A Utah County high school teacher was cited for child abuse Thursday after police say he put his hands around a student’s neck and shoulders and pinned him to the floor.

Utah County Sheriff’s officials say that shortly after 9 a.m. Thursday, Rockwell Charter High School teacher Anthony Robbie Chidester had a “disagreement” with a 14-year-old student who was not following instructions.

Chidester allegedly put his hands on the student's neck and shoulders and pushed him into a wall, then threw him to the floor and held him there.

The student had minor injuries, according to the sheriff’s office.

Administrators asked Chidester, 40, to leave the school after learning of the incident, according to the sheriff’s office. He is listed on the school’s website as a physical education/health teacher, but he told the Salt Lake Tribune on Thursday that he was fired.

Deputies interviewed Chidester at his home, according to the sheriff’s office, and he was cited for class A misdemeanor child abuse. Criminal charges had not been filed as of Thursday afternoon.

“I am absolutely mortified by this experience and truly sorry for my actions. I am so sorry to the young man and his family and feel just gutted from this experience,” Chidester said in a statement. “I allowed an incident of disrespect, bullying, teasing and insubordination from a student to escalate.”

In the statement, Chidester said that he is threatened and bullied by students every day he works. He said that doesn’t excuse his behavior, but he also “[doesn’t] think people realize the conditions that we have to teach in."

A Utah-based genealogy company has come under fire for running an ad that romanticizes why many African Americans have white ancestry — framing a story from the perspective of a white savior when the biggest historical reason is rape.

Ancestry.com posted its commercial online this month and it has been broadcast in Utah on cable networks. The company removed the video from its YouTube page shortly after The Salt Lake Tribune asked for comment.

Called “Inseparable,” it showed a white man trying to convince a black woman to run away with him to Canada, including a caption that calls them “two young lovers.” It appears to be set in the 1800s.

The ad is “incredibly problematic,” said Noel Voltz, an assistant professor of African American history at the University of Utah. “It’s messy,” she added. “They’re hinting to something that’s really a history of sexual exploitation and disempowerment.”

The video opens with the white man saying, “Abigail, we can escape to The North.”

The woman begins to say something, but is immediately cut off when he interrupts her. “There’s a place we can be together across the border. Will you leave with me?” the man continues.

The ad then displays her name — Abigail Williams — but it is unclear if the storyline is based on a true account, which Voltz said is possible, though highly unlikely.

Ancestry.com, which is based in Lehi and employs 1,600 people, did not specifically address that issue in a statement it released Thursday afternoon.

“Ancestry is committed to telling important stories from history,” the statement said. “This ad was intended to represent one of those stories. We very much appreciate the feedback we have received and apologize for any offense that the ad may have caused. We are in the process of pulling the ad from television and have removed it from YouTube.”

Voltz questioned how the company approved the commercial. She said it encourages people to erase history, and to think about relationships that white masters had with black slaves as touching and beautiful. In reality, she said, those were mostly coercive. “Most black people in the world are mixed because of rape that happened in slavery,” she said.

Many commenters on social media also criticized the ad. Kimberly Atkins, a journalist at Boston’s NPR-affiliated radio station, tweeted that ancestry information for many black Americans “is as painful and traumatic as it is illuminating.” She added: “These are not love stories.”

One of about 1,000 awful things about this commercial is it ignores the fact that for black Americans - myself included - and for others in the diaspora, DNA and documentary ancestry information is as painful and traumatic as it is illuminating. These are not love stories. https://t.co/tuTpHwmnGk

— Kimberly Atkins (@KimberlyEAtkins) April 18, 2019

For those who trace their family lines, there are often gaps, Voltz added, because rapes and assaults weren’t recorded.

Jeanetta Williams, president of Salt Lake City’s NAACP branch, said the ad ignores history and presents a harmful narrative. “People see things like that and think that it’s true,” she said. “It’s not portraying the facts.”

The video appeared to have been originally targeting Ancestry.com’s Canada audience, and was posted under a page for that branch of the company. For Voltz, that doesn’t make it any more palatable or understandable.

“There’s no setup in this that makes any kind of sense," she said. “There absolutely was slavery in Canada, too.”

The 30-second video shows the man and woman, with her in a long, hooded cape, running along a dirt road. They stop by a brick and wood building at a small, shingled porch. He pulls out a ring and says his three lines.

For many in the black community, the commercial brings up tensions over interactions between President Thomas Jefferson and his slave Sally Hemings, Voltz added. Jefferson fathered several of her children. Some have presented that history by calling Hemings his “mistress.” But Voltz said she was his property, and that power dynamic doesn’t create a consensual relationship.

Hemings didn’t have the freedom to say, “No,” Voltz said, and the woman in the video also doesn’t appear to be free to talk or make her own decision.

“The white owners came in and raped black women,” Williams added. “They didn’t have a choice. If they didn’t allow it, they were beaten or killed.”

One man on Twitter called it colonization. Another said it was “an irresponsible, ahistorical depiction.” A commenter said the company should “stop with the revisions.” And one said it wasn’t Ancestry.com’s story to tell.

Melissa Murray, a law professor at New York University, asked whether the woman in the commercial is supposed to be the man’s slave and if the ad went over well in focus group testing.

She posted: “Was there no other scenario that could illuminate the value of DNA testing?”

Who approved that ad? I mean... I know there’s no “cute” way to discuss chattel slavery as part of our ancestry but there were BETTER ideas than this right? https://t.co/xCuHjw4DKB

— M’BlockU (@rodimusprime) April 18, 2019

Houston • In 2017-18, the Houston Rockets finished with 65 wins.

They chased the vaunted Golden State Warriors, a team that features not one but two MVP winners on its roster to seven games in the Western Conference Finals, and only lost that last Game 7 because of an injury to Chris Paul and remarkably missing 27 threes in a row at one point. They were a whisker away from a trip to the NBA Finals, and given how that series went for Golden State, imagining the Rockets as likely champions isn’t difficult.

And yet, there are those on the Rockets that say that they feel this year’s team is better.

“Obviously we’re confident,” Rockets coach Mike D’Antoni said. “They’ve always had the belief that we’re locked in, we’re as good as anybody if not better than anybody.”

That wasn’t necessarily the case during the course of the regular season. The Rockets won 12 fewer games than in 2017-18, and looked to be broken defensively in the season’s first third, requiring major changes from D’Antoni and assistant coach Jeff Bzdelik, who leads the Rockets’ defensive schemes.

Some of those difficulties were due to personnel changes, too. The Rockets moved on from Trevor Ariza and Luc Mbah a Moute in the offseason, the former heading to Phoenix while the latter went to L.A. Meanwhile, the Rockets acquired Carmelo Anthony, who only worked to confirm his declining defensive reputation with an ugly 10 games that just led to his eventual dump from the squad. Chris Paul, Eric Gordon, Clint Capela, and even James Harden missed time due to injury early in the season.

But over the course of their 20-5 end to the season, they were the league’s best team, showing it against a variety of opponents. And of course, there’s been the remarkable shellacking they’ve put on the Utah Jazz so far, a good team that has looked outclassed more than any playoff matchup we’ve seen this year.

“We just battled through a lot of adversity and so many different lineups, so many people hurt, so many people out, that once it came all together, they locked in totally and we were feeling pretty good, we’ve been playing this way for a couple of months now,” D’Antoni said.

Harden’s the offensive engine, obviously, and he has unquestionably even improved from last year’s MVP campaign. Despite the injuries, he led the Rockets to the league’s second-best offense in remarkable ways.

The team argues, though, that despite the departures of lanky defenders Ariza and Mbah a Moute, they’re now more cohesive defensively than ever before, thanks to continuity from the main group. After holding the Jazz to double-digit scores in consecutive games, it’s hard to argue that.

“That’s just us being together for a bit now. Our core, Chris and James, when they get to getting us going, when they’re pushing [and] when they’re aggressive, they make it easier for all of us,” forward P.J. Tucker said. “So then me, Clint and Chris can really set up defense. We communicate well in our first unit. We all fight, argue, talk all the time. But in the end, we all get an understanding, and that’s made our defense really good.”

The result has been a powerhouse, through the first two games, that looks like its on the path to challenge Golden State once again. The series isn’t over, by any means, but the Rockets have made a statement.

Houston • Remember Alec Burks?

He’s had an up and down season, to be sure. He’s played on three teams this year, after the Jazz traded him to the Cleveland Cavaliers for Kyle Korver. Then the Cavs used him as salary ballast in a deal that earned them a first round pick, he was sent to the Sacramento Kings.

While on the Kings roster, Burks didn’t play in more games than he did, as a Did Not Play — Coach’s Decision. When he did play, it was frequently in garbage time. In most games, Burks’ limitations on defense and in operating an offense outweigh his strengths of being able to attack and score in isolation, so he sits on the bench. That’s where he frequently found himself in a Jazz uniform, too.

But in last year’s Jazz/Rockets series, Burks played a huge role: he scored 17 in the Jazz’s Game 2 win, and even scored 22 points in 32 minutes for the Jazz in Game 6. That was because that one skill, that ability to take advantage of a matchup and score, was what the Jazz’s offense needed.

Now, it’s only Donovan Mitchell who can do that for Utah. All of the other ballhandlers — Ricky Rubio, Joe Ingles, Jae Crowder, Royce O’Neale, Raul Neto, even Grayson Allen — need a space advantage in order to score that are rarely afforded by switching defenses; they don’t have the footspeed to get separation when matched up with a bigger “mismatch” unless they already have a step. A screen normally allows that, but switching prevents it.

The Rockets know this, too. So when Mitchell has the ball, Houston loads up, getting ready to help off from all of the right spots (in other words, the Jazz’s poor shooters) to stop the only threat. The result: ugly scorelines and turnovers from Mitchell, and open shots for shooters who haven’t made them.

That last bit has been critical, too. According to Jazz writer Ben Dowsett, taking into account the locations of the Jazz’s shots and the distance of the nearest defender when they were taken, the Jazz’s expected effective field goal percentage was 57.4% in Game 2— higher than any team in any game in the playoffs this year. The Jazz, whether it was due to poor luck, poor focus, or lack of talent, shot just 43.9% instead.

Korver was supposed to help the Jazz’s shooting and open more space for Mitchell, but a late-season knee injury has hobbled him on both ends, making him unplayable with Harden on the floor and unimpactful running off of screens. Ingles, typically reliable, has missed even the open ones. Rubio and Crowder are inconsistent, and have shown the downsides of that in the first two games.

“We have to just keep taking our shots and those are shots that we normally make. They’re going in and out, some of them short. They’re shots that we have to continue to take," Derrick Favors said postgame. "Ricky [Rubio] and the guards do a good job of finding guys open at the top of the key and we just have to make those shots. I don’t think there’s nothing to worry about right now, but hopefully when we get back to Utah — the home arena, in front of our home crowd, we can start knocking those shots down.”

The Jazz’s roster has two clear offensive limitations: a lack of off-the-dribble scoring wizardry, and inconsistent shooting at key positions. Over the last week, the Rockets have exposed those weaknesses time and time again.

Attorney General William Barr steps to the lectern.

Hello, everyone. I am here to repeat the words "no collusion" as many times as I can without sounding suspicious, but first, I would like to thank Rod Rosenstein. He is here standing behind me. He had plans to step back from public service before I came along and asked him to assist me. Then again, some would argue that by assisting me, he did not perform a public service. Anyway, he is here.

I would also like to thank Robert Mueller for making this report for me to redact. I feel like it is a joint creation between the two of us. He is not standing here with me today. Instead, there is a bearded man who, no doubt, is familiar to you all. I will certainly not introduce him at any point. I will leave his identity to your imagination! Worst-case scenario, this will just accustom you to seeing strange facts without context, something that will help you as you consume the report!

The good news is that, although the Russian government did interfere in the 2016 election with hacking and disinformation campaigns, it did not do so literally at the behest of the Trump campaign, in my opinion. Was that the opinion of the Mueller team? Who can say? But if it wasn't, it should have been, I think. Make no mistake, Russia did interfere to help him, but this effort was just sort of a fun lagniappe. Nobody asked for it.

Really, it was like when you are just sitting on a couch trying to have a nice time and your cat unexpectedly brings you a dead bird. (In this scenario, the dead bird is the American people.) You did not expect it! You don't even want it. But the cat seemed to think it was a nice gesture. Well, that is how Donald Trump feels about winning this election. In brief, this was not at all coordinated. Anyway, as I think anyone who has been watching the Trump presidency can see, this is not a man who expected to win.

Some more words about the president's feelings: Speaking as the attorney general of the United States, whose function is to defend the law of the land and not the person of the president, I would like for just a minute to defend the person of the president. You see, he has a lot of feelings and is facing an unprecedented situation. His pain is real, and we should respect it. He has been very frustrated and angry, and, I think, sincerely so. As I have learned from my years in close communion with the law, being very frustrated is a great legal defense against wrongdoing.

Between you and me, he is so lonely. I wish I could convey to you the unspeakable loneliness of his position. The president is not a well man. His doctor, a real doctor, has said we are to keep him from shocks — shocks such as seeing his name in the same sentence as the word “collusion” unaccompanied by the word “no,” or really any sudden experience of extreme feeling. This is why we must not let him stare too long at art that is particularly moving, lest its beauty knock something loose in him and destroy his system entirely. So I ask: If we, if any of us, can just do our part to spare him from hearing the awful word “collusion” that distresses him so much, is there any price we would not pay? Is there any sacrifice we would not make?

I will now take questions.

Q: Where is Mueller?

A: My friend with the beard is here!

Q: What do you say to people who say that you are going out of your way to defend the presidented, talking about how he faces 'an unprecedented situation'?

A: I would say, is there another precedent for it?

Q: … No.

A: Boom! QED! Runs a victory lap around the room, high-fiving anyone who will accept it, but no one will.

Q: Where's Mueller? Isn't this Mueller's report?

A: NO! IT IS MY REPORT, MINE! HE DID IT FOR ME! I AM THE ATTORNEY GENERAL! No more questions, goodbye.

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

@petridishes

Washington • The report from special counsel Robert Mueller provides a devastating portrait of President Trump’s behavior that may invite the beginning of an impeachment inquiry and a constitutional confrontation. A collision of some kind between the president (along with his attorney general) and Democrats who control the House of Representatives is now inevitable.

The report’s bottom line is easily lost in the details about Trump himself: that the United States has a president whom Russia actively intervened in our politics to elect. The Russian-controlled Internet Research Agency, Mueller’s report concluded, created “a targeted operation that by early 2016 favored candidate Trump and disparaged candidate [Hillary] Clinton.”

Mueller also clearly did not in any way encourage Attorney General William Barr to end further inquiry into whether the president obstructed justice. On the contrary, Mueller went out of his way to tell Congress that it has every right to decide that issue itself. "Congress has authority to prohibit a President's corrupt use of his authority in order to protect the integrity of the administration of justice," he wrote.

Mueller also noted: "The conclusion that Congress may apply the obstruction laws to the President's corrupt exercise of the powers of office accords with our constitutional system of checks and balances and the principle that no person is above the law."

The report will only embolden House Democrats who are already investigating the president and may increase pressure to launch formal impeachment inquiries, even though Democratic leaders have been reluctant to move in that direction.

Barr’s behavior has been truly shameful. From the moment he issued his letter on March 24 suggesting that the final Mueller document would clear the president — now we know it has done quite the opposite — Barr has behaved less like an attorney general than as a defense lawyer doubling as the president’s spokesman.

Hours after the report was released, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said that "Attorney General Barr appears to have shown an unsettling willingness to undermine his own [Justice] Department in order to protect President Trump" and that Barr had been "disingenuous and misleading." Barr's behavior continued until the last moment before the report was made public. At a wholly unnecessary news conference that ended roughly an hour before the document was released, Barr spoke as though Mueller had resolved the entire matter in Trump's favor and repeated the president's battle cry, "no collusion," four times.

But Mueller — perhaps anticipating the importance of the word "collusion" in Trump's propaganda — was explicit in saying that "collusion is not a specific offense or theory of liability found in the United States Code, nor is it a term of art in federal criminal law."

In fact, Mueller detailed many conversations and ties between the Trump circle and Russia. "In sum," he wrote, "the investigation established multiple links between Trump Campaign officials and individuals tied to the Russian government. Those links included Russian offers of assistance to the Campaign. In some instances, the Campaign was receptive to the offer, while in other instances the Campaign officials shied away."

Then came the one line in the report that Trump unambiguously liked and on which he wants to hang his entire argument: "Ultimately, the investigation did not establish that the Campaign coordinated or conspired with the Russian government in its election-interference activities." But given the sentences that came before, it's clear that not "establishing" conspiracy is not the same as having found no evidence of cooperation.

Here again, Mueller's caution about leveling charges against the president still leaves Congress — particularly the House Intelligence Committee — with ample room to probe the "multiple links" with Russia that Mueller documented.

Oddly, Trump may have been protected from even more damaging conclusions about obstruction by staff members who refused to do what he asked. "The President's efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful," the report found, "but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the President declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests." Whatever this is, it is not exoneration of Trump.

The Mueller report paints a broad picture of an administration that systematically lied to just about everybody, including the public and the media. It describes a president prepared to do whatever was necessary to close down inquiries into his behavior and Russian ties. And it noted that "some of the individuals we interviewed or whose conduct we investigated — including some associated with the Trump Campaign — deleted relevant communications or communicated during the relevant period using applications that feature encryption."

Mueller's findings do not end Trump's troubles. On the contrary, he is now in greater jeopardy because we know even more about what he did. Congress must take all the further steps required to ensure accountability.

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

Sen. Elizabeth Warren makes a campaign stop in Utah and says she would restore protections for Utah national monuments. Neighbors of the planned Inland Port say they fear the end of their rural way of life. And the state of Utah won’t enforce its 18-week abortion ban, for now.

At 9 a.m. on Friday, Salt Lake Tribune editor Jennifer Napier-Pearce, and reporters Bethany Rodgers and Taylor Stevens join KCPW’s Roger McDonough to talk about the week’s top stories. Every Friday at 9 a.m., stream “Behind the Headlines” at kcpw.org, or tune in to KCPW 88.3 FM or Utah Public Radio for the broadcast. Join the live conversation by calling (801) 355-TALK.

If special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation makes one thing clear, it’s that many of the news reports that President Donald Trump branded as “fake news” were, in fact, very real news indeed.

While Mueller's report didn't establish a criminal conspiracy and was "unable" to conclude that obstruction of justice occurred - contrary to hours of speculation among cable-news pundits during Mueller's long investigation - it also largely validated news accounts that Trump dismissed or disparaged.

Instead, at least in the Mueller team's analysis, the fake news seems to have flowed not from the media but from the other direction. His report, released Thursday, cites multiple instances in which Trump and White House aides misled or lied to journalists or in public statements as the investigation was unfolding.

On the day of Mueller's appointment, in May 2017, for example, White House aides said Trump reacted calmly to the news. In fact, according to Mueller's report, Trump's first reaction was anything but calm. According to notes taken by an aide, Trump responded by saying, "Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm f-----. . . . This is the worst thing that ever happened to me."

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters repeatedly in May 2017 that she personally had heard from "countless members of the FBI" that they were "grateful and thankful" to Trump for firing FBI director James Comey. That never happened, Mueller said. He wrote that Sanders later acknowledged to investigators that her comments were "not founded on anything."

Trump also dictated a press statement saying that he had fired Comey based on the recommendations of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. But Mueller found that Trump had already decided to fire Comey before Rosenstein had weighed in. Trump backed down and later publicly acknowledged he intended to fire Comey regardless of Rosenstein's memo after unnamed Justice Department officials "made clear to him" that they would "resist" the bogus justification, Mueller said.

Incoming White House aides also lied about press accounts they knew were accurate. Former national security adviser Michael Flynn directed an aide, K.T. McFarland, to call Washington Post columnist David Ignatius during the presidential transition in January 2017 and deny Ignatius' reporting about Flynn's conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. McFarland "knew she was providing false information" when she called Ignatius to dispute Ignatius' surmise that Flynn had discussed removing sanctions on Russia with Kislyak. (Prompted by McFarland's call, The Post updated the column to note that a "Trump official" denied that Flynn discussed sanctions.)

Trump and his aides also knocked down an accurate New York Times story in May 2017 reporting that the president had asked Comey for loyalty during a private dinner several months before Comey's firing.

Trump even lied about who invited whom to dinner: He told NBC News anchor Lester Holt in an interview that month Comey had asked for it because "he wanted to stay on." Mueller found evidence that the president extended the invitation to Comey on Jan. 27.

On the eve of Comey's testimony to Congress that May, Trump sought to raise questions about Comey's credibility, when - as Mueller found - it was Trump's credibility that was questionable. At the time, Trump tweeted, "James Comey better hope there are no 'tapes' of our conversation before he starts leaking to the press!"

Comey's contemporaneous accounts of his meeting with Trump and corroboration from his FBI colleagues also show that another New York Times story, branded as "fake news" by the president, was true. The Times reported that Trump had asked Comey to end the investigation of Flynn; Mueller found "substantial evidence" that this was true, despite Trump publicly saying otherwise.

Trump also tried to persuade then-White House Counsel Donald McGahn to deny stories in The Washington Post and the Times in early 2018 that Trump had asked McGahn to fire Mueller about seven months earlier. McGahn refused repeatedly to undercut the stories because he knew they were "accurate in reporting on the President's effort to have the Special Counsel removed."

Mueller noted that Trump "challenged" his lawyer for taking notes of their conversation.

"Why do you take notes?" he asked McGahn, according to the report. "Lawyers don't take notes. I never had a lawyer who took notes."

McGahn said he kept notes because he is a "real lawyer" and to establish a record.

Trump replied, "I've had a lot of great lawyers, like Roy Cohn. He did not take notes.''

Cohn, who was chief counsel to Sen. Joseph McCarthy, R-Wis., during McCarthy's communist-hunting hearings in the 1950s, was disbarred by a New York court in 1986 because of "dishonesty, fraud, deceit and misrepresentation."

—

The Washington Post’s Margaret Sullivan contributed to this report.

New York health officials issued summonses to parents of three children Thursday for not vaccinating their children against measles, a violation of the city’s emergency order mandating immunizations to control a surging outbreak.

The adults face civil penalties of $1,000 if an officer upholds the summons at a hearing. Health officials identified three children who were exposed to the severe respiratory virus but were not vaccinated by Friday, violating the order. Skipping the hearing or not respond to the summons will result in a $2,000 fine. The children are in three households.

During the outbreak, the city has mandated vaccinations for people living in four hard-hit Zip codes in Brooklyn's Williamsburg section, home to tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews. Health officials also confirmed 359 cases as of Wednesday, an increase of 30 cases in two days.

Because measles’ incubation period is long — seven to 21 days — health officials said they expect the outbreak to get worse before it gets better. “However, we can turn the tide by people getting vaccinated, especially before Passover, when families and communities gather,” said New York’s Health Commissioner Oxiris Barbot.

As part of the Health Department investigation, disease detectives trace where each infected person went while contagious and everyone they may have interacted with. If investigators find an unvaccinated child who could have been exposed to measles, that child's parents could be subject to fines, officials have said.

During a meeting Wednesday, the city's health board said it would be seeking civil, not criminal, penalties against the parents. Earlier in the week, a group of Brooklyn parents filed a lawsuit in Brooklyn Supreme Court, seeking to stop the city order. The plaintiffs say the order is unlawful because there is insufficient evidence of a measles epidemic or a dangerous enough outbreak to justify extraordinary measures, such as forced vaccination or criminal penalties.

The measure is the broadest vaccination order in the United States in nearly three decades. The nation has a long history of mandatory vaccinations dating back to a 1905 Supreme Court case that upheld Massachusetts' authority to require vaccination against smallpox during an epidemic after a man defied an order to be vaccinated. The case laid the foundation for public health laws in the United States.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, has said the city has sweeping emergency authority for such orders during a public health emergency.

Health officials also announced Thursday that they closed four additional schools for noncompliance with measles vaccine requirements.

Earlier in the week, officials closed a Williamsburg child care program for repeatedly not providing access to medical and attendance records, violating the emergency order. The order requires child care programs to exclude unvaccinated students and staffers and to maintain medical and attendance records on site. That child care program reopened Thursday.

A group of Utahns wants to persuade the state’s voters in 2020 to pass a carbon tax that they say could diminish reliance on fossil fuels and generate $75 million per year for local air quality initiatives.

Five Utah residents earlier this month filed paperwork laying the groundwork for a ballot initiative to tax carbon dioxide at $11 per metric ton starting in 2022 that would be paid by power companies, other major corporate users and motorists. Yoram Bauman, a Salt Lake City economist who’s helping to lead the push, says the proposal’s language is modeled after a bill that has failed in the state Legislature.

Lawmakers don’t seem willing to pass a carbon tax, and Bauman says the stakes are too high to let the issue stall.

“We think that the air pollution issues throughout this state are just something that the Legislature has not taken seriously enough,” he said in a Thursday phone interview.

The proposal is expected to cost consumers when they pump gas or pay their electricity bill, roughly 10 cents per gallon of gasoline and 0.8 cents per kilowatt hour of electricity, Bauman said. These additional consumer costs would be offset by eliminating the state sales tax on food, creating a 20% state match for the federal earned income tax credit and expanding the retirement tax credit.

"As an economist, I would say that it's a very smart way to go to tax bad things that you want less of instead of taxing good things" such as groceries, Bauman said.

About $75 million in revenues from the tax would go toward clean air projects such as replacing wood-burning stoves or gas-powered lawnmowers. Another $25 million would pay for rural economic development.

But the carbon tax proponents have some work to do to put their idea to a vote in 2020.

Over the next month, the governor’s budget analysts will study the fiscal implications of the proposed initiative. After that, the measure will go up for discussion at a series of public hearings across the state, according to Justin Lee, Utah’s elections director.

To get the initiative onto the ballot, Bauman and other carbon tax supporters must gather about 115,000 signatures that represent at least 10% of active voters in 26 of 29 state Senate districts, Lee said.

The carbon tax proposal is the only initiative effort that has been submitted to the state so far for the 2020 elections, he added.

Utah voters last year weighed in on seven ballot measures, including Proposition 2 to create a medical cannabis program and Proposition 3 to expand Medicaid. State legislators have since replaced those two successful initiatives with laws of their own making.

In 2016 in Washington, Bauman led the nation’s first state ballot measure to enact a carbon tax. However, the initiative failed with only 42% support from the state’s voters.

But Bauman said the proposal under consideration in Utah is crafted to be mindful of state residents and businesses.

Agriculture, mining and manufacturing companies would pay a lower tax so they could stay competitive with out-of-state businesses, he said. And the various proposed tax cuts and credits would help consumers.

Increases to the tax rate would also happen gradually, he said. While the carbon tax would start at $11 per metric ton of carbon dioxide, it would climb over time to about $15 per ton in 2031 and $20 per ton in 2040, up to a maximum of $100 per ton.

Major League Soccer will expand to 30 total teams in the upcoming years.

Commissioner Don Garber made the announcement Thursday at the league's Board Of Governors meeting in Los Angeles.

The league is currently at 24 teams, with FC Cincinnati joining the league this season. Nashville and Miami are teed up to start next year and Austin will come aboard in 2021.

The board did not identify markets but groups in Sacramento and St. Louis will be invited to give formal presentations to the league's expansion committee. A decision will be made in the coming months.

It has not been determined when the new teams will join the league. MLS has set an expansion fee of $200 million for the team’s 28th and 29th teams. A fee has not been set for the 30th franchise.

New York • The National Enquirer is being sold to the former head of the airport newsstand company Hudson News following a rocky year in which the tabloid was accused of burying stories that could have hurt Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Tabloid owner American Media said Thursday it plans to sell the supermarket weekly to James Cohen. Financial terms were not immediately disclosed for the deal, which included two other American Media tabloids, the Globe and the National Examiner.

American Media said last week that it wanted to get out of the tabloid business to focus on its other operations, which includes its teen brand and broadcast platforms.

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan agreed last year not to prosecute American Media in exchange for the company's cooperation in a campaign finance investigation. That probe eventually led to a three-year prison term for Trump's former personal lawyer Michael Cohen for campaign violations among other charges.

American Media admitted it had paid $150,000 to keep former Playboy model Karen McDougal quiet about an alleged affair with Trump to help his campaign. Trump has denied an affair.

The sale would end a longtime relationship between the National Enquirer and Trump. Under the aegis of American Media CEO David Pecker, the tabloid has for years buried potentially embarrassing stories about Trump and other favored celebrities by buying the rights to them and never publishing in a practice called "catch-and-kill."

The Associated Press reported last year that Pecker kept a safe in the Enquirer's office that held documents on buried stories, including those involving Trump.

Whether James Cohen has any allegiances to Trump is not clear. While he was a registered Republican as late as 2017, according to Nexis records, he has given to both Republicans and Democrats. That included $17,300 in 2016 to an arm of the Democratic National Committee and $2,500 to the Republican National Committee in 2012.

News of the sale comes two months after Amazon chief Jeff Bezos publicly accused the National Enquirer of trying to blackmail him by threatening to publish explicit photos of him.

An American Media attorney denied the charge, but it threatened potentially big legal costs by upending American Media's non-prosecution agreement in the hush money case. The AP reported that federal prosecutors were looking into whether the publisher violated terms of the deal, which included a promise not to break any laws in the future.

The Bezos accusation comes at a difficult time for American Media. It has financed several recent acquisitions with borrowed money and has been struggling under a heavy debt load. American Media said the Cohen deal would help reduce the amount it needs to pay back, leaving it with $355 million in debt.

The Washington Post, which earlier reported the sale, said Cohen will pay $100 million in the deal.

Cohen's family had run a magazine and newspaper distributor for decades before his father branched into newsstand stores in 1980s, starting with a single one at LaGuardia Airport. Before he died in 2012, the father had opened more than 600 stores.

After the death, James Cohen's niece alleged her uncle had cheated her out of her inheritance. She lost the case.

The family sold a majority stake in the chain about a decade ago. The business is now owned by Dufry, an operator of duty-free stores in which James Cohen is a major shareholder.

Cohen still owns a magazine and newspaper distributor called Hudson News Distributors. In addition, he runs a real estate developer and a publishing company, which owns Gallerie, an art and design magazine.

Cohen has reportedly been involved in American Media deals before. The New York Times reports that, in 2011, Cohen invested in the company’s American edition of OK!, a British tabloid.

The Salt Lake County District Attorney’s Office will not file charges against a Unified Police detective who shot and killed a 61-year-old man who ran toward him with a knife.

Prosecutors ruled the Oct. 17 shooting “justified" after reviewing witness and police statements, in addition to body camera and other video footage, District Attorney Sim Gill wrote in a letter about the shooting.

UPD Detective Geoff Clark shot James Lyle Kuehn during a confrontation after Kuehn was accused of robbing a Fiesta Olé in Kearns, near 4100 West and 5400 South.

Kuehn allegedly threatened a restaurant employee with a knife that looked like a “prison shank," according to court documents, and demanded money. Kuehn left, and police found him outside a nearby home.

Clark arrived at the home and saw another officer, who had his gun drawn. Clark wrote in a statement to prosecutors that Kuehn yelled, "Shoot me, you’re not taking me down for this!'

The other officer used a stun gun on Kuehn, who was holding a knife and had taken “an offensive stance with his hands clenched," but the stun gun didn’t work. The officer then fell.

Clark wrote that he thought Kuehn was going to kill the other officer, so he readied his gun and decided to fire if Kuehn moved closer to the other officer.

“All of a sudden, the suspect turned toward me,” Clark wrote. “Our eyes met and he began to run directly at me.”

Clark said he tried to back away, but Kuehn was moving too quickly. He said he “feared the suspect was going to hurt or kill me," and he shot Kuehn.

Some witnesses — including someone at the home where Kuehn was shot — said they didn’t see anything in Kuehn’s hands when he was shot, according to the letter.

However, Gill wrote, prosecutors never received an “objective and non-testimonial evidence” that refutes the officers’ stories, and that many of the witnesses saw the shooting from farther away.

Prosecutors interviewed or received statements from seven officers, including Clark. Gill said their stories were consistent and aligned with the available video footage.

Gill said prosecutors determined Clark reasonably believed deadly force was necessary to prevent death or serious bodily injury to him himself or another person, meaning it was justified according to Utah law.

Kuehn was one of 19 people killed in Utah by police in 2018. It is the most people killed by police in Utah in recent history, according to a Salt Lake Tribune database spanning more than a decade.

Washington • There is a mountain of evidence that President Trump obstructed justice. There is considerable evidence that the Trump campaign embraced and encouraged Russia’s attempt to meddle in the 2016 election. Special counsel Robert Mueller laid out the facts — and now Congress has a solemn duty to confront them.

Contrary to what Trump says, the long-awaited Mueller report is not an exoneration. The report makes that clear more than once, verbatim, including this passage in Part II: "Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him."

Nor does the report indict Trump for obstruction. But that is because Mueller took as his starting point the Justice Department opinion that a sitting president should not be made to face criminal charges. “If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state,” Mueller wrote. “[W]e are unable to reach that judgment.”

Trump and his apologists will try to paint the report as equivocal, but the evidence it cites strikes me as definitive. One representative passage from Part II, page 157:

"Our investigation found multiple acts by the President that were capable of exerting undue influence over law enforcement investigations, including the Russian-interference and obstruction investigations. The incidents were often carried out through one-on-one meetings in which the President sought to use his official power outside of usual channels. These actions ranged from efforts to remove the Special Counsel and to reverse the effect of the Attorney General 's recusal; to the attempted use of official power to limit the scope of the investigation; to direct and indirect contacts with witnesses with the potential to influence their testimony."

Mueller does not explicitly say that Congress must now judge the president’s conduct. But he draws a detailed road map for such an exercise, including not just the voluminous evidence he gathered but also the legal reasoning for viewing some of Trump’s actions — including his firing of then-FBI Director James Comey and his attempt to get then-White House Counsel Don McGahn to fire Mueller — as patently illegal.

The Mueller report was released Thursday by Attorney General William Barr, who, in the process, destroyed what was left of his own credibility. Pre-spinning the document before anyone had a chance to read it, Barr parroted Trump's favorite talking point and said Mueller found no "collusion" between the Trump campaign and the Russians. The report, however, says no such thing. It notes that "collusion" is not a federal offense and seeks instead to determine whether there is evidence of conspiracy, which is a statutory crime. Mueller did find such evidence, but not enough to bring criminal charges.

Barr flat-out lied when he said that Mueller’s decision not to charge Trump had nothing to do with the Justice Department opinion that effectively gives immunity to a sitting president. The report states clearly that this opinion has everything to do with Mueller’s choice to lay out the evidence without reaching a conclusion.

Barr said he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein decided to declare the matter of obstruction closed because Trump was understandably "frustrated and angered" at the very existence of the investigation, and thus may not have had the requisite intent to commit a crime. But Barr was confusing two different concepts, motive and intent. Trump's motive for trying to fire Mueller, for example, may well have been anger and frustration. But his legal intent may have been to obstruct justice.

Barr so embarrassed himself that Fox News anchor Chris Wallace seemed appalled. "The attorney general seemed almost to be acting as the counselor for the defense, the counselor for the president, rather than the attorney general, talking about his motives, his emotions," Wallace said. "Really, as I say, making a case for the president."

The report notes that Trump "lambasted" former Attorney General Jeff Sessions when Sessions recused himself from involvement in the Mueller probe, telling him "'you were supposed to protect me' or words to that effect." Barr obviously is determined not to make the same mistake.

Now responsibility shifts to Congress, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has a decision to make.

The Mueller report establishes that the Russians massively interfered with our election and that the Trump campaign cheered and encouraged that hostile act. It lays out ample evidence that Trump obstructed justice. Only Congress can hold the president accountable.

Thus far, Pelosi has resisted any move toward impeachment. Politically convenient or not, that's where Mueller's road map leads.

Eugene Robinson’s email address is eugenerobinson@washpost.com.

A pioneering nonprofit drug company has launched in Utah — and earned one of its founders recognition as one of the “World’s Greatest Leaders” by Fortune magazine.

Intermountain Healthcare CEO Marc Harrison was ranked No. 26 on Fortune’s annual list of 50 of the “World’s Greatest Leaders,” where he is joined by the likes of Bill and Melinda Gates, Robert Mueller and Jordan Peele. Fortune credited Harrison for his work toward solving hospitals’ “struggle for access to essential generic drugs, thwarted by price hikes, shortages, and drug-industry whims.”

To that end, Harrison and others on Thursday cut the ribbon on Civica Rx, a not-for-profit drug company that has brought together at least 900 hospitals nationwide to secure a steady supply of generic medications that have historically been subject to price-gouging and shortages.

"There is no other revolutionary, not-for-profit, generic drug company like us," said Civica CEO Martin VanTrieste at the company's grand opening Thursday at its Lehi headquarters.

Civica is planning to release 14 generic drugs by the end of 2019, with its first two likely to be announced within the next month, VanTrieste said. The drugs will be manufactured by off-site contractors; VanTrieste said the company is "actively exploring options" to build a factory in Utah, though that could take another five years or so.

A more immediate outcome, Civica’s founders hope, will be some added stability in the market for its 14 pilot drugs. There currently are more than 200 drugs on shortage watchlists in the United States.

“Most of these are basic products,” said Erin Fox, a professor of pharmacology at the University of Utah who helps to manage the American Society of Health-Systems Pharmacists’ drug shortage list. Drugs such as sugar solution, epinephrine, Benadryl and saline appear on the list “perennially,” Fox said.

"These are very cheap drugs," Fox said, which leaves few manufacturers interested in producing them. If just one manufacturer has a problem in operations, the few that remain don't have the capacity to produce what hospitals need, Fox said. Then prices go up precipitously.

By securing commitments from hundreds of hospitals, and operating as a not-for-profit, Civica will be able to work with its contracted manufacturers to ensure a reliable supply.

Civica is “organized in such a way that no one can monetize it,” said Intermountain executive and former Utah state Sen. Dan Liljenquist, who said he devised the nonprofit as he learned of “Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli’s price hikes for the antiparasitic drug Daraprim and the skyrocketing cost of EpiPens.

"It was like a light turned on and I could see down the road — this company," Liljenquist said, choking back tears.

Civica has the potential to "disrupt the marketplace," said Gov. Gary Herbert. He noted that on recent surveys, 60 percent of hospitals report difficulties obtaining drugs and 90 percent say they are having to use alternative treatments — often for products whose patents expired decades ago.

For his part, while Harrison insists he is "absolutely not" among the ranks of world leaders like New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern (No. 2), Rohingya activist Kyaw Hla Aung (No. 28), and Apple CEO Tim Cook (No. 14), he's grateful for Fortune's recognition of Civica.

“It’s really a lovely honor but it reflects the work of everybody else,” Harrison said. “If the award recognizes the health care transformation that we’re leading nationally, which I believe we are, it’s only possible with an extremely talented team.”

Utah's basketball program is adding a Texas high school guard, making the Utes' 2019-20 roster even younger.

Brendan Wenzel, a 6-foot-6 player from O'Connor High School in suburban San Antonio, announced his commitment to the Utes on Thursday. He received a release from Texas-El Paso after signing with the Miners in November. After reopening his recruitment, Wenzel reportedly visited Texas and Utah.

Wenzel will be among eight scholarship freshmen in Utah’s program, including redshirt freshmen Lahat Thioune and Naseem Gaskin. Utah’s coaching staff has received no assurance that center Jayce Johnson, who’s in the NCAA transfer portal, will return for his senior season. A source familiar with Johnson’s thinking said the player is unlikely to stay at Utah, amid efforts by coaches and teammates to keep him.

The Utes lost out to West Virginia this week in their pursuit of Texas junior college guard Taz Sherman, but found a guard who was considered one of the top uncommitted players in the Texas class of 2019, in this phase of his recruitment.

Wenzel averaged 24.1 points as a senior, scoring a school-record 42 points against Midland.

When he signed Wenzel in November, UTEP coach Rodney Terry said, “Brendan is a special talent, because he he has great size for the position at 6-6, playing the wing. He has the size and athleticism to defend and rebound at the position, a high IQ for the game and he possesses an elite ability to shoot the basketball. … He is arguably the best shooter in the 2019 class in Texas.”

Gregory Prince’s new book, “Gay Rights and the Mormon Church: Intended Actions, Unintended Consequences,” is the most comprehensive treatment available about the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on LGBTQ issues.

I hope you’ll check out the book, which is now available from the University of Utah Press and from Amazon. Greg will be doing a book signing on May 15 at Weller Book Works in Salt Lake City. In the meantime, though, I was grateful to get a chance to sit down with him for an interview when I was in the Washington, D.C., area, where he lives.

Your book gives step-by-step details about many of the major changes that have happened in the church regarding LGBTQ issues, including the 2008 campaign for Proposition 8 in California. You say that church leaders were surprised by the backlash when the extent of Mormons’ involvement in Prop 8 became known. What was the long-term effect of Prop 8?

The lasting effect was primarily external — it branded the church in the eyes of the public as the homophobic church. Prop 8 became known as “the Mormon proposition.”

But let’s look at the background. Before that, even though the church had been politically active starting in Hawaii in 1993, it was under the radar, and it happened at a time when society as a whole was still homophobic. What Hawaii did, and what Proposition 22 did [in 2000], was to preserve the status quo. So even though the church had a substantial role, it was not the decisive role because the majority of people were already agreeing. There was almost no backlash for either effort.

When Proposition 22 was overturned [in May 2008], things had shifted in two ways. First, for a window of time, same-sex marriage became the new status quo in California. The second was that public sentiment was gradually shifting toward marriage equality. It had not achieved a majority yet, but it was moving in that direction.

So when Proposition 8 passed [in November 2008], it was a different world. More people supported marriage equality, and there were tens of thousands of people who had legally married. Marriage equality had become the new status quo. To take away something that had been legally theirs put it on a different level.

Here’s a factor that people haven’t paid enough attention to: It’s hard to say that somebody dying at 97 had died prematurely, and yet if Gordon B. Hinckley had lived another five months, it would have been a different world. [Hinckley died Jan. 27, 2008.] That’s because he had cautioned his colleagues for years to stay in the background, keep a low profile, etc.

Now he was gone, and when Archbishop George Niederauer wrote to the church asking for help in California, the new Mormon president, Thomas S. Monson, jumped in with enthusiasm. The church sent a delegation of general authorities and public affairs people right after Niederauer sent his letter in early June of 2008. In less than a week, they did their assessment and reported back to Salt Lake, and by the end of June the letter came out [instructing all Latter-day Saints in California to support Proposition 8 with their donations and volunteer hours].

That’s lightning-quick for a bureaucracy to move, which emphasizes how impulsive this decision was. They had not thought it through, probably because they had gotten a pass the first two times around.

By the time the dust had settled after the election, there was enormous pushback against the church. It was immediate, intense and durable. There was also damage inside the church — congregations that were divided, people that were deeply wounded.

In the book you also discuss how the church’s own position on homosexuality has changed over time, from claiming that it was a choice to conceding that it does not appear to be a choice, that some people are born nonheterosexual. I was surprised by the fact that you credit [First Presidency member] Dallin Oaks with having admitted that homosexuality is based in biology.

He has waffled, though. In his 1996 article in the Ensign, he at least opened the door to biology without embracing it. And when he and Lance Wickman did their 2006 interview on the church’s website, he seemed to also.

But in the October 2018 General Conference, he for the first time tried to discredit science: You can’t trust the findings of science; you have to trust only the revealed word of God. I think he is worried about where biology is going, and since he can’t control the message, he is going after the messenger. I don’t know that he is the only voice for homophobia among the brethren, but he is the highest-profile one. In that General Conference, he was the only one who spoke against gay rights. In this month’s [conference], Neil Andersen briefly addressed the subject, but in terms of admiration for LGBT members who were living a celibate life.

When the MormonsandGays.com website came out in 2012, the most remarkable statement on the website was that gay is not a choice. It was immediately clear that the expectation was celibacy, but that was the church’s first real admission that homosexuality is biological. That notwithstanding, the body language and words of some of them suggest that they still think it is a choice, and that people should make the opposite choice and get back in the fold.

What are some of the scientific findings about sexuality and LGBTQ identity?

Biology is more and more speaking to the nature of sexuality in general. It’s complicated by two things. For one thing, there isn’t a “gay gene.” It’s much more complex than that. For another, there are many flavors of sexual expression, both in terms of sexual orientation (who do you go to bed with?) and gender identity (who do you go to bed as?).

Think of a two-axis graph — and in reality it’s probably three or four axes — but each one of those has multiple options, not just two. So you develop a multidimensional matrix, such that sexuality becomes an array, not a spectrum. A spectrum connotes linearity, and sexuality isn’t linear. The term that’s more and more being used is “nonheterosexual” rather than homosexual to account for terms like asexual, intersex or bisexual. Gradually, biology is informing more and more of those flavors.

There is also a birth order effect—each subsequent male birth from the same mother has a higher likelihood of being gay. And that is epigenetic rather than genetic.

It’s complex, and it’s nuanced, but the march of progress is in one direction. In the end, sexual orientation and gender identity are in the brain. Sexual orientation is permanent and can’t be changed. Gender identity is even less understood than sexual orientation. The brethren have been virtually silent about transgender, and I wasn’t able to find anything in church publications even mentioning intersex.

One thing that comes through clearly in the book is that the church seems to take two steps forward and then at least one step back in dealing with LGBTQ issues. Do you see progress overall?

It depends on when in the timeline. Homosexuality first showed up in the handbook in 1968, when “homosexual acts” were denoted as sinful, but during the [church President Spencer W.] Kimball years [1973–1985], just being gay was the sin. That’s when BYU security was staking out gay bars in Salt Lake, and students who were caught there were hauled into the honor office and given the option of either ratting out their friends or being expelled and excommunicated. And you had the specter of conversion therapy, which was practiced on campus. It doesn’t get much darker than that.

By contrast, for over a decade openly gay missionaries have been allowed to serve full-time proselytizing missions, something unthinkable in the Kimball era, when the sin was simply being gay.

So it has not been a straight line of evolution. We started in one place, went to a worse place under Kimball, and then have made some fitful progress since then. With transgender, we’ve actually taken steps backward. There used to be no policy, and then there was a harsh one.

Where were you when you found out about the reversal of the LGBTQ exclusion policy?

I was heading to Utah and was just about to go to the airport. I got an email from a good friend saying there would be an announcement later. When I was on the tarmac, I got a message from a reporter at the L.A. Times who was working on a story. So I was in the air when this all went down, and that was interesting because several years ago I was also flying to Utah the day the policy had been leaked.

I was pleased by the reversal, but there had been so much damage done that I couldn’t be happy. Nobody knows how many people walked away from the church because of this. So it was hard to be jubilant about it. It was like laying a cowpie in the road, stepping in it, then finally stepping out of it. Even if you’ve stepped out of it, you’re not really the same as you were in the first place.

What do you see happening as we move forward?

They’ve constructed an interesting dilemma for themselves. In announcing the reversal, they used language that says they are going to treat homosexual and heterosexual transgressions the same way. Does that mean they’re going to stop excommunicating gays, or start excommunicating heterosexuals? If you do the latter, you’ll thin out the pews.

And they still have not adequately addressed the conundrum of obeying the law of the land as an article of faith, and yet condemning marriages made legal by that law. That question is hovering unanswered.

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

The father of a man who was killed by Salt Lake City police last April is suing Salt Lake City and its police department, saying the officer who shot the 32-year-old didn’t act like a reasonable officer would in that situation.

The lawsuit alleges the officer — who has not been identified — was not properly trained to handle individuals in a mental health crisis, as Delorean Pikyavit was that day, and that the city and department haven’t done enough to prepare for those situations. That “failure," the lawsuit alleges, has “created an atmosphere and culture within law enforcement in the Salt Lake City area wherein deadly force is improperly used, and later ratified.”

Salt Lake City spokesman Matthew Rojas declined to comment on the pending litigation. Salt Lake City’s police department has received national attention because of its focus on de-escalation tactics and training after controversial deaths at the hands of police in 2014 and 2015.

For more than an hour on April 17, 2018, a police negotiator tried to get Pikyavit to come outside of his girlfriend’s home. The girlfriend had called police earlier because she and Pikyavit had gotten into a fight, and he had held a pair of scissors to his neck.

He finally came outside, holding a half-pair of scissors and a knife, yelling, “Shoot me!” Less than two minutes after he stepped onto a porch outside the home, and after dropping one of the weapons, an officer did.

In body camera footage released after the shooting, an officer can be heard telling another to stop shouting commands at Pikyavit and to let the negotiator talk.

Attorneys for Pikyavit’s father point to this in the lawsuit, saying officers were yelling “multiple, inconsistent commands” and that many were “difficult to distinguish from the overall noise and confusion.”

It states that an officer telling another to “let the negotiator talk” is proof that that officer acted unreasonably and excessively. The lawsuit also notes that Pikyavit “had shown substantial steps in complying with officers’ commands” by leaving the home and discarding one of the weapons he was holding.

The lawsuit accuses the shooting officer of excessive force and battery and Salt Lake City and its police department of failing to train its officers, negligence and other claims, including wrongful death.

The allegations, the lawsuit states, “are more than momentary lapses in judgment, thoughtlessness, or mere accident, and go beyond negligence; they are evidence of a more pervasive, overarching, and systematic deprivation of citizens’ civil and constitutional rights that plagues the law enforcement and oversight bodies of Salt Lake City.”

Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill has not yet determined if his office will file criminal charges against the police officer who killed Pikyavit. That officer’s name hasn’t been released.

In a statement, Neil Pikyavit’s attorney Travis R. Marker said, “On the day Delorean Pikyavit lost his life, his father and his two young children were left with a number of questions. Those questions have remained unanswered. Delorean’s family hopes that by filing this action, it will help them get the answers they deserve, and the answers that any of us would want in the event a loved one’s life is taken by police.”

Last week, 91% of you knew about an Instagram account that’s taking aim at Brigham Young University’s Honor Code Office, but only 63% knew about an increased concern in legalized marijuana leading to tobacco use. Think you kept up with the news this week? Take our quiz to find out. A new one will post every Friday morning. You can find previous quizzes here. If you’re using The Salt Lake Tribune mobile app, click here.

For clarification and fact checking — but hopefully not cheating — purposes, you can find the stories referenced in each question here: Question 1, Question 2, Question 3, Question 4, Question 5, Question 6, Question 7, Question 8, Question 9, Question 10, Question 11 and Question 12.

The small Heber Valley Airport attracts the most complaints of any airfield in the nation about fuel prices, service and fees, according to the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association. And it says Heber City just took action that could help cement the poor performance review perpetually.

The pilots association complains that the City Council just reversed earlier moves that had aimed to allow more competition that could have dropped prices and improved service. The about-face came after lawsuits and complaints were filed against the city by OK3 AIR — which currently is the only company that has a lease to provide services there.

Pilots complain the city not only dropped new rules and reverted to old policies that would make any new competition difficult — such as requiring new companies to lease nearly 350,000 square feet instead of just 25,000 — but also passed a resolution earlier this month that prohibits any new commercial development until an airport master plan is updated.

“It is not appropriate for a master plan development to serve as an excuse or mask for allowing an unlawful exclusive right enjoyed by a monopoly … to continue,” wrote Ken Mead, general counsel of the pilots association.

The pilots’ association argues that federal rules do not allow grant-receiving airports to have, as a matter of convenience, only one fixed-based operation to provide services.

“Yet that is precisely what is occurring here,” Mead wrote. “The airport, out of a desire to ward off or soften the impact of lawsuits, is choosing as a matter of convenience to permit a single FBO [fixed-base operator] to perpetuate its monopoly position and prices.”

Heber City Manager Matthew Brower — who was sent the letter from the national pilots’ group — did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

After complaints about prices and service at the airport, the city in 2017 had revised minimum performance standards to seek more competition — and made provisions for a stand-alone, self-service facility. It also issued a request for proposals for a second fixed-base operator. But the city has now rescinded those actions.

Federal court documents show that OK3 AIR argues its lease does not allow the city to make the performance standards changes without permission from that company — and also argued the changes would decrease safety at the airport, and would have financially damaged the company.

In court filings this month, OK3 AIR’s attorneys wrote, “While the City’s rescission was a step in the right direction, OK3 AIR’s dispute with the city regarding the meaning and interpretation” of its lease continues and “will continue to have a material effect on the parties’ relationship and on OK3 AIR’s enterprise value until it is resolved” by the court.