said in a phone interview Wednesday that a friend on Monday night saw the 25 thoroughbreds on the Kaufman Kill Pen page. Registration papers were also posted to demonstrate that the horses were thoroughbreds and showing they had been bred by Barton.

The thoroughbred racing industry finances rescue operations for former race horses and breeding stock. Ransom said Kaufman Kill Pen tends to demonstrate which horses are thoroughbreds because it knows people in the industry or racing fans will pay to prevent slaughtering.

“We won’t put up with it," Ransom said Wednesday. "You cannot dump horses. Period.”

Ransom said she decided to post about the horses on social media. Word apparently spread to Barton. In a series of tweets Monday, it acknowledged becoming aware of its former stock at Kaufman Kill Pen. By late Tuesday morning in California, Barton tweeted that it was repurchasing the horses and sending them to Duchesne.

(1/2): It has just come to our attention that horses we bred are at lot in Texas. All of these horses were sold privately in California, for which we have signed Bills of Sale. We are investigating this situation as to how they got there, and what we need to do to get them out...

— Barton Thoroughbreds (@_teambarton) April 16, 2019

It’s unclear what will happen to the horses once they reach Duchesne. Barton promotes itself as a breeder, not a trainer, of race horses.

Photos of the Barton-bred horses were not on the Facebook page for Kaufman Kill Pen on Wednesday. A man who answered the phone there said he didn’t know anything about Barton or Running Horse.

It's certainly possible that the news media will do a nuanced, accurate job Thursday of helping citizens understand the redacted version of the Mueller report.

It's possible they will do a better job than many of them did with their credulous and misleading coverage of Attorney General William Barr's letter on the report last month in which they failed to adequately challenge President Donald Trump's false claim of being completely exonerated.

But don’t count on it — especially on live cable news in the initial burst of coverage but also as print news organizations and the broadcast networks struggle to get something up immediately on websites and on social media.

"The DNA of news is to find a coherent story with a single, clear headline," said Frank Sesno, director of George Washington University's media school, and the former Washington bureau chief of CNN.

"This is a case where the media will have to fight their own DNA," he told me, to get across the complexity at the heart of the report by special counsel Robert Mueller III.

He had two strong suggestions for those running the live-media show.

"Put the reporters up front and put the opinionators to the side for a good long while," he said.

And divvy up the report into areas with designated teams of journalists on each — for example, the famous Trump Tower meeting, the issue of possible obstruction of justice by President Trump, and key players such as Donald Trump Jr.

Even so, the partisan spin is going to come fast and furious, and it will be difficult to resist, said another longtime Washington observer and journalist.

“This is a Washington set piece, with the rhetorical infrastructure being set up in advance by the various actors — they’re going to be flooding the zone, ready to spin, and the press has to figure out how to cover that, too,” said Tom Rosenstiel, executive director of the American Press Institute.

Making matters worse, the report is said to be nearly 400 pages long, and is likely to contain heavy redactions of sensitive material.

That’s why it will be important for journalists, in the initial reporting, to be open with their audiences or readers about what they don’t know — to say, in essence, “we just got this and we are reading it in real time and trying to figure it out.”

Transparency (we're just making sense of this) and humility (we really don't know what the bottom line is yet) will be crucial elements.

No matter what, the early coverage won't be great journalism. It will be more like mad scrambling and reading-while-reporting.

Then, of course, there's the Trump factor. When Barr's letter was released, the president was quick to claim that it proved he had been fully exonerated, not only on claims that he had colluded with Russian officials during the 2016 campaign but that he did not attempt to obstruct justice afterward.

His claim ignored that Barr's letter explicitly said that Mueller had not exonerated him on obstruction of justice charges.

Plenty of media figures and news organizations picked up Trump’s spin and ran with it — at least at first. Cooler heads — and more-nuanced reporting — eventually prevailed. But by then, the story line had been set.

Not that the public bought it. In fact, most Americans said they wouldn't make their minds up until the complete report was out. And only a third of Americans, according to an NPR/PBS/Marist poll, said they thought Mueller had cleared the president of wrongdoing.

That put ordinary citizens in the position of being more skeptical — appropriately so — than many in the news media. (At least in the early reporting.)

Now, the press gets a chance to try again and to apply the lessons of last month.

One of the trickiest elements, of course, is that the report will have some information blacked out. That, too, needs to be part of the reporting.

An early responsibility will be to report not only what Barr released but also to get a sense of what he didn’t reveal — what was redacted — and what the legal or political implications of that might be: Were the redactions necessary for national-security reasons or were they meant to protect the president politically?

They'll have to dig that out.

Most of all, news organizations should resist the temptation to let pundits and politicians who haven't read the report become instant, would-be experts on it.

This assumes, of course, that most news consumers really want the straight story. That may be assuming too much, given the polarizing subject matter - and the media organizations that have played to that division for many months.

No matter what the report says, it's doubtful that Fox News and MSNBC will present it as recognizably the same.

"A lot of people will want a rendering that helps who they think the good guys are," Rosenstiel said.

It won't be long before what's being discussed and spun is nothing but "a pale imitation" of the report itself, he said.

But in the early hours, a lot of Americans will want a clear and impartial sense of the long-awaited report.

The news media need to provide that if they can.

And, if they can’t, they shouldn’t be afraid to say so, and to say why.

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

@sulliview

A coalition of environmental groups is suing the Trump administration to halt a coal mining lease near Bryce Canyon National Park.

Alton Coal Development Co. is seeking to increase its coal output eightfold under its recent federal lease of 3,581 acres about 10 miles west of Bryce Canyon. This lease contains up 40 million tons of recoverable coal adjacent to Alton’s existing Coal Hollow strip mine.

But the lawsuit, filed Tuesday by Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment and several other groups, asserts federal officials violated environmental regulations by approving the lease without considering the impact of the eventual burning of the coal itself.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management "failed to adequately analyze and disclose the indirect and cumulative environmental impacts of mercury and other pollutants emitted from burning coal that will be mined," or the resultant greenhouse gas emissions, the lawsuits states.

The Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the National Parks Conservation Association, the Grand Canyon Trust and WildEarth Guardians also are plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

The complaint states the mining and the subsequent burning of the coal will force recreationists to breathe polluted air, impair visibility at scenic spots, and increase industrial traffic on the roads near Bryce.

Expanded coal mining there, the lawsuit states, “irreparably harms plaintiffs’ health, recreational, economic, professional and aesthetic interests ... because it will destroy wildlife habitat and vegetation, increase particulate and other air emissions, increase truck traffic, and cause other impacts that will degrade enjoyment of the affected areas."

The U.S. Department of the Interior declined to comment on the lawsuit, The Associated Press reported.

Lima, Peru • Former Peruvian President Alan García died Wednesday after shooting himself in the head moments after police attempted to detain him amid corruption allegations in Latin America’s largest graft probe.

President Martin Vizcarra announced on Twitter that García died after undergoing emergency surgery hours earlier. Doctors at the José Casimiro Ulloa Hospital in the capital city of Lima said they provided cardiac resuscitation three times while trying to save his life.

"Distraught over the death of ex-President Alan García," Vizcarra wrote. "I send my condolences to his family and loved ones."

The shocking end for the man who twice ruled Peru but more recently was ensnared in the Odebrecht corruption scandal comes amid national upheaval over endemic corruption involving nearly every former living president.

García repeatedly professed his innocence and said he was the victim of false testimony by political enemies who accused him of taking more than $100,000 from the Brazilian construction giant. Odebrecht admitted in a 2016 plea agreement with the U.S. Justice Department that it paid nearly $800 million throughout Latin America in exchange for lucrative public works contracts.

The 69-year-old former head of state's attorney accused authorities Wednesday of neglecting to provide García information on why he was being detained or show their official identifications when they showed up to arrest him.

"The president, upset over this situation, knowing his absolute innocence ... had this terrible accident," attorney Erasmo Reyna said.

Interior Minister Carlos Morán said police found García on the second floor of his home when they arrived. He asked for a moment to call his lawyer, entering a bedroom of the leafy mansion in Miraflores and closing the door behind him.

"Minutes later the sound of gunfire was heard," Morán said. "Police forced their way into the room and found him."

He was immediately transported to the hospital, arriving at 6:45 a.m. local time. A team of doctors, some called from outside hospitals, began operating at 7:10 a.m., according to Peru's health ministry.

"The situation is very critical," Health Minister Zulema Tomás said shortly after the incident. "It's grave."

The stunning turn of events comes four months after García tried to seek asylum in Uruguay as prosecutors in Peru investigated allegations he illegally took payments from Odebrecht. He remained there for a little more than two weeks before having his request denied. In rejecting his claim, the South American nation's embassy said there was no evidence to support García's contention that he was being targeted politically.

"In Peru, the three branches of government function freely and autonomously, especially in the case of judicial power," Uruguayan President Tabaré Vázquez said.

Peru has gone further than any other country outside Brazil in prosecuting politicians tied to the Odebrecht probe. All but one living former head of state is being investigated for corruption tied to the scandal.

Just last week, former President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski was also detained for alleged money laundering tied to the probe. Congressional allies said he was taken Tuesday night to a local clinic with high blood pressure.

On Wednesday, Alberto Quintanilla, a congressman from the left-leaning political party Nuevo Peru, expressed solidarity with the family of García and said that he hoped officials "would advance knowledge of the truth" through their investigations, but also respect due process.

García was a populist firebrand whose erratic first presidency in the 1980s was marked by hyperinflation, rampant corruption and the rise of the Shining Path guerrilla movement.

When he returned to power two decades later he ran a more conservative government, helping usher in a commodities-led investment boom in which Odebrecht played a major supporting role.

A judicial order obtained by The Associated Press shows Judge Juan Sanchez ordered authorities to arrest García and search for documents in his home related to money laundering allegations.

Prosecutors suspect the former president received more than $100,000 from Odebrecht, disguised as a payment to speak at a conference in Brazil.

NBC Universal and the LA Olympics are going into business together, combining to package commercial time on all the network’s platforms with opportunities to sponsor the American team through 2028.

The deal is for contracts covering 2021 through 2028, the year the Summer Games return to the United States for the first time in 32 years.

NBC paid $7.75 billion for rights to broadcast the Olympics from 2022 through 2032, while the group organizing the 2028 Los Angeles Games has taken over the U.S. Olympic Committee's marketing arm through those Olympics.

LA 2028 chairman Casey Wasserman said the new arrangement provides "simplicity and clarity and consistency in a market that provides very little of it in any medium."

Part of LA 2028's agreement with the USOC was that it would provide the federation $488 million from 2021 through 2028 in exchange for essentially taking over Olympic marketing in the United States through the Los Angeles Games.

The deal with NBC provides the organizing committee a chance to "de-risk" — Wasserman's word — some of its obligations to the city, the USOC and the International Olympic Committee by entering sponsorship deals that will presumably become more valuable because they'll include ad time on NBC's Olympic-based shows.

It also eliminates one of the gripes some Team USA sponsors had in the past: that signing on with the USOC did not guarantee them opportunity to place ads on NBC's coverage of the Olympics.

The network, meanwhile, could find ways through the deal to reach new sponsors and offer more value in a changing media climate. In 1996, NBC aired 171 hours of the Atlanta Games on a single network. In 2016, NBC offered 6,755 hours of coverage via live-streaming and 11 networks that aired 2,084 hours.

"Together, we're building what's never been available before — the chance to be an exclusive partner of a monumental global movement for the next decade," said Linda Yaccarino, NBC Universal's chair of ad sales and client partnerships.

In 1984, Peter Ueberroth led an LA Games that showed how a city could leverage marketing opportunities, which in turn helped transform the Olympics into the colossus they are today. Wasserman, who has been in the business of sports and entertainment marketing for decades, said he was looking to help Los Angeles again reimagine the Olympic blueprint.

“I get paid to do this every day at my job,” he said. “This was a unique opportunity to enact a business structure that, frankly, the marketplace was asking for.”

Utah’s gymnastics team seems to have had some bad luck all the way around in its placement for the NCAA Championships as not only are the Utes in the most difficult session, but they are stuck with a rotation that has them starting on the floor.

But the Utes are more positive about their fate than things might seem on paper, particularly when it comes to their rotation for Friday’s competition at the NCAA Championships in Fort Worth.

The Utes will start on floor, the same rotation they had at the NCAA regionals the second night, when they scored a 197.25 and nearly knocked off host LSU.

It’s common for teams to struggle when they open on floor, particularly if they are one of the power teams such as the Utes that do well with the adrenalin-driven events.

But Utah did a solid job of starting strong the second night of the regionals and scored a 49.375 to open on floor, their second-highest score other than vault (49.425).

Just as importantly, the Utes finished well on the balance beam, scoring 49.375, as they showed no nerves being under pressure.

Utah coach Megan Marsden hopes her team can produce a similar effort at the NCAA Championships when the Utes take on UCLA, Michigan and LSU.

The top two teams advance to the finals on Saturday.

“The good news is we have practiced this rotation,” Marsden said. “At regionals the place was filled with LSU fans and we did better with the shotgun start. The girls didn’t have a problem with it at regionals and we will be prepared for it.”

Marsden questions more how the lack of byes will affect teams. The byes were known as the X-factor in the championships because they could either squash momentum or give teams a chance to regroup if needed.

Now that they are eliminated since there are just four teams competing, Marsden wonders how teams will compete without the breaks.

She liked the flow her team had at regionals without the byes. The worst were the times the Utes had to end on a bye and couldn’t be on the floor in the final rotation, when it seemed it was so important to be out there.

“We haven’t experienced how this new format is going to affect things, but being in the Super Six and being in the locker room sometimes, that was a real bummer,” she said.

The Utes are confident in starting on floor too because of their lineup. Their floor lineup starts with two seasoned veterans, Macey Roberts then Kari Lee, seniors accustomed to pressure and who know the importance of a strong start.

“Macey takes great pride in that role,” Marsden said. “She works hard to nail that set and her first floor pass has a lot of difficulty so it is a great start for us.”

The Utes end their floor rotation with their one-two punch of MaKenna Merrell-Giles and MyKayla Skinner. They know their routines could be the propellant that drives the Utes for the rest of the meet, especially since there aren’t any byes.

Skinner said she is ready for that challenge.

“I didn’t mind the byes, because you could just go chill in the room and go attack it again, but I do feel like it makes gymnastics more fun when the teams are all competing at once neck and neck,” she said. “It can bring out the best in everybody and having eight teams with four in the finals only makes it harder. It’s going to come down to who is ready to play.”

Alden Global Capital, a prominent hedge fund that controls more than 100 local newspapers, moved nearly $250 million of employee pension savings into its own accounts in recent years, an unusual move that is now triggering federal scrutiny.

The hedge fund, which is the controlling owner of such newspapers as the Denver Post and Boston Herald under the brand MediaNews Group, in some cases moved 90 percent of retirees' savings into two funds it controlled, according to public records filed with the Labor Department. Most of the money has now been moved back out of the hedge funds.

Federal law generally requires that pension managers avoid conflicts of interest and avoid taking excessive risks with the assets they manage, experts said, though some exemptions are allowed.

Alden is being investigated by the Department of Labor for management of its pensions, a hedge fund spokesman confirmed. The specific nature of the investigation is unclear, but one person familiar with the agency's inquiry, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is confidential, said the department issued subpoenas to Alden and its partners last year.

The inquiry could become a factor in Alden’s effort to acquire what is now the nation’s largest chain of daily newspapers, Gannett, including USA Today, as at least one prominent lawmaker raises questions about how it would manage the company’s pensions. Alden has faced criticism for its stewardship of local newspapers the company has purchased. Research shows it cuts jobs more rapidly than other owners.

Its subsidiary MediaNews Group, formerly known as Digital First Media, buys newspapers, often reduces jobs and sells off the buildings. For three months, MediaNews Group has been trying to acquire McLean, Virginia-based Gannett and its more than 100 newspapers.

A spokesman for MediaNews Group, Hugh Burns, confirmed the Labor Department's investigation and issued a statement denying any violations of the federal law protecting private pension holders, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA).

"MNG believes that Alden's management of the pension plan assets for which it provided management services has at all times complied with all legal requirements, including ERISA," he said in a statement.

He said that Alden routinely manages pension money for clients, that the funds performed well during the time they were invested with Alden and that less than 1 percent of money in MNG pensions now remains with Alden funds.

"In 2017, consistent with its return of other outside capital, Alden began winding down its management of these pension plan assets, making regular cash distributions to the MNG pension plan investors," he said.

Burns said Alden did not accept any fees for its work on MNG pensions.

Heath Freeman, Alden's president, did not respond to a request for comment. A Labor Department spokesman declined to comment. Aon, the firm that provided actuarial services for the pensions, and Prudential Retirement, which serves as trustee and manager, both declined to comment.

ERISA, which was passed into law in 1974, requires that pensions be invested solely on behalf of retirees and not in a way that could benefit the pension managers themselves.

The law also requires that the managers be "prudent" in making investments according to the statute's language, generally by diversifying funds to minimize the risk of large losses.

Experts say Alden may have run afoul of either or both of those requirements by investing large majorities of pensions in hedge funds that it controlled.

Beginning in 2013, public records show that 90 percent or more of some MediaNews Group pensions was invested in two Alden funds based in the Cayman Islands. At the San Jose Mercury News (now the Mercury News) $107 million out of the pension's $119 million in 2015 was invested in the Alden funds, according to Labor Department records.

At the Denver Post, $47 million, or 91 percent of the pension's total in 2015, was invested in the same two Alden funds, according to Labor Department filings. That year, $248.5 million of pension savings for current and former employees of MediaNews Group papers was placed into the two Alden funds, according to court filings in an unrelated case.

Another plan for newspaper employees had $45 million of its $58 million — 77 percent of the total — invested in the Alden funds in 2015, according to Labor Department filings.

Mark Iwry, a former senior Treasury Department official overseeing pensions and retirements, said he thinks the Department of Labor will likely be looking at the process by which Alden moved the funds.

Iwry said he did not know the specifics of the Alden case but that federal rules on conflicts of interest generally prohibit plan managers from investing with partners in which they have a financial stake. "What did [the plan's managers] think they were doing and what did they think was the justification for it?" he said.

Relying so heavily on hedge fund investments could prompt questions from investigators as well, experts said. While some of the Alden pensions were more than 90 percent invested in Alden funds, Fortune 1000 companies put only 3.3 percent of their pension money into hedge funds, according to a February study by the advisory firm WillisTowers Watson.

Regardless of whether Alden’s practices ran afoul of federal rules, they have irked some pension beneficiaries. Thousands of former newspaper reporters, editors, photographers and printing press workers — some of whom lost their jobs because of staff cuts at Alden papers — became again beholden to the hedge fund because it controlled their retirement savings.

In some cases, beneficiaries said they were either unaware that their savings had been placed with Alden or didn't realize the extent of Alden's involvement. Many of them remain disconcerted by the way the MNG and Alden treated them or their colleagues at their former papers.

Pete Carey worked for 49 years at the Mercury News and was part of a team of investigative reporters who won a 1986 Pulitzer Prize for unveiling widespread corruption in the Philippines.

He retired in 2016 after watching a decade's worth of layoffs and buyouts, cost-cutting that has become an industry norm. He said he had learned about Alden's investment of the pension money from an article published by the NewsGuild labor union but hadn't fully considered the ramifications.

"It sort of looks like self-dealing," he said. "It just makes me a little nervous because if I had $5, I definitely would not invest it with Alden Global. And it's very hard to track."

John Farrell, a 66-year-old author and veteran of two five-year stints at the Denver Post, collects $151 a month from his pension. He said he had not looked into the details of the plan but was appalled at the idea that Alden might have benefited from it.

"I certainly hope they would be forthcoming about something like that," he said.

The two funds that received the pension money are Alden Global Adfero BPI Fund, Limited and Alden Global CRE Opportunities Fund. According to securitiesfilings, both were registered in the Cayman Islands, a common location for hedge funds.

In many cases, an MNG executive is listed as the administrator of the plans and Freeman is listed as president of the investment adviser.

There is little information available publicly about how the funds performed or what they invested in. Alden continues to buy and invest in newspaper companies, raising the possibility that its executives have used newspaper employees' pension money to buy other papers.

Alden declined to comment on what it did with the pension money.

In 2016, while Alden managed more than $200 million of its newspapers' pension money, it financed the $52 million purchase of the Orange County Register and the Press-Enterprise in southern California. It's unknown whether Alden used pension money in the deal, and Alden also buys stakes in other companies, including retail chains.

When The Washington Post published a February story about Alden's practice of reaping real estate profits from newspapers, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., wrote to Alden with concerns about how MNG would manage the Gannett newspapers and employees' pensions.

"MediaNews Group's decision to invest its employees' pension assets in Alden Global's own high-risk hedge funds raises questions regarding its ability to satisfy its current and future fiduciary obligations," he wrote. Schumer then wrote to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation last week to request a briefing on potential regulatory concerns.

Experts said that the Labor Department could view Alden's transactions as a conflict of interest. ERISA provides exemptions that sometimes allow pension managers to place funds with parties in which they have a financial interest. A Labor Department spokesman said it appeared as though Alden had received no such exemptions.

"Federal pension law has strict rules prohibiting a wide swath of transactions that can be viewed as conflicted," said Michael Kreps, principal at Groom Law Group, a Washington firm that specializes in retirement law. Kreps said every situation is different but that the agency "pays particular attention to situations where retirement plan fiduciaries enter into investment and other arrangements with related entities."

Iwry, the former Treasury official now at the Brookings Institution, said the riskiness of placing so much money in hedge funds, considered more risky than other investments, could draw scrutiny as well.

"These are investments that are not widely held by the public, presumably. Therefore you don't have the same natural presumption that it's reasonable to put these investments into them," Iwry said.

Burns declined to say who acted as administrators on the plans or what the Alden funds invested in.

Leaders of the Denver Newspaper Guild began confronting management about the transfers to Alden funds in 2013, said Tony Mulligan, a former Denver Post employee who now works for the guild. Mulligan said he contemplated suing the company over the practice but that the Denver Post pension plan had performed similarly to others.

"You can't look at the results and say they screwed the plan," Mulligan said.

Mulligan said MNG told the guild in 2015 that it had begun moving investments out of Alden funds, and it has since merged some of the plans. Some of the pension money was moved into more traditional, diversified accounts managed by Vanguard.

MNG announced its plans to buy Gannett in January, when R. Joseph Fuchs, chairman of the MNG board, wrote to the Gannett board castigating the company's efforts to grow revenue and saying it ought to do more to "maximize value right now." MNG offered to buy Gannett for $12 a share, or $1.36 billion.

Since then, the two companies have exchanged ugly accusations in advance of Gannett's May 16 annual meeting. MNG, which owns 7.5 percent of Gannett's stock, proposed six new board members, including Freeman and Fuchs.

As they struggle through the industry's decline, many newspapers in recent years have frozen pension plans and declined to offer pensions to new hires.

Gannett’s board has raised concerns about how MNG might manage its pensions, writing to shareholders March 26 with “grave concerns that under MNG’s control, the board would be repurposed for siphoning value — including potentially from Gannett’s pensions — to deliver generous management fees and profits to Alden.”

But Gannett's own pensions were underfunded by $294 million at the end of 2018, which will likely force the company to make future contributions.

Fuchs wrote to shareholders April 2 saying: "The reality is that the newspaper business is in secular decline. Gannett is in serious trouble and needs to quickly address its operational and strategic issues if it is going to survive."

The Mercury News veteran, Carey, said he’s glad to see some scrutiny brought to the issue: “It does make me a little nervous. But so far the checks keep coming.”

The Salt Lake Tribune was once part of MediaNews Group.

It was a moment so surreal, it seemed almost like a dream. During Fox News' Monday night town hall with Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., host Bret Baier asked audience members how many had private health insurance. A large majority raised their hands. He then followed up by asking how many would like to see Medicare-for-all enacted. Almost all the same hands went up - remember, this was on Fox News! - with wild cheers to boot.

Baier's action violated a major rule of lawyers: Never ask a witness on the stand a question to which you don't know the answer. However, I must point out, only in the Fox News bubble would anyone be surprised by the popularity of Medicare-for-all - polls routinely find more than half of Americans say they support it, including one from last year that found a majority of Republicans say they back Sanders' signature initiative.

As I watched the hand-waving, cheering crowd on Fox, I immediately thought about a statistic that landed on my desk earlier Monday, which showed how employer-based health insurance is offering less financial protection for low-income Americans than many realize. According to a study on the employer health insurance market from the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Peterson Center on Healthcare, households with incomes at 200% of poverty - slightly more than $50,000 for a family of four - are spending on average 14% of their income on premiums, deductibles and medical bills - a number that jumps to 18.5% if someone in the family suffers a health crisis.

Health care and health insurance costs are putting increasing strains on all budgets, not simply those of people living paycheck to paycheck. As the Kaiser Family Foundation reported, the typical health insurance premium for a family increased at double the rate of inflation in 2018, after soaring by 55% over the previous decade. The average deductible is also in the four figures, having increased by slightly more than 50% over a five-year period. People find medical services increasingly unaffordable, even when they are insured, with almost a quarter of people prescribed prescription drugs - including 23% of senior citizens - saying they are having an increasingly hard time affording their medicines.

Nonetheless, many health care policy wonks and more than a few politicians remain convinced that Americans are enamored of the current system. They point to surveys finding that people are satisfied with their current plans, not realizing that those findings are all relative. Stability in the health insurance market is wildly exaggerated: A few years back, a survey found that only 7 in 10 people with employer insurance in Michigan remained on the same employer plan a year later. Second, dissatisfaction with employer health insurance is hardly unknown: For starters, it was one of the causes of the teacher strikes and job actions last year in red-state West Virginia and solidly blue Jersey City, New Jersey. Almost everyone is concerned about increasing costs. Even when people are happy with what's on offer, they can feel trapped, something economists call job lock: People who suffered cancer in childhood, for instance, often fear changing jobs because they are afraid of coverage gaps or higher medical costs going forward.

All this goes a long way toward explaining why parts of the health insurance industry went on the offensive Tuesday after Sanders' appearance on Fox, attempting to scare the American public into submission to the current, clearly unacceptable status quo. David Wichmann, the CEO of UnitedHealth, the nation's largest health insurance company, said on a company earnings call that Medicare-for-all plans would "surely jeopardize the relationship people have with their doctors, destabilize the nation's health system and limit the ability of clinicians to practice medicine at their best." Actually, that sounds like our current reality, where insurance companies routinely impede the relationship between doctors and patients, insisting on approving medications, treatments and even requests for physical therapy sessions, sometimes denying them willy-nilly.

While I suspect more than a few people believe Medicare-for-all means something more like the Center for American Progress plan called Medicare Extra for All, which would permit people to keep employer-based health insurance if they prefer, I don’t think very many believe, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., indicated in a recent interview with The Washington Post, that they mean simple universal health coverage. Nor does it simply mean upping subsidies for the Affordable Care Act plans. I think it means people want at least the option of joining the plan that works so well for people over the age of 65. Much of American politics - like, say, tax cuts - comes down to some variant of “What about me?” Why would health care be any different?

Helaine Olen is a contributor to Post Opinions and the author of “Pound Foolish: Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry.” Her work has appeared in Slate, the Nation, the New York Times, the Atlantic and many other publications. She serves on the advisory board of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project.

Utah Gov. Gary Herbert and other officials got a glimpse Wednesday of the sheer robotic power of Amazon's new 855,000-square-foot customer fulfillment center in Salt Lake City, the first of its kind in Utah.

After attending a grand opening for the center at 777 N. 5600 West, Herbert and others toured the building and saw displays of a host of new automation technologies that nearly 1,500 full-time Amazon employees will eventually use to fulfill customer orders for the Seattle-based online shopping giant.

Employees will pick, pack and ship customer items such as books and electronics from the facility. Amazon said those new jobs will earn competitive wages and a comprehensive package of benefits.

Mike Taylor, general manager of the fulfillment center, said the new building reflected the company’s commitment to long-term investment in the Salt Lake City area.

And in officially welcoming Amazon to Utah, Herbert predicted the company’s investment in the city’s northwest quadrant would be “a significant driver for our economy and help diversify our business climate.”

The Weekly Run is The Salt Lake Tribune’s weekly newsletter on all things Utah Jazz. Subscribe here for the newsletter.

Houston • The Game 1 blowout has been dissected, analyzed, overanalyzed even, to death.

It’s been a long couple days since the Jazz dropped their postseason opener to the Rockets by 32 points. Now they’re ready to finally try and do something about it.

At Wednesday afternoon’s shootaround at the Toyota Center, Donovan Mitchell said it does no good now to fixate on that initial result; the focus must change to what can be done better tonight in Game 2.

“We’re in a hole, and we gotta get out of the hole. That’s where my head is at,” he said. “… It helps when you know it’s a series, you process it differently in the regular season than you do in a series. You understand that you can’t do nothing about it, you can’t sit there and sulk, ’cause that’s playing into their hands. We’ve got to be able to find a way to bounce back and make adjustments.”

Donovan, on getting past the blowout: "You understand that you can’t do nothing about it, you can’t sit there and sulk, ’cause that’s playing into their hands. We’ve got to be able to find a way to bounce back and make adjustments. All of us have come in and given our input." pic.twitter.com/U8YBI8zKqH

— Eric Walden (@tribjazz) April 17, 2019

The biggest one in forward Jae Crowder’s mind is ratcheting up the mental and physical ferocity. Watching the Game 1 tape, he said, clearly showed that the on-court fervor didn’t match up to the magnitude of the moment.

Asked what must change most from Games 1 to 2, he was direct and blunt.

“Our intensity — watching that, it didn’t feel like a playoff game. We didn’t bring the intensity that we needed to, and the game got away from us,” Crowder said. “First of all, our intensity has to pick up, and everything else will fall into place.”

There are plenty of other things, of course, that could use some improvement. And the Jazz are confident many of those areas will be better. Mitchell said there has been great back-and-forth between players and coaches on how best to make it all work.

“All of us have come in and given our input on what we see and what we should do, and the coaching staff is great and phenomenal as far as listening to us, as far as giving us their input as well,” Mitchell said. “We have a great team team chemistry that allows our coaches and allows teammates to give their opinion and constructive criticism; and that makes it a lot easier when you have guys who want to help each other out.”

In case you missed it …

Doesn’t it feel like just about forever now since the Jazz’s 122-90 loss to the Rockets in Game 1 of their first-round playoff series? We’ve at least had plenty to discuss in the aftermath. Like, how can the Jazz get Donovan Mitchell going after a tough opening effort? And the need to make some more 3-pointers going forward. The bromance between Jazz coach Quin Snyder and Rockets point guard Chris Paul. Columnist Gordon Monson took a look back at last year’s Game 2 victory over the Rockets in the Western Conference semis.

But wait, there’s more! We also examined what the Jazz might do defensively for the rest of the series after their opening-game strategy largely fell flat. Speaking of which, the Rockets surprised a lot of people with how good their defense has become. Meanwhile, if you thought a 32-point loss would discourage the team, well, they’re confident in the adjustments they’ll make going forward.

Other people’s stuff

• The New York Times did a feature story on Warriors guard Steph Curry’s love of in-arena popcorn, wherein he ranks every NBA arena’s version of the snack. Vivint Smart Home Arena’s is tied for 15th overall, earning high marks for saltiness, but low marks for freshness and presentation.

• Deseret News columnist Brad Rock took note of Rudy Gobert’s simple message heading into Game 2: “We’ll be fine.”

• The Tribune’s Andy Larsen and the Deseret News’ Eric Woodyard appeared with Aaron Falk and Angie Treasure of utahjazz.com on a Jazz Facebook livestream to discuss takeaways from Game 1 and preview Game 2.

• Ben Anderson wrote a contributing column for KSL.com, arguing that Game 1 wasn’t actually lost on Sunday, but much earlier, when the team decided not to make significant changes from last season.

• The Athletic has a couple pieces that touch on the Jazz, with beat writer Tony Jones touching on Derrick Favors’ soft-spoken admonition that the team needs to “play better,” and analyst Zach Harper taking an in-depth look at how the strategy for defending James Harden went so wrong.

• Here’s a fun thing — the Jazz, in combination with student developers from the Neumont College of Computer Science, have released a new video game called “Splash Uncles.”

Up next

Game 2 of the series is tonight in Houston. After that, the teams return to Salt Lake City for Games 3 and 4 on Saturday and Monday, respectively.

The world watched in horror this week as Notre Dame burned.

Now, with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints poised to announce Friday the details of a massive renovation project for its iconic Salt Lake Temple, perhaps Mormonism’s Notre Dame, thoughts turn to the Utah-based faith’s sacred structures.

Allen Roberts, a Utah architect who specializes in preservation, including work on Latter-day Saint chapels, tabernacles and temples, discusses the church’s historic buildings, their place in the design world and the faith’s high points and low points in preserving them.

Listen here:

Mortgage lenders are significantly more likely to deny same-sex couples a home loan and charge them more for it when they do, a new study has found.

Gay couples were 73 percent more likely to be denied a mortgage than heterosexual couples with the same financial worthiness, according to an analysis of national mortgage data from 1990 to 2015.

The study, published Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also found that when same-sex couples were approved for a home loan, they were given inferior terms. On average, they paid .5 percent more in interest and fees, which collectively adds up to as much as $86 million a year, the researchers said in a news release.

"Lenders can justify higher fees, if there is greater risk," Lei Gao, a finance professor at Iowa State University's Ivy College of Business, and co-author of the study said. "We found nothing to indicate that's the case. In fact, our findings weakly suggest same-sex borrowers may perform better."

The researchers say their findings signal a need to include sexual orientation as a protected class under federal lending laws. The Fair Housing Act and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act currently prohibits discrimination against borrowers on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. They prohibit specific types of behavior, such as discouraging applicants of protected classes to apply; rejecting applicants based on those characteristics; and imposing different terms and conditions based on those traits. But, the researchers note, neither law specifically covers sexual orientation.

"Policymakers need to guarantee same-sex couples have equal access to credit," Hua Sun, a professor of finance and the other co-author of the study said. "Using our framework, credit monitoring agencies also can take steps to investigate unfair lending practices."

Mortgage applicants are not required to disclose their sexual orientation. For the study, the researchers identified same-sex couples as co-applicants of the same gender. They said they used data of geographic distributions of LGBTQ adults from the Census Bureau and Gallup to verify their method of identification.

Planned Parenthood and the ACLU of Utah are suing the state over a new law prohibiting elective abortions after 18 weeks of fetal development.

The law — which challenges long-standing Supreme Court precedents — comes at a time when organizations like Planned Parenthood are being told by the Trump Administration to either cease abortion referrals, or walk away from millions of dollars in federal funding.

On this week’s episode of “Trib Talk,” Tribune reporter Bethany Rodgers and Heather Stringfellow, vice president of public policy for Planned Parenthood of Utah, join Benjamin Wood to discuss new state laws and federal rules limiting access to elective abortion procedures.

Click here to listen now. Listeners can also subscribe to “Trib Talk” on SoundCloud, iTunes and Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify and other major podcast platforms.

“Trib Talk” is produced by Sara Weber with additional editing by Dan Harrie. Comments and feedback can be sent to tribtalk@sltrib.com, or to @bjaminwood or @tribtalk on Twitter.