The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has released a series of videos intended to help keep its missionaries safe out in the scary world.

It makes sense, given that many if not most missionaries are barely out of puberty when they go. They have little worldly experience when it comes to crime, appropriate behavior between sexes, or even making their own beds.

I was 20 years old when called but still emotionally about half that. I knew it, too. Which is why I entered the mission home in Salt Lake City with a massive inferiority complex.

Here I was, suddenly surrounded by hundreds of future apostles and stake presidents, all of them firm in their knowledge of the gospel. Then there was me, a wretch who wasn’t long off a more than passing association with street drugs.

Within the first hour, I was ordered to get another major haircut, find a “less hippie-looking” necktie, and send a pocketknife home.

It wasn’t until I got to the Language Training Mission (now called the Missionary Training Center) in Provo, where, after spending an insufferable amount of time (72 hours) surrounded by the Lord’s elect, that I came to understand how much danger I was in.

There wasn’t a single person in my district who understood the real world better than the dumbest guy in my Army basic training platoon. We were children being sent to some of the worst places in the world and expected to take care of ourselves.

It didn’t occur to me that my own pre-mission life experiences — as unsavory as they might have been — would help keep me safe on a mission.

Uruguay in 1973 was a harrowing place full of murder, revolution, violence and anti-American sentiment. One July afternoon, a massive street disturbance erupted a few blocks from where we were knocking on doors.

In that moment, the Holy Ghost whispered to me for the first time in my life. It sounded exactly like the rattle and clank of armor.

Elder Lekker had never heard a tank before, but I had. So even though I was the junior missionary, we hearkened unto the spirit and went the hell home, where we spent two days listening to a city racked by gunfire.

My disgraceful gift of tongues also helped keep me safe. Having lived in Spain as a child, and Southern California for years after that, I had a language leg up on never-take-no-for-an-answer missionaries.

One night, I had to explain to an overly superior district leader what a man threatened to do after Elder Butz told him that Christ wouldn’t bless him if he wouldn’t listen to our message.

Me • “He says your mom is a whore and he’s going to cram dog [stuff] down your throat if we don’t leave right now.”

Elder Butz • “How do you even know that?”

Me • “I’m leaving. Bon appétit.”

Elder Butz • “Wait. What does that mean?”

I confess that I had to rely on other missionaries when it came to teaching the gospel according to us. I’m still grateful to the ones who had the patience to help me in that regard. But I’d like to think my own contribution also helped them.

One night, we came home to find our front door lock broken. Burglaries were common in an impoverished country, and hungry criminals knew where the money was. My companion started to rush inside to assess our loss. When I stopped him, he wanted to know why. I said it was because the bad guys were still inside.

Him • “What makes you think so?”

Me • “Because I would be.”

Sure enough, as soon as the cops showed up, we heard a clanging and crashing as whoever took off through the back door.

Except for bike wrecks, dog bites, intestinal disorders, and a couple of companions I would have killed had the Lord turned his back for a minute, I had a relatively safe mission.

Ironically, a lot of it was based on past experiences that might have prevented me from going in the first place.

Robert Kirby is The Salt Lake Tribune’s humor columnist. Follow Kirby on Facebook.

Seoul, South Korea • South Korea and the U.S. are eliminating their massive springtime military drills and replacing them with smaller exercises in what they call an effort to support diplomacy aimed at resolving the North Korean nuclear crisis.

The decision announced by both countries Sunday came after President Donald Trump complained about the cost of joint drills even as his high-stakes second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un collapsed last week.

The drills' cancellation is an olive branch to North Korea, which has viewed them as an invasion rehearsal. But some experts say it will likely weaken the allies' military readiness amid worries that tensions erupt again in the wake of the failed nuclear summit in Vietnam.

The Pentagon said in a release that the U.S. and South Korean defense chiefs decided to conclude the Key Resolve and Foal Eagle series of exercises. It said the allies agreed to maintain firm military readiness through newly designed command post exercises and revised field training programs.

Acting U.S. Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan and South Korean Defense Minister Jeong Kyeong-doo "made clear that the alliance decision to adapt our training program reflected our desire to reduce tension and support our diplomatic efforts to achieve complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula in a final, fully verified manner," the statement said.

Seoul's Defense Ministry released a similar statement.

Jeong expressed his regrets at the lack of agreement at the Trump-Kim summit but still hopes that Washington and Pyongyang will continue negotiations, the South Korean statement said.

The new training, dubbed "Dong Maeng," which means "alliance" in English, starts Monday and runs through March 12. It will focus on "strategic operational and tactical aspects of general military operations on the Korean Peninsula," South Korea's military and the U.S.-South Korean combined forces command said in a joint statement.

According to U.S. officials, the new training will be done in smaller drills, tabletop exercises and simulations, and will involve smaller units such as battalions and companies rather than massive formations involving thousands of troops, as they had in the past.

Officials said the Pentagon would focus on smaller exercises and mission essential tasks, which include the ability to integrate airstrikes and the use of other weapons systems, drones, surveillance assets, logistics and communications.

In November, a month before he resigned as defense secretary, Jim Mattis disclosed that the U.S. and South Korea would scale back and tone down the spring exercises. He said the aim was to avoid setting back diplomacy over North Korea's nuclear weapons. He described it as a reorganization of the exercises, not an end to maneuvers on the peninsula.

Trump has long complained about the cost of military drills with South Korea.

After his second summit with Kim ended without any agreement in Hanoi on Thursday, Trump spoke again about the cost of annual military drills. "It's a very, very expensive thing and we do have to think about that, too," Trump told reporters.

Following his first summit with Kim in Singapore last June, Trump caught many in the United States and South Korea by surprise by suspending the allies' summertime military drills. He called joint drills "very provocative" and "massively expensive."

The United States and South Korea also have since suspended a few other smaller joint drills.

Trump has also pushed South Korea to increase its financial contribution for the cost of the 28,500 U.S. troops stationed in the country as deterrence against North Korea. He previously threatened to withdraw troops from South Korea and Japan if those countries refused to pay more.

The end of the springtime war games will benefit North Korea, which has responded with its own costly military exercises and weapons tests, including firing a new intermediate-range missile over Japan in 2017.

North Korea's state media on Sunday didn't immediately comment on the drills' cancellation.

After the Hanoi summit, the United States and North Korea blamed each other for the breakdown of the talks. But both sides stopped short of pulling out of negotiations.

The Korean Peninsula remains in a technical state of war because the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.

Logan • While Utah State fans filled with floor inside the Dee Glen Smith Spectrum, soaking in the program’s first win over a Top 25 team since 2007, tempers flared in the surrounding tunnels and hallways Saturday night in Logan.

After Utah State (24-6, 14-3) topped No. 12-ranked Nevada 81-76 to take over first place in the Mountain West Conference, various media outlets captured videos Wolf Pack players and coaches getting into verbal altercations with uniformed police officers and what appears to be USU staffers. Nevada star forward Jordan Caroline was seen punching a fire extinguisher case in the hallway and had to be restrained by teammates.

It still remains a bit unclear what set off these incidents, but ESPN’s Michael Eaves reported Saturday night that a source informed him that a Utah State assistant coach allegedly directed profanity at Caroline after the game, perhaps setting off the chain of events. Nevada coach Eric Musselman and Nevada staffers were also captured angrily telling uniformed police offers that fans were touching Wolf Pack players as they tried to make their way into the tunnel and toward the locker room once the game ended.

Prior to that point, the videos posted show an officer scream at the Nevada staff and players to get into their locker room. Nevada staffers responded by wondering why the officers didn’t stop the fans from touching the players after the game ended.

Below is a video of the fracas from KUTV. WARNING: GRAPHIC LANGUAGE

Wow! Emotions running high after the Utah State vs Nevada game. This is incredible. @KUTV2News (WARNING: STRONG LANGUAGE) pic.twitter.com/mFl7wIP6W9

— Jake Edmonds (@JakeKUTV) March 3, 2019

No Nevada coaches or players were made available for comment after the game.

USU athletic director John Hartwell released a statement, saying the school and conference would begin getting to the bottom of the incident.

“After being notified of an incident in the hallway of the locker rooms after the completion of the game, I have been consulting with Mountain West senior associate commissioner Dan Butterly, who was in attendance at the game, and Nevada deputy AD Rory Hickock, who was also in attendance at the game,” Hartwell said. “In addition, I have spoken by phone with Nevada AD Doug Knuth and we will continue to gather information, including surveillance videos of exactly what happened and work closely with the Mountain West Conference and the University of Nevada to determine what started the situation and how we are going to deal with those involved.”

Added a Nevada spokesperson Saturday night: “We are working with officials from the Mountain West Conference and Utah State to gather more information about the events that occurred this evening in Logan.”

When asked about fans storming the court — continually a hot-button topic around college basketball — USU head coach Craig Smith said the No. 1 concern is always in regards to safety, but added it’s an added element that makes college athletics unique.

“You’ve been on both sides of that, where you lose a tough game and they’re storming the court and to me it’s always been like, you know what, you’re college students and doing all that stuff, obviously you never want anyone to get hurt,” he said. “Storming the court, I think that’s kind of part of the deal.”

If USU beats Colorado State on the road Tuesday, it guarantees a share of the Mountain West Conference regular season title. Nevada needs to win its last two games to be that school that splits the crown with the Aggies.

Ballet West’s version of the Christmas classic “The Nutcracker” will mark its 75th anniversary this year — and will be one of the highlights of the dance troupe’s 2019-2020 season.

The Salt Lake City-based dance company announced its new season Tuesday, touting a rarely performed work by George Balanchine, the return of a popular love story, and the staging of a Shakespeare classic.

“This will be a season of history, mystery, glamour and drama,” Ballet West artistic director Adam Sklute said in a statement.

The show that will draw the biggest audiences, as it does every year, is “The Nutcracker.”

This year’s production of the holiday favorite — set to run from Dec. 6 to Christmas Eve — will mark 75 years since Ballet West’s late founder Willam Christensen staged the first full-length version, in 1944 with the San Francisco Ballet. Mr. C, as everyone called Christensen, returned to Utah in 1955 to open the first accredited ballet school at the University of Utah. He continued his “Nutcracker” tradition at the school, and then at Ballet West when the company began in 1963.

The production has been praised by critics outside Utah. In 2010, The New York Times sent its dance critic, Alastair Macaulay, across the country to watch two dozen productions of “The Nutcracker," and he rated Ballet West’s “the best discovery of my ‘Nutcracker’ marathon.” Ballet West has taken the show to the Kennedy Center in Washington eight times, most recently last year.

The show has undergone revisions through the decades, most recently a $3 million project to create new costumes and sets, completed in 2017. Through each update, though, Mr. C’s choreography has remained intact.

As part of the anniversary celebrations, Ballet West is collaborating with BYUtv to produce a broadcast version of the ballet, to air on Dec. 1. The dance company restaged its version of “The Nutcracker” at the Capitol Theatre over three days in mid-February, during a break in its recent production of “Swan Lake.” The TV special will also feature documentary elements, including interviews with the creative team.

Ballet West will start its season with “Balanchine’s Ballets Russes,” Oct. 25-Nov. 2, a trio of works choreographed by the legendary George Balanchine, and marking the 110th anniversary of the founding of Sergei Diaghilev’s revolutionary dance company.

The program begins with the U.S. premiere of “The Song of the Nightingale,” a reconstruction of Balanchine’s first collaboration with the composer Igor Stravinsky. The work, which tells of a songbird healing a Chinese emperor, in its original version featured sets and costumes by the artist Henri Matisse.

Also on the opening program: “Apollo,” Balanchine’s second work with Stravinsky, based on Greek mythology; and “Prodigal Son,” based on the Gospel of Luke, with music by Sergei Prokoviev, and Balanchine’s last work before Ballets Russes disbanded and he left for America.

The romantic ghost story “Giselle” returns for a Valentine’s Day run, Feb. 7-15. Sklute first staged his “reconceived” version of the classic work in 2014, and it was a hit with Utah audiences.

Two works will be paired in a show running April 17-25: “The Dream,” choreographer Sir Frederick Ashton’s 1964 retelling of William Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” to music by Felix Mendelssohn; and “Bolero,” a work by Ballet West’s resident choreographer Nicolo Fonte, set to Maurice Ravel’s famously rhythmic score.

Ballet West will once again play host to the World Choreographic Festival, May 14-16. Singapore Dance Theatre and the Royal New Zealand Ballet will be the visiting troupes. Ballet West plans to premiere two works by choreographers Jennifer Archibald and Matthew Neenan.

Ballet West II will perform another world premiere, “Snow White,” set to a score by Edvard Grieg by in-house choreographers Pamela Robinson and Peggy Dolkas. The work, part of the Family Classics Series, will be performed three times, on Nov. 8 and 9. The show is a fleeting 90 minutes, and includes guided narration to help younger audience members along.

Something else that’s new at Ballet West: The company’s logo. The troupe Wednesday unveiled its new logo, created by in-house graphics designer Alex Moya.

“I looked at the differences and similarities between pointe and flat shoes, and then made abstractions of them to make shapes that suggest the B and the W,” Moya said in a statement. “I also wanted to communicate a sense of theatricality through the implied stage lights of the W.”

“It was time to have a logo which represents both the history and the future of this bold and visionary company,” said Sara Neal, Ballet West’s chief marketing officer.

All of next season’s shows except one will be performed at the Capitol Theatre, 50 W. 200 South, Salt Lake City. The exception is the World Choreographic Festival, which will take place at the Rose Wagner Center for the Performing Arts, 138 W. 300 South, Salt Lake City.

Individual tickets will go on sale in September; subscription packages and season memberships are on sale now.

———

Ballet West’s 2019-2020 season

Here is a schedule of Ballet West’s 2019-2020 season. All shows will be performed at the Capitol Theatre, unless otherwise noted:

• Oct. 25-Nov. 2 • “Balanchine’s Ballets Russes,” featuring three works: “The Song of the Nightingale,” “Apollo” and “Prodigal Son.”
• Nov. 8-9 • Ballet West II’s “Snow White.” (Not part of Ballet West’s main season.)
• Dec. 6-24 • “The Nutcracker.”
• Feb. 7-15, 2020 • “Giselle.”
• April 17-25, 2020 • “The Dream” and “Bolero.”
• May 14-16, 2020 • 2020 World Choreographic Festival (at the Rose Wagner Center for the Performing Arts).

In the coming weeks and months, there will be an air of uncertainty hanging over the meetings and worship services of Utah’s United Methodist churches as members await the fallout of this week’s international vote to maintain the faith’s ban on same-sex weddings and ordination of LGBTQ clergy.

“We are disappointed with the vote,” said Pastor Dennis Shaw of Hilltop United Methodist in Sandy. “My congregation, by and large, wanted to see a change; they wanted to see the exclusionary language go."

More than half of the 800 delegates at the church’s special session in St. Louis voted in favor of the so-called Traditional Plan, which called for keeping the LGBTQ bans and enforcing them more strictly.

Had an alternative proposal — called the One Church Plan — been approved, it would have left decisions about same-sex marriage and the ordination of LGBTQ clergy up to regional bodies and would have removed language from the church’s law book asserting that “the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching."

“Essentially [we are] where we were before General Conference,” said Shaw, who pointed out that the UMC is a global denomination. About 43 percent of the delegates in St. Louis were from foreign countries, mostly Africa, and those representatives overwhelmingly supported the LGBTQ bans.

“It’s not who we are in the Methodist Church in the United States," Shaw said, “and it’s certainly not who we are in the Methodist Church in Utah. It’s problematic."

Shaw said his congregation believes Christ’s message is more inclusive. “Jesus was touching the lepers, and reaching out to those on the margins of society,” he said. “We don’t see [Jesus’ message] as exclusive; we see it in an inclusive way.”

Formed in a merger in 1968, the United Methodist Church reports about 12.6 million members worldwide, including nearly 7 million in the U.S. While other mainline Protestant denominations, such as the Episcopal and Presbyterian (U.S.A.) churches, have embraced gay-friendly practices, the UMC still officially bars them, even though acts of defiance by pro-LGBTQ clergy have multiplied and talk of a breakup has intensified.

In recent years, the church’s enforcement of its LGBTQ bans has been inconsistent. Some clergy members have conducted same-sex marriages or come out as gay from the pulpit, The Associated Press reported. In some cases, the church has filed charges against clergy who violated the bans, yet the denomination’s Judicial Council has ruled against the imposition of mandatory penalties, which typically called for an unpaid suspension of at least one year.

The Traditional Plan would require stricter and more consistent enforcement.

The Rev. Elizabeth McVicker, pastor at Salt Lake City’s First United Methodist Church and Centenary United Methodist churches, attended St. Louis conference. She said that if any churches were to defect, they would be the conservative ones — not the progressive or centrist churches in the U.S.

She said the conservatives already have put “major pieces in place” to start a new denomination called the Wesleyan Covenant Association.

“Their effort to break us apart backfired,” she said. “It really galvanized the progressives and the centrists and gave us more resolve.”

Tracy Hausman, pastor at Park City Community Church, has received more than 80 emails and texts from congregants concerned about the vote and what it means for them.

“Let me assure you that nothing will change when it comes to our church’s commitment to work for love and inclusion of all people within our congregation, our community and around the world,” she wrote in a letter posted on the church website.

Rusty Butler, senior pastor at Salt Lake City’s Christ United Methodist Church, said his congregation shares similar concerns.

“A lot of people are feeling grief,” he said. “I certainly am, especially for the young people. The Traditional Plan is simply more punitive than what we have been living with" for decades.

Butler said now that the church’s legislative branch has taken action, the vote will be considered by UMC Judicial Council, which will deem whether it is constitutional. That should happen in the next few weeks. “At that point in time," he said, “local churches will have a better idea about what will unfold.”

No matter the outcome, Butler said his church will continue to be a safe haven for LGBTQ members. Butler wore rainbow colors — an LGBTQ symbol of pride — to services Sunday and several congregants did as well to show their support.

“We will be public in our resistance to the idea that LGBTQ people are less than,” he said. “And we will continue to do same-sex weddings and unions.”

“You will be haunted by Three Spirits.”

— Jacob Marley’s ghost, in “A Christmas Carol,” by Charles Dickens

The spirit from the past weighed a lot more than a ghost. And, unlike Marley, it was both expected and appreciated.

It was a package, tall and very thin. Inside was a large homemade picket sign. On one side, in very large block letters, “THE F-- RAG,” referring to an anti-gay slur. On the other, in similarly bold lettering, “RAPE OF THE TRUTH.” Each carried a citation to an appropriate verse from the Bible.

More important to me, though, were a few scribbled, faded words from an old friend.

“5-16-93 To George Pyle, Best wishes to a lover of the First Amendment. - Fred Phelps”

Yes. That Fred Phelps. If you don’t recall, Phelps and members of his Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka were known far and wide for a time as the horrid people who picketed funerals.

Their holy mission was to inform the world that the AIDS plague that was then raging across the world — as well as wars, hurricanes, airplane crashes and the odd heart attack — represented God’s judgment against a society that was increasingly becoming tolerant of what we now call LGBTQ folks and their relationships.

One day, Phelps and his congregation (almost entirely his children, in-laws and grandchildren) added a side trip to the sidewalk in front of the offices of The Salina Journal. A newspaper that had, under my editorship, been outspokenly in favor of gay rights and marriage equality.

A brave reporter asked Phelps if she could have that sign. For me. Fred gladly obliged.

Before Phelps lost his mind, he had been sort of a friend of mine. He had built a reputation as a civil rights attorney, standing up for the downtrodden. He ran for governor a couple of times, mostly on a platform of slashing taxes by doing away with all the bits of state and local government devoted to assessing and collecting taxes. (We did the math. It didn’t add up.)

Fred’s health and influence faded. Some of this family members left his tribe to become normal people, others because they thought the old man had gone soft. In 2014, at the age of 84, he died. And was memorialized in Time magazine as “a colossal jerk.”

Haunting my present is the ghost of The Salina Journal. It was sold some months ago to a rapacious devourer of such properties called Gatehouse Media. Aka, Guthouse Media, in honor of the many people it has fired, leaving the communities they operate in very poorly served.

A few of the hard-working journalists who put out The Journal when I was there are still on the staff. Or maybe not. I can’t be altogether sure because nobody is bothering to keep their online staff roster up to date.

On their way out the door, a couple of veteran journalists — both still quite young in my mind’s eye — picked up a few souvenirs. Including the Fred Phelps sign. Which, for some odd reason, did not fit the decor of either of their homes. So they graciously sent it to me.

So, now, we need a third spirit.

Oh. I know. The future credibility of Chris Stewart.

Utah’s 2nd District member of Congress has become alarmed by the number of people who style themselves as “socialists” who are not only getting themselves elected to Congress but mounting what appear to be credible runs for the presidency. His response has been to create an “anti-socialism caucus” in the House and to deliver to The Tribune a commentary outlining the reasons for his concern.

Said essay was a total disaster of false equivalencies and proof certain that Stewart — and anyone else who joins his He-Man Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Haters Club — wouldn’t know “socialism” if it fell from the sky, landed on his nose and bit him.

He is confused enough to accept the word of now-dead leaders of Cuba and the old USSR that their regimes were socialist, when they were actually about as Marxist as the Spanish Inquisition was Christlike. He talks up the robust, and completely democratic, welfare states of Northern Europe as a sort of Schrodinger’s Socialism, free and oppressive at the same time.

What is it that the new generation of American socialists wants? For us to heed the regretful words of Jacob Marley, who, from beyond the grave, regretted spending too much time at the office.

“Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business.”

If Stewart can understand that, we can talk. If not, well, maybe he can autograph an anti-socialist picket sign for me on his way out.

George Pyle, the editorial page editor of The Salt Lake Tribune, wishes he had had the nerve to do a Bugs Bunny kisses Elmer Fudd on Fred Phelps all those years ago. gpyle@sltrib.com

Twitter, @debatestate

Boulder, Colo. • Asking the Utah basketball team to deliver a seventh road win in Pac-12 play probably was too much. The immediate issue is whether winning their last two home games also is too ambitious for the Utes.

“Our biggest thing is, just go home and defend home court,” senior guard Sedrick Barefield said after Saturday’s 71-63 loss at Colorado.

That would defy Utah’s trend. The visits of USC (Thursday) and UCLA (Saturday) to the Huntsman Center offer the Utes one last chance to sweep a Pac-12 homestand for the first time this season. Such an achievement would guarantee Utah (15-13, 9-7) a top-four finish and a first-round bye in the conference tournament in Las Vegas.

Because of the Utes’ home-court performance and the packed standings, the other extreme demands to be discussed. How far would the Utes fall if they’re swept by the Los Angeles schools? The No. 10 seed is unlikely, but just about any other placement is in play for the Utes, who are tied with Oregon State and UCLA for third place, one game ahead of three other teams.

ESPN’s analytics suggest a split for Utah this week. Depending on the tiebreakers, that might be sufficient for a top-four finish — especially if the win comes against UCLA.

The Utes could have helped themselves Saturday, when they lost at Colorado to finish their conference road schedule with a 6-3 record. Utah shot 5 of 26 from 3-point range, even though few attempts were forced or tightly contested. Most were generated by passes from inside, and players were not often having to create their own shots to beat the 30-second clock. They just kept missing.

Utah will need shots to fall this week against teams it beat on the road in decidedly different fashion in early February. The Utes held on at USC after building a 20-point lead in the first half, then rallied from 22 points down in the last 12 minutes at UCLA.

Ute guard Sedrick Barefield, always cooperative, after the loss at Colorado. pic.twitter.com/ULzLt3sayW

— Kurt Kragthorpe (@tribkurt) March 3, 2019

Three takeaways

• If the Utes finish 11-7 in Pac-12 play, this season has to be considered a success and would bolster the belief that coach Larry Krystkowiak’s teams improve as they go along. If they end up 9-9, after being 8-4 in mid-February, that would make the season a disappointment. A 10-8 mark would be subject to debate. That’s how much is at stake this week.

“We know how big these games are, especially us seniors, and the younger guys trying to send us out on the right note,” Barefield said.

• Anecdotally, the Utes always seem to start slowly. They trailed Colorado 8-0, although they scored the next nine points. The season’s numbers, according to Krystkowiak, say Utah’s worst stretch is the last five minutes of the first half. That was true Saturday. The Utes started that segment down by five points, got within four, then gave up the last five points as Colorado took a 35-26 lead.

Donnie Tillman's missed 3-pointer and Timmy Allen's offensive foul resulted in empty possessions, while the Buffaloes got two free throws and a buzzer-beating 3-pointer.

• It was not a great weekend for the current or future Utes. Incoming freshmen were favored to win state championships, but center Matt Van Komen’s Pleasant Grove team lost to rival American Fork in the Class 6A title game and guard Rylan Jones’ Olympus team lost to eventual champion Corner Canyon in the 5A semifinals.

Player of the week

Allen. His return to action was imperfect, as he had four turnovers in his first action after missing two games with a back injury, but he generally looked good. The Utes beat Washington State without him, but imagine Saturday’s outcome if Allen had remained sidelined. Utah outscored Colorado by one point in the 29 minutes Allen played; the Buffaloes had a 15-point edge in the 12 minutes that Riley Battin played.

Allen posted 11 points, three rebounds, three assists and three steals. He made a rare 3-pointer, going 1 of 2 on a day when his teammates were 4 of 24.

Play of the week

Tillman’s consecutive 3-pointers. Those shots came after the Utes started 1 of 13 from 3-point range and pulled them within 30-26, before they faded at the end of the half.

Looking ahead

This will be a pivotal week for the legacies of senior guards Parker Van Dyke and Barefield. Two victories would give them a nice ending at the Huntsman Center, where the Utes have lacked much of a home-court aura lately.

Provo • Last year, spring football practices were all about installing a new offense at BYU. That was expected, because Jeff Grimes had arrived from LSU to replace Ty Detmer as offensive coordinator, and almost all of the other offensive coaches were also new.

This year, coaches will focus on building depth, and identifying which players have the physical and mental toughness to help them in the fall.

Practices begin Monday and run through March 28. As was reported Thursday, the Cougars will conduct their spring scrimmage on March 23 at Provo High’s football stadium because LaVell Edwards Stadium is undergoing renovations.

“We will do some things differently than we have ever done them before,” BYU coach Kalani Sitake told BYUtv last week. “It will cause a lot of our guys to be in an uncomfortable position. But we need to get them out of the comfort zone and into the growth zone, and the learning zone. And in order to do that, there is going to be a little bit of discomfort.”

Asked to be more specific, Sitake said players who normally have been reticent to speak up and become leaders will be encouraged to do so, after the 2018 team that went 7-6 and defeated Western Michigan 49-17 in the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl seemed to lack player leadership at crucial times during the season.

“We are trying to get as many leaders on the team as possible,” Sitake said.

As for having the spring game across the street on property that BYU purchased a few years ago for $25 million, Sitake said the school “looked at a lot of different places” to conduct the game before settling on what BYU is calling the west campus field.

“We will add some bleachers and try to pack the house,” he said. “We will try to make the best of it.”

Sitake said that sophomore Zach Wilson is “obviously the starting quarterback,” but reiterated that the Potato Bowl MVP won’t throw in camp after having shoulder surgery in January. Sitake said Wilson “should be ready” to throw when preseason camp begins in late July or early August.

The backup QB race is wide open. Passing game coordinator and quarterbacks coach Aaron Roderick said in February that redshirt freshman Jaren Hall (who is playing baseball this spring), redshirt sophomore Joe Critchlow, senior Beau Hoge (a onetime running back) and redshirt freshman Baylor Romney are the main competitors for that spot.

Sitake said former Orem QB Gunnar Legas will also be in the mix, along with redshirt freshman Stacey Conner and junior Hayden Griffits.

The coach said that Wilson has already been asked to mentor and teach some of the other QBs and players, much like Tanner Mangum did last spring when he couldn’t participate in the contact drills and scrimmages as he recovered from an Achilles injury. Wilson is especially good at preparing for games, Sitake said.

“It is a good opportunity for Zach to teach and learn as much as he can,” Sitake said. “He will be asked to teach his competition. … It will be a good humbling experience for him, and he’s all about it.”

New offensive line coach Eric Mateos will step in for Ryan Pugh, who left Provo after just one season to become Troy’s offensive coordinator. He inherits a solid group, led by sophomores Brady Christensen and James Empey and juniors Tristen Hoge, Kieffer Longson and Chandon Herring.

Defensively, the Cougars will look to replace mainstays Corbin Kaufusi, Sione Takitaki and Michael Shelton and several backup linebackers who had made that position a strength of the team.

The Cougars open the season on Aug. 29 at LES against Utah looking to avenge November’s 35-27 loss after leading the Utes 27-7 late in the third quarter.

“The experience we had in that Utah game last year is really motivating our guys to get ready for this year,” Sitake said.

After winning consecutive games that they weren’t supposed to, can the Utah Jazz win the ones they’re expected to?

The rest of the season’s schedule is shockingly favorable for Utah, with the team predicted to win the next 17 games and 19 of the next 20 overall for the rest of the season.

FiveThirtyEight publishes winning probabilities for every team for every remaining game on its website, using its game prediction model CARMELO. And if you believe it — to be honest, the results scan as pretty reasonable — then the Jazz should have a remarkably downhill slope for the rest of the season.

In only three of the remaining games will the Jazz face an opponent that holds an above-.500 record: the Oklahoma City Thunder on March 11 at home, the Denver Nuggets on April 9 at home, and the Los Angeles Clippers on April 10 in L.A. But thanks to the home advantage — worth three to six points, according to various analysts — the Jazz are favored in both games at Vivint Smart Home Arena.

The only game the Jazz aren’t favored in is an April 7 away game against the Los Angeles Lakers, for which FiveThirtyEight says the Jazz have “just” a 48 percent chance of winning. But given the Lakers’ recent form, including losses to the Memphis Grizzlies, Atlanta Hawks and Phoenix Suns, their season might be done by then.

It is, by wide agreement, and perhaps by some distance, the easiest schedule remaining in the NBA.

When asked about their remaining schedule, the Jazz mostly say the right kind of things — that they’ll have to take it “one game at a time” to get value out of their schedule. Donovan Mitchell, for example, acknowledges that the Jazz have played well over the course of their current four-game winning streak.

“We’ve taken it to an even greater level. We’ve done it four times, but I don’t know where we are in the standings,” Mitchell said. “You have to continue to do this every game, just like last year.”

About those standings: They look pretty promising, too. After Saturday’s win over the Milwaukee Bucks, the Jazz stand just two games away from the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Portland Trail Blazers, who are tied for the No. 3 seed. FiveThirtyEight predicts the Jazz will finish with a 50-32 record, with a 14-6 finish to the season in the remaining 20 games. That’s also the record ESPN’s Basketball Power Index simulator, which runs the rest of the season 10,000 times, sees as most likely for the Jazz.

In both simulations, the Jazz tie for the No. 3 seed, behind the Golden State Warriors and Denver Nuggets. In FiveThirtyEight’s simulation, the Jazz tie with the Houston Rockets, a tiebreaker they’ve already lost, bumping them down to No. 4. In ESPN’s, the tie is with Portland. That season series finished at 2-2, so the next tiebreaker is division record. Right now, the Jazz have a 6-7 record against the rest of the Northwest, while the Blazers have gone just 4-8 in those games.

According to the win probability model at Inpredict, the most likely seed for the Jazz is the No. 3 seed. They have a 32 percent chance at that, and a 25 percent chance at the No. 4 seed. For the truly optimistic, there’s a 15 percent chance at the No. 2 seed. Sure, there’s a six-game distance between the Jazz and Nuggets now, but Denver has 13 games remaining against above-.500 teams, not just three. Thanks to their four-game winning streak, there’s a projected 72 percent chance of home-court advantage in the first round for the Jazz.

It’s been an up-and-down season for Utah, but the schedule sets up for the Jazz to achieve their regular-season goals.

“I don’t see any limits for us. We want to aim at the top and show every day that we can beat the best teams in the league,” Rudy Gobert said. “Now, it’s up to us to become one.”

Houston • Last season, Real Salt Lake could have been described as a middle-of-the-road goal-scoring team. The 55 goals it scored wasn’t the worst performance in the league — or even just the Western Conference — but it wasn’t the best.

It’s arguable, however, that the 55 number is better than advertised because RSL played without a so-called true striker in 2018. So coming into this season, with the signing of Sam Johnson and the bevy of attacking options that coach Mike Petke has at his disposal, Real has some interesting decisions to make throughout the season.

Saturday’s draw against the Houston Dynamo might have provided some glimpses into how RSL’s coaching staff plans to navigate this problem. The team started with Corey Baird and Jefferson Savarino on the wings, Albert Rusnák attacking in the middle, and Damir Kreilach in the most forward position.

Johnson subbed in and played 23 minutes, but the expectation is that he will eventually appear in the starting lineup. Until then, though, the attacking four RSL utilized against the Dynamo could be what fans see in the near future.

“There was nobody new starting in the lineup,” Rusnák said, "so I felt like we all knew each other.”

That familiarity could have contributed to the team’s overall performance on the attack. RSL tallied 14 shots, five of them on goal. Houston defenders blocked five shots. Rusnák and Savarino combined for seven shots. Those chances put constant pressure on Dynamo keeper Joe Willis, who had four saves.

RSL also distributed the ball in a manner that created good chances. As a team, Real had 10 key passes, the majority coming in the attacking third of the field. Rusnák had half of those passes.

“We got a lot of flexibility there,” Baird said of the attacking four. “Even with the guys that came off the bench, there’s lots of guys that can play in different positions. So it gives us a lot of different looks, and it makes it hard for teams to scout us.”

Throughout the game, Baird and Savarino switched sides of the field. At times, Baird also could be found in more of a central position, particularly on defense. Petke said Baird switching positions came partly by design and partly through the natural flow of the game. Baird and Savarino, Petke said, have the autonomy to make those decisions in the moment.

Petke said he liked the way his four attackers played on defense and how Baird and Savarino stretched out Houston’s back line. Petke added that the team could have found a way to get Rusnák the ball a bit more.

“I don’t think we found Albert enough tonight,” Rusnak said. “But when we did, I thought he pulled the strings well and he kept the play going.”

Things can certainly change depending on opponents and how players perform during training sessions. Joao Plata and Sebastian Saucedo, who were listed as subs Saturday, both saw time in the starting lineup last season and have been solid attacking options when they have played.

But for now, it appears the combination of Baird, Savarino, Rusnák and Kreilach gives RSL plenty to work with.

How does an award-winning, collaborative, 10-year restoration project for Utah’s state tree – the aspen – suddenly get dissed as a project that would be more successful if only more roads could be punched into Monroe Mountain? It’s a head-scratcher.

In late January, Kathleen Clarke and her Utah Public Land Policy Coordinating Office team were meeting with a nonprofit public policy organization when Monroe Mountain was brought up by state officials as an example of why the state needs to petition the U.S. Department of Agriculture to exempt Utah’s national forests from our nation’s Roadless Area Conservation Rule.

The roadless rule conserves national forest lands in Utah and across the nation to protect key drinking watersheds, important wildlife habitat and recreation areas. While the entire premise of the upcoming Utah petition — that roadless areas impede forest management to prevent wildfire — is wrong, choosing Monroe Mountain as a reason for the Roadless Area exit petition piles wrong on wrong.

The decade-long Monroe Mountain Aspen Ecosystem Restoration Project has the goal of restoring aspen on 41,000 acres of the Richfield Ranger District in the Fishlake National Forest. Approximately two-thirds of these trees are being overtopped by conifer following decades of fire suppression. A significant amount of the other one-third of aspen, which don’t grow among conifers, is lacking new growth to replace older aspen because their sprouts have been excessively browsed (eaten) for many years.

For its first three years (2012-2014), a diverse group of 21 stakeholders called the Monroe Mountain Working Group met almost monthly to become familiar, on-ground, with the woes of Monroe Mountain’s aspen, and to develop restoration recommendations, science studies, and plans for mid-course corrections — adaptive management — if results of any restoration actions were falling short of success. The group was and is committed to reaching consensus on all recommendations, and skillful facilitation has allowed us to get there. We continue to meet together while aspen restoration is underway.

As a Monroe Mountain Working Group member who has never missed a single meeting in the past seven years (our most recent meeting was January 2019), I can report that roadless areas have never arisen as a particular challenge. Conifer are being removed in Monroe Mountain’s roadless areas; prescribed fire is taking place in its roadless areas; aspen is being restored within its roadless areas (particularly within prescribed fire areas). In fact, the Monroe Mountain project is a prime example of the management flexibility built into the Roadless Area Conservation Rule.

In 2015, the Richfield Ranger District combined the Monroe Mountain Working Group’s and other recommendations with extensive forest surveys and fire predictions to complete an Environmental Impact Statement for the 10-year restoration project. The EIS met with broad approval – and wasn’t litigated by anyone. The forest is now entering the fourth year of recommended treatments: prescribed fire, mechanical thinning, fencing and monitoring. Researchers from Brigham Young University have been answering crucial questions with research, and, on a smaller scale, so has the Monroe Mountain Working Group.

Richfield District Ranger Jason Kling and the restoration project have been honored both within Utah and nationally. In 2017, one of the Forest Service chief’s five Honor Awards went to the project and, late in 2018, the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands awarded both the Richfield Ranger District and the Monroe Mountain Working Group its 2018 Forest Stewardship Achievement Award.

If the state of Utah wants to make the case for exempting itself from the Roadless Rule, it really should select something other than one of the few truly multi-stakeholder consensus collaborations in Utah, and a highly-honored restoration project that is succeeding in most ways to restore the state’s tree on a mountain that clearly wants to grow aspen.

Citing a successful forest restoration project as a reason to build roads throughout some of the last roadless areas in Utah indicates there’s insufficient reason to petition for exemption from the nation’s Roadless Rule.

Mary O’Brien, Castle Valley, has been a member of the Monroe Mountain Working Group since its establishment in 2012, and is the Utah Forests Program director of the Grand Canyon Trust.

Provo • BYU didn’t have to defeat San Diego on Saturday night at the Marriott Center to secure the No. 3 seed for this week’s West Coast Conference men’s basketball tournament at Orleans Arena in Las Vegas.

Fourth-seeded San Francisco fell earlier Saturday at home to Loyola Marymount, ensuring the Cougars would get the third seed regardless of how they fared on Senior Night.

But knocking off the rugged, physical Toreros 87-73 supplied BYU (11-5, 19-12) the momentum it will need for the tournament after it had lost its previous two games. An added bonus: Saint Mary’s (11-5, 20-11) lost 69-55 to No. 1 Gonzaga late Saturday, meaning BYU tied the Gaels for second place.

“Yeah, for sure,” said junior forward Yoeli Childs. “Obviously we had two letdowns, but this team has been through so much adversity, and through so many challenges, that we know who we are.”

The Cougars were shorthanded, too, because freshman sensation Gavin Baxter was home ill and third-leading scorer Jahshire Hardnett sat on the bench in street clothes, his badly bruised left hand still sore. It was a confidence-building win, even though USD rallied from a 20-point deficit to pull within six in the second half.

“We know we are a team that can bounce back. We know we are a team that is really good when we are playing with a purpose, and doing the right things,” Childs said. “I think everyone’s confidence is sky-high right now. We are going into this thing with the attitude that we are going to go win it all. So we are really excited and I wish Saturday would come quicker.”

Three takeaways

• It will be interesting to see who the coaches choose as the league’s player of the year when the All-WCC teams and individual award winners are announced Tuesday. It will likely be No. 1 Gonzaga’s Rui Hachimura or Brandon Clarke.

BYU’s Childs made his case again Saturday with his 17th double-double, and he also tied SMC’s Jordan Ford as the WCC’s scoring leader in all games with 665 points (21.5 ppg.) and led the league in all games in rebounding with 302.

Childs was the leading scorer in conference games only with 331 points (20.7 ppg.) and second in rebounding. He’s a shoo-in for the All-WCC First Team, and fellow junior TJ Haws should be as well.

• BYU will surely need Baxter’s rebounding prowess in the postseason, because USD out-rebounded the Cougars 37-34 and had nine second chance points, eight in the first half, off 11 offensive rebounds.

“Gavin is sick,” Rose said after the game. “I am worried about him. He went to the doctor twice last week. He is feeling a little bit better today, but our trainer wanted him to stay home, stay away from the guys. … Hopefully he is feeling better and we will get him back in here next week.”

• That 77-71 loss to San Francisco at the Marriott Center two weeks ago came back to haunt the Cougars, because they would have earned the No. 2 seed — and a double-bye into the WCC semifinals — if they had held on to their 14-point second-half advantage.

Alas, they will have to play in a 10 p.m. MDT quarterfinal Saturday against either Portland, San Diego or Santa Clara. Last-place Portland and No. 7 San Diego will meet Thursday, with the winner taking on No. 6 seed Santa Clara on Friday. The winner of that game advances to play No. 3 BYU in the quarterfinals.

“This time of year it is really physical,” Childs said. “Things that are fouls at the beginning of the year aren’t fouls at the end of the year. You just have to be ready for a dogfight, especially going into the conference tournament where if you lose, you are done.”

Player of the Week

Childs. With Baxter recovering at home, the Cougars went small after senior Luke Worthington got the start in the freshman’s place. Childs rose to the occasion, scoring 29 points and grabbing 13 rebounds. He hit two crucial free throws after Haws was bulldozed by Isaiah Wright and had to leave the game, and finished 14 of 19 from the free-throw line in the ultra-physical contest.

Play of the Week

Nick Emery’s 3-pointer that beat the shot clock. The triple gave the Cougars a 75-59 lead with 5:45 remaining and was their final field goal of the game. Emery was 3 of 4 from deep and had 15 points and two assists.

“We missed quite a few threes early in the game that were wide open, really good shots for us. But we didn’t make them,” Rose said. “Then I thought we made a nice adjustment, attacking their closeout and getting to the free-throw line and getting more open shots.”

Tj Haws and Yoeli Childs on BYU’s win over San Diego pic.twitter.com/0SKlXWk2jz

— Jay Drew (@drewjay) March 3, 2019

Saturday’s WCC Quarterfinal Game

At Orleans Arena, Las Vegas

No. 3 BYU vs. No. 10 Portland, No. 7 San Diego or No. 6 Santa Clara, 10 p.m. MST

TV: TBA

Sen. Rand Paul is throwing his support behind a resolution that would block President Donald Trump’s declaration of a national emergency to build his long-promised U.S.-Mexico border wall, defying a warning from the president and putting the measure on track to passage.

Paul, R-Ky., said in a speech Saturday at the Southern Kentucky Lincoln Day Dinner that he "can't vote to give extra-Constitutional powers to the president," the Bowling Green Daily News reported.

"I can't vote to give the president the power to spend money that hasn't been appropriated by Congress," Paul said, according to the newspaper. "We may want more money for border security, but Congress didn't authorize it. If we take away those checks and balances, it's a dangerous thing."

Paul joins fellow Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Thom Tillis of North Carolina in opposing Trump's move, a reflection of some resistance within the GOP to what lawmakers see as executive overreach and a test of the constitutional separation of powers.

Utah’s senators, Mike Lee and Mitt Romney, have not announced how they’ll vote on the resolution.

The disapproval resolution has already passed the Democratic-controlled House and requires a simple majority to pass the GOP-led Senate. Fifty-three senators caucus with Republicans and 47 caucus with Democrats, meaning that four Republican defections would be enough to ensure passage.

While the resolution is likely to clear the Senate - an embarrassing rebuke to Trump - lawmakers in both chambers lack the votes to override a threatened presidential veto.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., spent weeks warning against a national emergency only to declare his support for the move last month. McConnell faces re-election next year and there is concern within the GOP about being forced to choose between Trump and their self-described opposition to executive overreach.

Republicans worry that in supporting Trump, they will be giving approval to a White House power grab that circumvents Congress' constitutional power over spending. But if they oppose it, they face the wrath of not only the president but his political base - and possibly a primary challenge.

Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., who has been critical of Trump's emergency declaration, delivered a floor speech on Thursday in which he outlined what he described as an alternative way for the president to get the money he wants to build his wall. But Alexander has declined to say how he would vote on the disapproval resolution.

Numerous other GOP senators have also expressed reservations about Trump's move, among them Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida, leading to widespread expectations that the disapproval resolution will easily pass the Senate.

The Senate is poised to vote on the measure later this month.

Asked about Paul's decision, his spokesman Sergio Gor said it "speaks for itself" and declined to elaborate further.

Trump has said he would veto the legislation, and the vote margin in the House last week - 245 to 182 - was well short of the two-thirds majority that would be required to override his veto.

Nonetheless, the disapproval resolution represents a blow to Trump's Feb. 15 move to declare an emergency after Congress balked at giving him the money he demanded for his border wall. Trump's declaration allows him to access $3.6 billion in funds allocated for military construction projects.

That money would be tapped after the administration exhausts funding from other sources, including $1.375 billion provided by Congress; $2.5 billion from a Pentagon counter-drug account that the administration can access without an emergency declaration; and $601 million from a forfeiture fund in the Treasury Department.

During an interview last week with Fox News Channel's Sean Hannity, Trump urged Republicans not to back the disapproval resolution and said those who do so will "put themselves at great jeopardy."

"I think that really it's a very dangerous thing for people to be voting against border security," Trump said.

Trump also raised the issue on Saturday during a wide-ranging speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference that lasted more than two hours. He dismissed Republican criticism that his declaration could set a precedent for future Democratic presidents, arguing that the solution was simply for him to be re-elected in 2020.

"They're gonna do that anyway, folks," Trump said. "The best way to stop that is for us to win the election."

Trump repeatedly said during the 2016 campaign that Mexico would pay for construction of the wall. Instead, he has asked American taxpayers to finance it.

Success, to update the old saying, has a thousand parents. Failure is an orphan.

The death-dealing air pollution that so often hangs over the Wasatch Front has many thousands of causes. With no single smokestack that could be plugged, no particular activity that could be banned, and no one political or regulatory act that could heap credit on a specific elected official or agency, doing anything to face the problem always seemed like someone else’s job.

Which meant it was no one’s.

That’s why it is such good news that at least some members of the Utah Legislature seem to be facing up to the fact that, with no silver bullet available to slay our air quality problem, it is time to get off as many shots as we can in as many different directions. (These guys like guns, so let’s load up on firearms analogies, shall we?)

Not only that, but some of the actions under legislative consideration include the realization that, for even the smallest pollution source, upgrades and replacements cost money. And that, rather than expect individual households to pay up out of the goodness of their hearts, it makes sense for things that are of public benefit to be at least partially reimbursed by the public purse.

Gov. Gary Herbert has plugged a figure of $100 million into his proposed budget for such sweeteners. And lawmakers and advocates have quickly come up with plenty of ways to use the money.

Among the actions making their way through the long legislative slog are measures to replace state-owned vehicles that were made before the 2007 model year, contribute to efforts by railroads to switch to cleaner switch engines, as well as cash reimbursements for regular folks to trade in old dirty cars for newer clean ones, shift homes that rely on woodburning for their primary source of heat to cleaner furnaces, even replace old snowblowers and leafblowers with their emissions-free electric descendants.

Face it. There is little incentive for a family of limited means — which is most of us — to spend a bundle to replace a car that works just fine getting you to work every day while spewing toxic fumes. It’s all cost and practically no benefit. Unless, of course, there is some reason to believe that a few thousand of your friends and neighbors might do the same. Then it makes sense. It’s the same with fireplaces and snowblowers.

Another idea moving through the process would give the Utah Transit Authority $1.2 million, enough to make it whole for up to 17 days, scattered over three years, of offering free rides to everyone when the air quality is particularly awful.

Yes, some bolder strokes would feel good and do a lot. Making UTA free all the time — or at least through the inversion-heavy winter months — could be well worth the money. An upgrade to the state’s building codes that would require state-of-the-art efficiencies in homes and commercial buildings is long overdue.

But these measures — this spending — would be a very useful start. If it is seen as the beginning of the effort, not the end.

Single-issue presidential campaigns are not generally successful, but what if the issue in question is the survival of most life on Planet Earth?

That's what Washington governor Jay Inslee wants us to consider as we choose the next president, and he's making climate change the centerpiece of the candidacy he announced on Friday. He's also the first governor to enter the 2020 race, joining an extraordinarily diverse and growing field.

Unlike many (but not all) of his primary opponents, Inslee has a direct and emphatic answer to the question every one of them has to face: Why are you running for president? That kind of clear vision may not be enough to win, but it's something you can't win without.

Though Inslee has the kind of resume one typically associates with presidential candidates - he started as a state representative, then had a lengthy term in Congress, then was elected and reelected as governor - he's practically unknown nationally. But he can legitimately claim to have been advocating for action on climate since before some of the other candidates ever got elected to public office.

Here's how he summed it up in an interview with Rolling Stone's Andy Kroll:

"His vision, he tells Rolling Stone, is an administration organized around the climate crisis, an entire federal government working in unison to decarbonize the economy and help save the planet. No candidate has his record on the issue, and none of them have said nearly enough about it, he says. 'A lot of these candidates want to check the box,' he tells me. But one sentence in their campaign-launch events doesn't solve this problem. 'This has to be the number-one priority of the United States,' he insists. 'Every agency has to be on board, and it has to take priority over everything else we do. You have to build a mandate for this during the campaign, and you have to express a willingness to spend your political capital to get this done. I think too many other candidates are going to say, 'I'm for the Green New Deal, and now I'm done.' That just doesn't cut it.' "

There's something else distinctive about Inslee: He wants to get rid of the procedural and representational impediments that have hampered Democrats and progressive ideas for a long time. Of the six senators in the race, only one, Elizabeth Warren, has expressed any interest in getting rid of the filibuster - and she only says that eliminating it should be "on the table."

Inslee wants to do away with it. He told David Roberts of Vox, "you can't have antebellum rules in the Senate in the internet age. And I have the same view of the electoral college. It ought to be one person, one vote." He also supports statehood for D.C. and Puerto Rico.

Inslee certainly has an uphill climb ahead, as someone without a national profile and, frankly, as a white guy looking to represent an increasingly diverse party. He also has to convince Democrats and a potential general electorate that climate change is indeed the most urgent problem we face.

The conventional wisdom about climate has always been that while people say they care about it, as a voting issue it's way down their list of priorities. That has made it easy to do the kind of box-checking Inslee talks about, since voters wouldn't punish a candidate who said the right things about climate but didn't demonstrate a commitment to serious action even if it entailed political risk.

But with him in the race - and obviously, with the practical realities of climate change becoming more evident on an almost daily basis - it's going to become harder for the other candidates not to put out comprehensive climate plans and demonstrate that commitment.

It will also be interesting to see if Inslee can force a debate within the party about what the next president's most important goal should be. Is it universal health care? Fixing income inequality? Or climate?

Which brings us back to the question of why these people are running for president. I'll be brutally honest: Though I think there's a lot to like about nearly all the Democratic candidates, I couldn't tell you why most of them are running, and it's not because I'm not paying enough attention. Of course I know why they're actually running - they want to be president! Which is fine; every politician you ever loved, whether your tastes run to FDR or Kennedy or Reagan or Obama, was possessed of an almost pathological ambition. It comes with the territory.

But so far the only ones who have articulated a clear and coherent rationale for their candidacies are Bernie Sanders and Warren, both of whom want to attack the political and economic power of plutocrats, and now Inslee.

The others haven't yet made their purpose as clear. Try to sum up in a sentence or two why Kamala Harris or Kirsten Gillibrand thinks we should elect them president, and you won't be able to do it. That makes it harder to imagine precisely what their presidencies would look like, which makes judging them more difficult.

One thing you can say for Jay Inslee: He’s telling us exactly what his presidency would be about. We don’t know yet how compelling his case will be and how primary voters will react to his insistence that climate change has to be our top priority, but the race is definitely better for having him in it.

The Utah women's basketball team ended the regular season Sunday by inventing another way to lose a game.

The Utes lost a four-point lead in the last nine seconds of regulation and USC took an 83-77 overtime victory at the Galen Center in Los Angeles.

Utah (20-9, 9-9 Pac-12) already was locked into the No. 6 seed in this week’s conference tournament. The effect of Sunday’s defeat is that any reasonable chance of an NCAA Tournament bid appears to be gone. Utah coach Lynne Roberts said last week that her team probably needed three more wins for an at-large bid, and then the Utes lost to UCLA and USC on the road.

The Utes will meet No. 11 seed Washington in a first-round game of the Pac-12 tournament Thursday at 9:30 p.m. MST. The winner will face No. 3 seed Oregon State in Friday’s quarterfinals.

Down to seven active players, the Utes have gone 2-8 in their last 10 conference games. That finishing stretch included a loss at Arizona State, where Utah led by 18 points in the last eight minutes.

At USC, Dru Gylten's two free throws gave Utah a 67-63 lead. Mariya Moore hit a 3-pointer for the Trojans, then Utah's Erika Bean made one free throw and missed the second attempt. In the scramble for the rebound, Bean fouled USC's Desiree Caldwell, who made two free throws to force overtime.

Utah never led in overtime, although forward Megan Huff scored seven of her 30 points in the extra session. Huff missed a 3-pointer that would have given Utah a lead and USC (17-12, 7-11) pulled away from the free-throw line to sweep the two-game season series.

Kiana Moore scored 11 of her 13 points in the fourth quarter for the Utes, although she missed a key free throw in the last minute. Dru Gylten added 12 points. Utah committed 22 turnovers, including 10 in the first quarter.

Police say a woman was taken into custody Saturday after she stabbed her mother multiple times at a Sandy hotel, FOX 13 reports.

Sgt. Jason Nielson with the Sandy Police Department says officials received a call that a stabbing had occurred at an Extended Stay hotel at 7555 S. Union Park Avenue.

The alleged attacker, Jayde Altemeirer, had initially fled the scene, police say, but she was later arrested.

The injured woman, in her mid-50s, was taken to a hospital and was later upgraded to stable condition.

For more information, visit FOX13.com.

Dotting a map of the United States – in the Heartland and beyond – are 531 small towns. While consumer marketers and politicians call them Main Street, U.S.A, for economists and researchers, well, we call them micropolitan areas.

At the Walton Family Foundation, we have researched, reviewed and ranked the 531 micropolitan statistical areas nationwide – which have one or more counties with at least one city with more than 10,000 but less than 50,000 in population – using a new, comprehensive index to measure the vitality and viability of these small towns’ economic standing.

While Pecos, Texas, took the top spot, Utah boasts two micropolitan areas – Summit Park and Heber City – ranking second and fourth respectively.

What we’ve learned is telling, both in the short and the long-term: Small-town America has big-time potential for economic renewal and revival.

In the aftermath of the Great Recession, there was a fissure in economic performance across the United States based on the size of a place. Between 2010 and 2017, large metropolitan areas witnessed job growth of 8.7 percent; medium-sized metropolitan areas 4.9 percent; and small metropolitan areas 2.3 percent. Meanwhile, micropolitan areas lost 0.7 percent of their employment over this period, which accounted for the loss of more than 500,000 of jobs.

As Chinese manufacturing imports surged, with their entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001, micropolitans witnessed the devastation of closed factories, lost jobs and rising hopelessness. Even now, America’s micropolitans could be at further risk and negatively impacted by retaliatory tariffs imposed by the Chinese government in response to President Donald Trump’s tariffs on imported Chinese goods.

As we researched the 531 micropolitans, one question was top of mind: How can these communities chart a course to improve their economic performance in the future? As most small towns in America would understand, learn from and lean on your neighbors for best practices and apply those locally.

The Most Dynamic Micropolitan Index is performance-based, with metrics such as job growth, wage and income gains, and a new metric, the proportion of total jobs at young firms. This measure captures which communities are creating meaningful jobs for their residents and those that might desire to in-migrate. It provides information on the ability of entrepreneurs to start new businesses and scale them —critical for future job and wage gains.

The research’s findings also conclude that America’s economically successful micropolitans have four key traits that influenced economic growth: travel, tourism and recreation; professional services; culture of entrepreneurship; and research universities and four-year colleges. In addition, each of these micropolitan communities has carved out a specialized niche within these categories for themselves and are focused on economic diversification.

Summit Park has promoted professional and technical jobs such as research, accounting and engineering. Heber City is targeting software development and information technology, professional services, health care and advanced manufacturing. Further, Heber City’s Small Business Development Center Utah Valley University campus and Business Resource Center provide entrepreneurial support and mentoring.

Micropolitans such as Heber City and Summit Park must survey their assets and determine the best way to leverage them and fill gaps. Leveraging tools, such as Opportunity Zone designations from the federal government and patterning economic development efforts after fellow micropolitan areas, is a strong starting point and could serve as a catalyst for economic growth.

While Main Street, U.S.A. may have its own unique attributes, in the 531 micropolitans that dot a map of the United States, one thing is for certain, small-town America has big-time potential.

Ross DeVol is a fellow at the Walton Family Foundation.

Washington • The core political challenges facing Democrats are not the rise of those who proudly call themselves democratic socialists and the danger that Republicans will succeed in red-baiting the entire party.

Instead, Democrats face formidable coalition management problems because they now provide a home to millions of voters (and scores of elected officials) who in earlier times might well have been liberal Republicans.

Democratic leaders — and presidential candidates — must find ways to cope with an alliance that spans not only their own long-standing left and center-left factions, but also many moderate voters who despise President Trump but have not been Democrats before.

The fractious dustup in the House Democratic caucus last week over how often its vulnerable members should be able to vote with the GOP is another reminder of the difficulty of holding a big-tent party together.

Here’s the key point: The 2018 elections did not make the Democrats a more left-wing party. It had the opposite effect. A large share of the new Democrats in the House hail from districts — a lot of them suburban — that in the past would have happily elected Republicans with moderate-to-progressive inclinations.

Such Republicans, once a substantial minority in the party, are a virtually extinct species. The rightward shift of the GOP began before Trump's rise, and his extremism has, in turn, led to the defeat of even moderate conservatives. The survivors (with occasional brave exceptions) generally moved his way, fearing defeat in primaries.

This has had a peculiar effect on our politics: Many of the most important policy debates are no longer between the two parties; they are being carried out almost entirely inside the Democratic Party.

Because of the hold right-wing ideologues and extractive industries have on their party, Republican politicians are under great pressure to deny that climate change has human causes. Therefore, Democrats tussle over whether carbon taxes or the provisions of an ambitious Green New Deal are the best way to mitigate an impending catastrophe.

Republicans don't even support the advances in health insurance coverage brought about by Obamacare. Therefore, the question of how to achieve universal coverage is left to the Democrats. They quarrel about the relative merits of a Medicare-for-all system or incremental steps building on the Affordable Care Act.

My hunch (and hope) is that those preferring single-payer health care will come to see that, if their goal is ever to be realized, it will not pass in one big bang. It will be achieved in steps that would leave a private insurance system in place for some time. But in the short term, there's a lot of shouting.

Republicans are for cutting taxes, and then cutting them again, always in ways that tilt the code further toward the wealthy and corporate interests. They do this by ignoring the deficits they are increasing, except for mouthing vague bromides about "reforming entitlements." This sticks Democrats with the burden of raising enough money to pay for both existing and new programs.

These issues are far bigger than the strife roiling the House, though it matters, too. A significant number of moderate Democrats believe their political survival requires them to vote for nuisance amendments with appeal in their districts put forward by Republicans.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and progressive members of her caucus want the moderates to vote "no" on all these last-minute motions, as Republicans generally did when they were in the majority. Pelosi understandably fears that throwing votes the GOP's way increases their ability to disrupt legislation.

Yet many of the politically moderate freshmen, backed by other members of the leadership, naturally worry about protecting their fragile electoral margins. They thus argue that they should be able to vote with the Republicans fairly freely.

House Democrats will eventually resolve this problem by working out a better disciplined system of granting a limited number of "free passes" on especially tough votes while preventing wholesale defections. Modest procedural changes (for example, by allowing at least an hour between the introduction of an opposition amendment and the vote on it) might also ease the internal strains.

But even if they work through this kerfuffle, the larger challenge remains. Democrats need to figure out how to make genuine progress on the issues that rightly engage their party's left — for starters, health care, climate change, and rising economic inequality — in ways that allow their new constituency of virtual liberal Republicans to join the effort. The party's presidential candidates should focus more of their energy on explaining how they'll pull this off.

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

Mendon • Utah state wildlife officials have corralled more than 500 wild turkeys this winter in Cache County that are a nuisance to homeowners. They were moved to a rural area known as the Book Cliffs near Vernal.

Drawn by food they can find near homes, the wild turkeys come into the small northern Utah town of Mendon outside of Logan by the hundreds, said Randall McBride, depredation specialist with the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources. They leave waste and sometimes destroy property, KSL-TV reports .

“They’ve become a nuisance during the winter,” McBride said. “They get together in big flocks, and then people tend to not like defecating on their lawns or destroying their landscape.”

He said the city of Mendon set aside grazing areas near town several years ago in hopes of keeping the turkeys out of town but it didn’t work.

McBride urged homeowners not to leave out any pet food that the wild turkeys like to eat.

“Food availability is really what’s bringing them in,” McBride said.

On a recent day, wildlife officials corralled about a 12 turkeys in two traps in the area. It is one of about six places that wildlife officials stop at regularly during the winter.

Some of the wild turkeys who are caught are given GPS backpacks so scientists can track their behavior and hopefully better manage the herds. Most of them are moved to a rural area in the Book Cliffs near Vernal where a large flock lives.

“We’re just trying to better understand the turkeys in general,” McBride said. “Especially in this area so we can better manage them, so, hopefully, they’ll become less of a problem.”