This Pat Bagley cartoon appears in The Salt Lake Tribune on Thursday, July 11, 2019. You can check out the past 10 Bagley editorial cartoons below:

• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2019/07/09/bagley-cartoon-american" target=_blank><u>The American System of Justice</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2019/07/08/bagley-cartoon-penalty/"><u>Penalty Kick</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2019/07/05/bagley-cartoon-democrats/"><u>Democrats Wooing Who?</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2019/07/03/bagley-cartoon-pet-peeve/"><u>Pet Peeve</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2019/07/02/bagley-cartoon-wishing-he/"><u>Wishing He Would Zip It</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2019/07/01/bagley-cartoon-founding/"><u>Founding Fathers Fun Facts</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2019/06/28/bagley-cartoon-press/"><u>Press Control</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2019/06/27/bagley-cartoon-pillars/"><u>Pillars of Democracy</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2019/06/26/bagley-cartoon-future/"><u>Future Shock</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2019/06/25/bagley-cartoon-if-its-not/"><u>If It’s Not Broke</u></a>

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The man accused of killing University of Utah student MacKenzie Lueck has been charged with aggravated murder and aggravated kidnapping days after police found her body in Logan Canyon.

Ayoola Ajayi, 31, faces four felony counts, including second-degree felony obstruction of justice and third-degree felony desecration of a body, in the high-profile case that has captivated the state and the nation since Lueck disappeared on June 17.

The charges, filed Wednesday by Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill, say Lueck died of blunt force trauma to her head. Gill said her body was found with her arms bound behind her back by a zip tie and rope.

Washington • Paul Gibbs brought pictures of his sons to show Congress.

Without the Affordable Care Act they may not be alive, he said. Nor would he.

The West Valley City resident and board member of the Utah Health Policy Project testified before a House committee about how affordable health care is vital to Americans and that attacks against the 2010 law – such as a lawsuit backed by Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes – are really an attack on people trying to stay alive.

“This law is commonly referred to as the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare,” Gibbs told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. “For me it's important to call this law by its full name: The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act because the patient protections of the ACA have been a gift from God for people like me and families like mine.”

Gibbs — who has been a strong defender of Proposition 3 that expanded Medicaid in Utah, which was later partially rolled back by state lawmakers — was one of four people to appear before the committee to detail how Obamacare has helped their lives.

Gibbs noted how his twin brother needed 17 surgeries before he was 5 years old and how he personally faced nine surgeries on his kidneys – medical procedures that left his parents financially struggling until their deaths.

In 2008, Gibbs, then a student without health care coverage, said he was told his kidney was failing and he needed a transplant at the cost of nearly $80,000. He narrowly fit the qualifications for government help and takes medication still to ensure the transplant sticks, a cost he says would rival his mortgage if not for Medicaid.

“I've heard opponents of the ACA say people don't die in America for lack of health care because they can go to the emergency room,” Gibbs said. “You can't get a kidney transplant at the E.R.”

Both his sons also faced health crises where he needed help to pay for their care.

Wednesday’s hearing comes as the Trump administration has refused to defend the Affordable Care Act in the lawsuit filed by several states’ Republican attorneys general, including Reyes, that seeks to strike the law down as unconstitutional. Previous attempts to challenge the law have mostly failed but that was at a time President Barack Obama’s administration forcefully defended his signature domestic accomplishment.

“If the Trump administration’s position prevails and the entire ACA is struck down there will be catastrophic implications for millions of Americans and the entire United States health care system,” said Rep. Elijah Cummings, a Maryland Democrat and chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Cummings had invited the acting director of the Office of Management and Budget to appear before the committee to answer questions about the administration's plan if the law is tossed but the official declined.

Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the top Republican on the committee, called the hearing a farce because no officials from the Department of Health and Human Services or the Justice Department were invited to speak.

“This hearing is just another attack on President Trump and it's disappointing,” Jordan said.

Gibbs, who turned emotional at times during his testimony, said it was the opposite.

“We are guaranteed in the Declaration of Independence the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” he said. “Life comes first because without life all other rights are meaningless. Being subject to insurance companies able to deny us coverage – and make it prohibitively expensive because we’re sick – is not liberty. And without those protections, without access to health care, there can be no pursuit of happiness. My sons deserve the right. They deserve the right to be born. They deserve the right to stay alive and they deserve to have a father who has access to the care he needs to stay alive for them.”

Most of the pre-tournament favorites at the 121st Utah State Amateur are still in the running for the championship after the Round of 64 matches were contested on Wednesday at Soldier Hollow Golf Course in Midway.

Medalist Colton Tanner, the University of Utah golfer, blitzed former Ute Greg Slack 6 & 5 in the first match of the day.

Defending champion Preston Summerhays, the No. 2 seed, made quick work of playoff-survivor Patrick Horstmann, winning 5 & 4 on the Gold Course, where all the matches will be played through Saturday’s 36-hole championship match.

Summerhays’ younger sister was not as fortunate. Having become only the second woman in tourney history to qualify for match play on Tuesday, Grace Summerhays lost 4 & 2 to former Utah State golfer Brennan Coburn.

Former Alpine resident Annie Thurman Young — now the women’s golf coach at Tulsa — remains the only woman to have won a State Am match.

Third-seeded Cole Ponich, who is headed to BYU this fall, defeated former Utah Valley golf coach Tommy Johnson 4 & 3. After holding off the younger Summerhays, Coburn will now face the red-hot Ponich, who would have contented for medalist honors if not for a triple bogey in stroke-play qualifying.

Colton Dallmore, the No. 4 seed, was upset by 15-year-old Cooper Jones of Highland, a Lone Peak High golfer and the brother of Zach Jones, a BYU-bound golfer who was also victorious Wednesday.

The Jones brothers’ father, Clark, lost a close match to Masen Ward (2 & 1) or the family would have had three contestants in the Round of 32.

That round will be played Thursday morning, while the Round of 16 will be played Thursday afternoon. When the day’s rounds are over, only eight players will remain in the hunt for the crown. The quarterfinals and semifinals will be played on Friday.

Among the better matches in Thursday’s Round of 32: BYU golfer Kelton Hirsch, the 2017 State Am champion at Ogden Golf & Country Club against former University of Utah golfer Steven Croft; Park City’s Tanner vs. seasoned amateur Ryan Brimley, a former college basketball player; BYU golfer Spencer Dunaway vs. former Jordan High golfer Christopher Cheney, now at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas.

Along with Preston Summerhays, two other former champions are still alive — Hirsch and Dan Horner, the 2008 champion at Soldier Hollow. Another past champion at Soldier Hollow, Cole Ogden (2013) lost his first-round match 1 up Wednesday to Nick Becker, a former BYU golfer.

Wednesday’s Match Play Results

Bracket No. 1

No. 1 Colton Tanner def. No 64 Greg Slack, 6 & 5

No. 33 Ryan Brimley def. No. 32 Kyle Dearden, 2 & 1

No. 16 Chase Lansford def. No. 49 Michael Branca, 1 up

No. 48 Nick Becker def. No. 17 Cole Ogden, 1 up

No. 8 Mitchell Schow def. No. 57 Brett Garner, 6 & 5

No. 25 Alec Williams def. No. 40 Jayce Frampton, 2 & 1

No. 56 Zane Brownrigg def. No. 9 Brigham Gibbs, 1 up

No. 24 Thomas Young def. No. 41 Andrew Cottle, 1 up

No. 61 Cooper Jones def. No. 4 Colton Dallimore, 3 & 2

No. 36 Blake Murray def. No. 29 Dylan Chugg, 4 & 3

No. 13 Kelton Hirsch def. No. 52 Noah Schone, 4 & 3

No. 45 Steven Croft def. No. 20 Triston Gardner, 6 & 5

No. 60 Aaron Smith def. No. 5 Denny Job, 1 up

No. 37 Spencer Wallace def. No. 28 Peyton Hastings, 5 & 4

No. 12 Christopher Cheney def. No. 53 Paul Cannon, 3 & 2

No. 21 Spencer Dunaway def. No. 44 Joshua Lansky, 2 & 1

Bracket No. 2

No. 2 Preston Summerhays def. No. 63 Patrick Horstmann, 5 & 4

No. 34 Boston Watts def. No. 31 Ryan Seamons, 5 & 4

No. 50 John Owen def. No. 15 Carl Jensen, 3 & 2

No. 18 Reed Nielsen def. No. 47 Hunter Howe, 3 & 2

No. 7 Zach Jones def. No. 58 Christopher Romney, 6 & 4

No. 26 Braydon Swapp def. No. 39 Clay Bingham, 19 holes

No. 23 Jake Vincent def. No. 42 Cole Wecker, 1 up

No. 3 Cole Ponich def. No. 62 Tommy Johnson, 4 & 3

No. 30 Brennan Coburn def. No. 35 Grace Summerhays, 4 & 2

No. 51 Elijah Turner def. No. 14 Tanner Telford, 4 & 3

No. 19 Dan Horner def. No. 46 Kyler Tueller, 1 up

No. 6 Cameron Tucker def. No. 59 Kurt Owen, 4 & 3

No. 38 Derek Penman def. No. 27 Joshua Pehrson, 3 & 2.

No. 11 Nathan Ouimette def. No. 54 Tanner Alder, 2 up

No. 43 John Reid def. No. 22 Ryan Barber, 1 up

Thursday’s Round of 32 Matches

Bracket No. 1

Tanner vs. Brimley, 8:50 a.m.

Lansford vs. Becker, 9 a.m.

Schow vs. Williams, 9:10 a.m.

Brownrigg vs. Young, 9:20 a.m.

C. Jones vs. Murray, 9:30 a.m.

Hirsch vs. Croft, 9:40 a.m.

A. Smith vs. Wallace, 9:50 a.m.

Cheney vs. Dunaway, 10 a.m.

Bracket No. 2

P. Summerhays vs. Watts, 7:30 a.m.

J. Owen vs. R. Nielsen, 7:40 a.m.

Z. Jones vs. Swapp, 7:50 a.m.

Ward vs. Vincent, 8 a.m.

Ponich vs. Coburn, 8:10 a.m.

Turner vs. Horner, 8:20 a.m.

Tucker vs. Penman, 8:30 a.m.

Ouimette vs. Reid, 8:40 a.m.

“Time has upset many fighting faiths.”

— Oliver Wendell Holmes, dissenting, Abrams v. United States (1919)

Washington • In this moment of dueling political hysterias (“The fascists are at the gates!” “The socialists are within the gates!”), it is reassuring to remember that America has quickly recovered from some previous plunges into overheated anxiety. David Maraniss understands this.

He is a Washington Post editor, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, a best-selling biographer (of Vince Lombardi, Roberto Clemente, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama) and author of books on the 1960 Summer Olympics, late-1960s turmoil ("They Marched into Sunlight: War and Peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967") and contemporary Detroit. Now, in "A Good American Family," he has tackled his most difficult subject: his parents. They were communists.

Being a communist was never not foolish, and was always reprehensible, especially after the broad outlines of Stalin's terror (including the engineered famine in Ukraine) in the 1930s were known, or knowable. And after American communists proved themselves to be plastic people, following Moscow's zigzagging line before and after the German-Soviet "nonaggression" pact of Aug. 23, 1939, and then the Soviet invasion of Finland. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, however, Elliott and Mary Maraniss paid more dearly than they should have for affiliating, from a safe distance, with the most murderous of all the 20th century's fighting faiths.

In the postwar years, some congressmen became crusaders, wielding the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). There are such activities, but it is not Congress' job to ferret them out. And some crusaders were conspicuously unqualified to judge others' fidelity to American ideals. They included vociferous racists, one chairman who would go to prison for embezzlement, and one who had been present at the 1915 Georgia lynching of Leo Frank, a Jew who had moved to Atlanta from Brooklyn and who almost certainly was innocent of the murder for which he was convicted.

Elliott had been a "red diaper baby": His father was a "Wobbly" (a member of the radical Industrial Workers of the World). Elliott grew up in Brooklyn, where he was a Boy Scout and where socialists were run-of-the-mill moderates. Then he (like another Brooklyn boy from Abraham Lincoln High School, the future playwright Arthur Miller) went to the University of Michigan. There he met David's mother, 17 and already a communist, at an event welcoming two Michigan graduates home from fighting fascists in the Spanish Civil War, including Mary's older brother.

David writes that his father, a fledgling journalist writing for the campus newspaper, had to have seen stories about the Moscow show trials. Decades later, Elliott would say he had been "stubborn in my ignorance and aggressive in my prejudices." Yet he enlisted one week after Pearl Harbor, and volunteered to command an African American unit in the segregated Army. "He was," his son writes, "a patriot in his own way."

A few stealthy Americans — Alger Hiss, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, and others — gave important aid and comfort to communism. The Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) did not. It first ran a presidential candidate in 1924, when he won 36,386 votes, 0.1% of the popular vote. It last ran a candidate in 1984, when he received 161 fewer votes than the 1924 candidate.

But when in 1952 HUAC came to Detroit, which then was the epicenter of the labor movement, to expose and shame communists, its star witness was a gray-haired, 49-year-old grandmother and FBI informant who named Elliott as member of the CPUSA. Elliott, then with the Detroit Times, was immediately fired and launched into years of wandering with his family, seeking work. He caught on with the Cleveland Plain Dealer, but was fired in 1954 when the paper learned of his HUAC appearance. David writes, "The FBI made it clear that its agents would follow him wherever he went and whenever he applied for a job."

Soon, however, the national fever broke, he found employment with the Madison, Wisc., Capital Times, and he died at 86 in 2004 "a permanent Midwesterner." Elliott's son writes of him, "I can appreciate his motivations, but I am confounded by his reasoning."

This was, David Maraniss says, "a book I had to write." His professional ethic is to "follow the truth wherever it takes you and I knew this would take me to places that were uncomfortable." His readers will admire his emotional equilibrium, and can take comfort from this story of national equilibrium lost and restored.

George Will’s email address is georgewill@washpost.com

Great Barrington, Mass. • Jim Bouton, the former New York Yankees pitcher who shocked and angered the conservative baseball world with the tell-all book “Ball Four,” has died. He was 80.

Bouton’s family said he died Wednesday at the home he shared with wife Paula Kurman. He fought a brain disease linked to dementia and was in hospice care. Bouton also had two strokes in 2012.

Published in 1970, “Ball Four” detailed Yankees great Mickey Mantle’s carousing, and the use of stimulants in the major leagues. Bouton’s revealing look at baseball off the field made for eye-opening and entertaining reading, but he paid a big price for the best-seller when former teammates, other players and executives across the big leagues ostracized him for exposing their secrets.

Throwing so hard that his cap flew off his head, Bouton was 21-8 with six shutouts in 1963 — his second season in the majors — and went 18-13 with four more shutouts in 1964. The Yankees lost the World Series both years, with Bouton losing his lone start in 1963 in New York’s loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers, and winning twice the following year in the Yankees’ loss to the St. Louis Cardinals.

Bouton injured his right arm in 1965, going 4-15 that season, and saw limited action the next three seasons with New York. He worked on “Ball Four” in 1969, a season spent with the expansion Seattle Pilots and Houston Astros, his fastball replaced by a knuckleball as he tried to prolong his career.

Bouton also pitched for Houston in 1970, and made a comeback with the Atlanta Braves in 1978, going 1-3 at age 39. He finished his 10-year career with a 62-63 record and 3.57 ERA.

Bouton was a television sportscaster in New York City with WABC and WCBS, wrote other books and starred in a 1976 CBS sitcom based on “Ball Four” that lasted only five episodes. He and a former teammate developed Big League Chew, a bubble gum alternative to chewing tobacco.

The Salt Lake City School District and the teachers association have brokered a tentative salary agreement after the district brought in a federal mediator to help them sort out their differences.

The move follows a stalemate in negotiations over what percent of an increase to give, and after at least two teachers’ protests in recent weeks. It also comes as districts across the state have engaged in a bidding war to attract the best teachers.

Details of the compromise were not available Wednesday. The district said it will release more information Aug. 8, after the agreement has been shared with both the Salt Lake City Board of Education and the Salt Lake Education Association executive board.

“We are grateful for the efforts of both negotiating teams, as well as the federal mediator, for their willingness to work together in reaching this tentative agreement,” Jason Olsen, a public information officer for the district, wrote in an email Wednesday afternoon.

Final approval of the agreement is contingent upon a vote from Salt Lake Education Association members, which will take place later in August, and approval by the Board of Education on Sept. 3, Olsen said.

The district's bargaining team had made three earlier proposals to the education association team, all unsuccessful, before the district brought in a mediator.

As part of the brokering, teachers have requested more personal days, class size caps and paid parental leave. If a resolution is ultimately unsuccessful, there could be a strike.

On Thursday night, Lady Gaga was rockin’ down Vivint Smart Home Arena in Salt Lake City. Her foundation, on the other hand, was in a quieter mode on its “Channel Kindness” tour, recognizing a 13-year-old lesbian girl named Savannah and Women of the World, a nonprofit that helps refugee women become self-sufficient.

Savannah garnered fame in May when she came out as a lesbian before her Eagle Mountain Mormon congregation. “No part of me is a mistake,” she told them. “I do not choose to be this way, and it is not a fad.”

Savannah was not allowed to finish her church testimony, but she did make national headlines. [The Salt Lake Tribune is not using her last name, in accordance with her parents’ wishes.]

She is one of eight recipients of the Channel Kindness award from the Born This Way Foundation, which was established by Lady Gaga and her mother, Cynthia Germanotta.

Born This Way focuses on young people, according to the organization’s website, because they are budding problem solvers and effective change-makers who can build a kinder world.

Savannah nabbed the award for her project to give care packages to LGBT homeless teens — many who have been disowned for their sexual orientation. On Thursday, she was joined by two dozen volunteers who helped package blankets, socks, toiletries and other items to be delivered to Youth Futures.

“I always wanted to help homeless people. That’s why I wanted to go on a [Mormon] mission,” Savannah said Thursday. “But you don’t have to go on a mission to help people.”

Savannah no longer attends school in Eagle Mountain. After she came out, she was shunned by teachers and classmates, her mother, Heather Kester , explained.

“Kids were telling her she would go to hell,” Kester said. “And some kids wouldn’t let her sit with them at lunch.”

But Savannah wears a big smile and is upbeat. “I try to look for the positive aspects, rather than the negative ones,” she said.

When she grows up, Savannah said she wants to be a Disney animator. And her mother thinks she will succeed.

“That girl has a brain,” Kester said, “and a lot of drive.”

Born This Way also recognized Salt Lake City-based Women of the World, which helps refugee women become self-sufficient.

Samira Harnish, Women of the World’s founder, said she was bowled over when a Born This Way Foundation director called her as Lady Gaga was preparing to head to Salt Lake City for her “Joanne World Tour.”

Members of the Born This Way Foundation follow Lady Gaga to 40 cities in the U.S. and Canada, meeting with members of each community who are making a difference, said spokeswoman Rachel Martin.

“We wanted to meet some of these amazing women,” Martin said Thursday. “We hope to bring more attention to them that hopefully will allow them to do more good work.”

“It was like I was dreaming,” Harnish said of the recognition. “This is a great honor.”

Volunteers with Harnish’s nonprofit teach refugees English and help them navigate their new environment. Some of her clients have graduated from high school and college and embarked on professional careers. Some have become successful businesswomen.

Each year, Harnish awards “certificates of independence” to clients who have succeeded. In 2010, she gave three certificates, last year it was seven and this year she awarded 20 certificates of independence to Women of the World clients.

Those women then come back to the organization and tell their stories to new arrivals who are struggling to fit into the American culture.

One of the clients, Farida Ghulam Jillani Ruhani Popal from Afghanistan, says she supports the organization for all it does.

“It’s a safe place for women to come, and they show them how to get education and other things,” she said. “They find resources for women, according to their needs.”

Harnish said she sees parallels between Women of the World and Born That Way Foundation.

“We each ensure women stand up with courage, face their fears and solve their own problems.”

Dear Ann Cannon • I am so grateful to have children who are now raised, on their own, and very independent. My problem is in knowing how much they want me in their lives. I would love to spend more time with them, chat and offer advice when asked. They do ask for help when it’s needed, but sometimes I wonder if I could be more of a presence in their lives. I don’t want to be in their face and have them wish I would go away, but at the same time, how do I know how much they want me around? I realize each child is different and circumstances change with time, but I don’t want to be asking them over and over. Do I just let it ride like I have been and just make sure I’m there when they need me? How should I go about this?

— Mama in a Quandary

Dear Mama • Because I am in the same stage of life that you are, I’d be interested in having our readers who’ve already navigated this new territory share their ideas with us.

NOTE TO READERS: Share your ideas with us! Thank you!

Meanwhile, think about setting up a regular time to get together with your children. My neighbor has her adult kids over for dinner nearly every Sunday, for example. Or offer to take your grandkids for a few hours every Monday (or Tuesday or Wednesday or whatever) morning. Standing invitations such as these will increase the possibility that you’ll have regular contact with your kids if they live in town. Otherwise, stay in touch by FaceTiming or Skyping on a regular basis. Sometimes I find conversations via FaceTime frustrating, but they’re preferable to no conversations at all. And there’s no doubt that my granddaughters who live out of state know me and my husband better than they would have otherwise.

Although you say you hate to keep asking your children over and over about their preferences, I would still check in with them. Tell your kids that while you don’t want to be intrusive, you’d definitely like some degree of regular connection. Inviting them into the actual conversation will help them understand how YOU feel while allowing them to give input at the same time. And when something stops working — regular picnics in the park, for example — don’t be afraid to make a change.

One more thing: Everybody is busy, so choose not to take things personally if plans don’t always work out.

Dear Ann Cannon • My father-in-law has had a total knee replacement and we agreed to exchange houses with him and my mother-in-law since ours is one level and they live in a three-story condo. The problem is that the surgery was nearly six weeks ago and they are not making any moves — including doing his prescribed rehab — to move back home. They are lovely people, but we are getting weary of living between two places.

— Homeless Near Seattle

Dear Homeless Near Seattle • Recovering from knee surgery is a tough business — it often takes longer than people assume it will — and it was very kind of you to accommodate your in-laws this way. At the same time, it’s tough when you start feeling like loved ones are unintentionally taking advantage of your generosity, right? I’m sorry.

If I were in your position, I’d get the conversational ball rolling right away by asking your in-laws what their plans for the immediate future are. The question alone might cause them to assess the situation and acknowledge that it’s time for them to move forward. If it doesn’t, you can always be more direct and let them know (kindly) that you would like to be back in your own home sooner rather than later. Or you can decide for now to let things be — as you long as you can manage to not be eaten up by resentment.

Best wishes!

Ann Cannon is The Tribune’s advice columnist. Got a question for Ann? Email her at askann@sltrib.com or visit the Ask Ann Cannon page on Facebook.

I am currently pacing through my house in disbelief. I finally got a chance to read Leonard Pitts' column from the July 7 Salt Lake Tribune.

As I began to read, I assumed Pitts was telling a story of someone to make a point for his column. When I realized that he was the story, and that he had been put in a position that frequently results in death by police shooting, I felt terrified and sick.

Leonard Pitts and George Pyle are my favorite editorialists. They have the courage to say what many of us think which relieves a great deal of stress in our lives.

The person who is responsible for this swatting incident did so with the intent to kill. This was no joke, but in his mind a "police for hire" hit. The caller assumed that a black "accused killer" in front of a police officer would suffer death by firing squad.

And this amoral supremacist-thinking person will probably do it again. I hope the police track him down and charge him with attempted murder before he is successful.

Beverly Terry, Salt Lake City

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When the pioneers, many of whom are our forefathers, migrated from Illinois to the west in 1847, they were seeking freedom from oppression to exercise their faith in peace. They wanted to be free, to speak, live and pray as they believed they should.

The pioneers risked all to migrate west, not to the United States but to Mexico. They sought escape from the oppression imposed upon them by the United States and, in particular, the state of Illinois.

Members of our congressional delegation have forgotten their roots when they blindly support the present administration in oppressing others seeking freedom. Those coming to the United States risk all because we are the land of opportunity.

Read the words inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, which read in part, “Give me your tired, your poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” That is who we are, we should not forget our roots.

Most of us are children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those who (a) immigrated to the United States seeking freedom to live in peace, and (b) immigrated to Mexico for the same reasons.

Yes there are holes in our immigration laws that need to be addressed. However, tearing young children from their parents is not the answer, putting people in cages and unfit quarters is not the answer. We are better than that.

When we cruelly placed Japanese Americans in internment camps during World War ll, at least they had running water and living quarters for their families. Take a look at the pictures of Topaz, Utah. The cruelty of the present administration as to its treatment immigrants along our southern border reminds me of the stories my grandparents told me of the German concentration camps of World War ll.

We need as Americans and, particularly, as Utahns to see that history need not repeat itself, we need to learn from the past and make sure the future is better for all who seek protection from our outstretched hands, not our clenched fists.

Bruce Cohne, Salt Lake City

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You know that feeling you get from witnessing something so shocking that it makes you feel the world has gone mad, even as you simultaneously feel incapable of greeting it with the appropriate outrage because you've suffered through so many equally outrageous things recently?

Perhaps there's a long word in German for this. Whatever that word might be, it's what anyone following the Republican lawsuit seeking to strike down the entire Affordable Care Act is now feeling.

That suit is a kind of legal version of Donald Trump's 2016 presidential candidacy: Everyone realizes it's both ludicrous and terrifying, but somehow it keeps chugging towards a catastrophic victory.

On Tuesday, a three-judge federal appeals court panel heard oral arguments in the case, and legal observers came away in that shocked/not shocked state. The lawsuit is acknowledged by both Republicans and Democrats to be so unbelievably stupid in its arguments that only the most buffoonishly partisan judge could take it seriously. The entire Republican Party, having created, endorsed, and promoted the lawsuit, now seems increasingly worried that it might actually succeed.

And apparently two out the three judges on the appeals court panel are ready to give it a thumbs-up.

Briefly, the Republican argument is that since the Supreme Court upheld the ACA's individual insurance mandate as a tax, and since the GOP Congress later reduced that tax to zero, effectively making it moot, then the entire law must now be struck down as unconstitutional.

As The Washington Post reports, in oral arguments, "two members of a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit grilled lawyers representing Democratic-led states and the U.S. House to explain why the Affordable Care Act remains valid."

If this suit succeeds, it would be the most profound upheaval in the history of the American health care system, with 20 million people likely to lose health coverage, somewhere between 50 and 130 million losing protections for pre-existing conditions, mass closings of hospitals deprived of revenue, chaos as the entire regulatory structure of the system is swept away in one fell swoop, and other effects we can't even begin to imagine. It would be a cataclysm.

Now here's what will really drive you mad: Republicans are trying to convince you that they are the ones who are ready to protect you from the effects of their lawsuit.

"I think the important thing for the public to know is there is nobody in the Senate not in favor of covering pre-existing conditions," said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. "And if it were, under any of these scenarios, to go away, we would act quickly on a bipartisan basis to restore it."

Or, in Trump's words, "We will always protect patients with pre-existing conditions, very importantly."

Those are obvious, naked, preposterous lies. It's like me holding you at gunpoint, then shooting you in the leg, then telling you that I am 100% committed to getting you to the hospital so you can get the treatment I wanted for you all along, because I have such a deep commitment to the health of your leg. So you can put your faith in me.

Let's go over the relevant history, just so we're clear:

• Prior to the Affordable Care Act, insurers could deny anyone coverage or charge them exorbitant premiums if they had a preexisting condition. The ACA outlaws that practice, creating the protections for the first time. Every Republican in both the Senate and the House votes no.

• Republicans spend the Obama years filing lawsuits to get the entire law struck down and holding congressional votes to repeal it, which if successful would eliminate protections for pre-existing conditions.

• Republicans take control of the entire federal government in 2017 and realize they had promised repeal but hadn’t bothered to come up with a replacement. They hastily assemble a bill, including ending protections for pre-existing conditions. The overall effort fails when John McCain opposes it at the last minute.

• Attorneys general and governors from 20 Republican-led states file a lawsuit to strike down the ACA. One attorney general who spearheaded it, Josh Hawley of Missouri, runs ads in his successful Senate bid touting his commitment to pre-existing conditions protections, the very ones was attempting to destroy.

• Even conservative legal scholars who opposed the ACA argue that the lawsuit is ridiculous.

• The lawsuit is filed in Texas so that it will be heard by Judge Reed O’Connor, an unusually partisan Republican. He rules that the whole ACA must be wiped out, thereby eliminating those protections.

• The Trump administration signs on in support of the lawsuit, asking the appeals court to strike down the ACA and its protections for pre-existing conditions.

So what we have here is the culmination of a decade-long Republican effort to eliminate protections for pre-existing conditions, a Republican lawsuit that would eliminate protections for pre-existing conditions, supported by officials in nearly every red state and by the Trump administration, validated by one Republican-appointed district court judge and likely to be rubber-stamped by two Republican-appointed appeals court judges.

Yet Republicans are still trying to convince us that they're the ones who want to protect those with pre-existing conditions.

It's madness.

And you know what else is madness? The best-case outcome is that only four Supreme Court justices vote to strike down the entire ACA and create that health care cataclysm based on this idiotic lawsuit, while Chief Justice John Roberts decides once again to save the Republican Party from itself by siding with the liberals on the court.

That’s what we have to pin our hopes on.

Paul Waldman is an opinion writer for the Plum Line blog.

@paulwaldman1

Salt Lake City Police Chief Mike Brown said in 28 years in law enforcement, he had never seen a scene as violent as the clash between protesters and police that spilled onto downtown streets Tuesday afternoon.

It started as a strange hodgepodge of protesters upset about all sorts of issues, primarily the inland port — the sprawling section of Salt Lake City snatched by the state for a massive shipping center — but also a sprinkling of pro-immigration, environmentalist and anti-racism voices.

It was essentially an anger stew that boiled over.

In the aftermath, we should consider what both sides say with some skepticism.

Gov. Gary Herbert said the whole clash was fomented by “anarchists” bent on violence and disruption and reiterated his view that it was “borderline terrorism.”

Salt Lake Chamber President Derek Miller, who also is chairman of the Inland Port Authority Board, said the radical, fringe group stormed into the chamber’s offices and immediately began breaking items, smashing security cameras and urinating in some of the offices (although the property manager said any damage was minimal).

When police showed up, the protesters refused to leave and bedlam ensued. Eight people were arrested.

Several protesters say it was the police who antagonized the group and escalated the situation to violence. Police came into the offices hot, some protesters resisted and in almost no time, violence erupted. The protesters say the officers used excessive force, punching and choking them.

Outside, more than two dozen police cars arrived, closing down roads as skirmishes spilled out into the streets and a television camera crew and a Tribune photographer were confronted and harassed.

The reaction from our elected leaders was one of shock. This type of thing never happens in Utah, according to Herbert.

But it really shouldn’t have come as a surprise. The frustration over the way the inland port has been forced on Salt Lake City has been growing for more than a year and much of it is entirely justified.

Think about it: The state annexed roughly a third of the city and handed over decision-making to a board with absolutely no accountability to the people who are most directly affected.

There was no process, just a product, with terms dictated by the Legislature. And there are no answers for members of the public demanding to know what the air and other environmental impacts will be or what might be done to mitigate them. There doesn’t appear to be any champion of their cause with a seat on the board, either.

And no matter how many times members of the public have spoken out against the port — civilly and calmly, as the governor has asked — it has been as effective as politely asking a freight train to change its course.

We’ve seen it throughout history. When people feel they aren’t being heard, they shout. When they feel the system is rigged and they have exhausted their options, they turn to protest.

And when these angry protesters — who may well have been egged on by agitators looking for a fight — come face-to-face with on-edge cops, it creates the perfect conditions for the violence we saw Tuesday.

But if the anger makes sense, the violence does not.

Tuesday’s actions were enormously counterproductive for the protesters. Instead of voicing legitimate issues, they sacrificed their own legitimacy in the eyes of a public that only saw videos of a melee, they undermined the credibility of those who have been doggedly working on this issue for months, and — I would be willing to wager — only made the members of the inland port board even more entrenched in their positions.

In the midst of the riot, all we heard from Mayor Jackie Biskupski, the most prominent port critic, was a tweet about how excited she was for the upcoming “Damn These Heels” LGBTQ film festival. The next morning, she issued a statement condemning violence and praising the police for “their handling of the situation and working to keep everyone involved as safe as possible.”

But if you look at the scores of officers on the scene and watch the video of the rousted protesters, you can’t help but wonder if the response was entirely appropriate. If you haven’t seen it, watch the video of one bald officer punching one man in the head two or three times until he appears to be restrained by another officer.

In another video, an officer — perhaps even the same one — appears to hit a woman in the back of the head as she moves toward the door. Other protesters said they were choked and dragged on the ground.

Obviously, we don’t see what happened before or after those incidents and maybe force was necessary. But Biskupski should order a thorough review of how the incident was handled, including reviewing all of the body camera footage, both to ensure the use of force was justified and perhaps to learn lessons about how to respond the next time something like this happens.

Where else do we go from here? On Wednesday, Herbert, Miller and Biskupski all called for civility and an end to violence. (Although the civility message was undercut since the mayor won’t be in the same room as the governor).

It’s the right message, of course, but civil opposition doesn’t mean much if it appears that the forces driving the inland port aren’t actually willing to listen or consider opposing viewpoints, let alone try to accommodate them.

Hopefully they will, because real, meaningful engagement is the only way to defuse the kind of frustration and anger that led to the violence we saw this week.

Happy Thursday!

A planned social-media summit at the White House today will feature traditional conservatives voices but also is expected to attract some far-right promoters of fringe conspiracy theories and misinformation. Among those boasting of invitations are Bill Mitchell, a radio host who advanced the bizarre QAnon conspiracy theory, and activist Ali Alexander, who attempted to smear Sen. Kamala Harris using inflammatory rhetoric questioning whether she is an “American black." [CNN]

Topping the news: Utah political leaders call for unity and civility in the wake of an inland port protest that grew violent. But Gov. Gary Herbert and Mayor Jackie Biskupski hold separate news conferences because of continuing disagreements about the project. [Trib] [DNews] [Fox13]

-> An advertised Salt Lake City luncheon and dinner with presidential candidate Kamala Harris will not be taking place, and organizers now say they were the victims of a bizarre scam. [Trib] [DNews]

-> Odgen City leaders defend their purchase of the old Swift Building property that is chock full of chemical and toxic waste, saying this move assures the cleanup will be conducted safely and properly. [StandEx]

Tweets of the day: @MayorJonPike: “I share @GovHerbert’s concern and condemnation of today’s violent protests at the SL Chamber offices. In the words of Arthur Brooks, we’ve got to ‘disagree better’ than this.”

-> @Patbagley: “The SL Inland Port is a rotten deal. When people feel they’re not being heard ...”

-> From @MikeLMower: “I find I don’t have to block too many of my haters on Twitter because they tend to self-select after being able to handle only so many of tweets about my Sunday School class and my hometown of Ferron.”

Happy Birthday: to Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox, state Rep. Kim Coleman and Daryl Wolke.

Trib Talk: On this week’s episode of “Trib Talk,” Leia Larsen, a journalist with the Utah Investigative Journalism Project and Brandon Cooper, Ogden City’s deputy director of community and economic development, join Tribune reporter Benjamin Wood to discuss the ongoing cleanup of masses of hazardous waste at the Swift Building in Ogden and whether city officials were adequately aware of the property’s contents when it was purchased. [Trib]

In other news: The Salt Lake City School District and the teachers association have reached a tentative salary agreement. [Trib] [DNews]

-> Utahn Paul Gibbs testified before Congress in support of the Affordable Care Act as federal courts consider the Republican attorneys general lawsuit to strike it down. [Trib] [DNews]

-> Brigham Young University announced updates to its honor code, including an “innocent until proven guilty" policy, on Wednesday. [Trib] [DNews] [DailyHerald]

-> A school for troubled youth in St. George will close after riots and recent reports of staff members assaulting students. [Trib]

-> Ten out of 19 members of Utah’s Medical Care Advisory Committee oppose the state’s plan to partially expand Medicaid using enrollment caps and work requirements. [Trib]

-> Salt Lake City mayoral candidates vow to make Muslim issues a priority. [Trib]

-> The Provo Municipal Council has approved moving to an urban deer program that uses only lethal methods of removal. [DailyHerald]

Nationally: The New York Times cites unnamed sources in reporting that the nationwide raids threatened last month to arrest and deport thousands of immigrants here illegally will launch this weekend. [NYT]

-> United State lobbyists and lawyers have made millions helping Saudi Arabia in the nine months since journalist Jamal Khashoggi was butchered. [WaPo]

-> Arrivals of migrants at the U.S. southern border have decreased in recent weeks. [NYT]

-> A Guatemalan asylum seeker recounted to Congress the story of her infant daughter’s death after contracting a lung infection in a detention center. [Reuters]

-> Britain’s ambassador in Washington has resigned after memos were leaked in which he insulted President Trump, prompting an outpouring of outrage from Trump. [Poltico]

-> U.S. Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta defends the plea deal he made with billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in Florida years ago. [WaPo] [NYT]

-> San Francisco-based PG&E Corp. knew for years that its voltage lines were wildfire risks in dry areas of California, according to documents obtained by the Wall Street Journal. [WSJ]

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

-- Dan Harrie and Sara Tabin

Imagine Vegas heat — but without the casinos and showgirls. That could be Salt Lake City’s future, according to a new climate study that shows Salt Lake City’s summers could feel more like Las Vegas in a little more than 30 years.

The average highs of Salt Lake City’s warmest month — July — are likely to rise about 10 degrees by 2050, according to the global analysis by the Crowther Lab in Switzerland. The lab produced a data map that pairs one city’s future climate conditions with those of a current city.

For example, Portland, Oregon’s climate in 2050 will be more like the 2019 conditions in San Antonio, Texas. The climate in Phoenix in 2050 will feel like Baghdad does in 2019. And 2050 Stockholm will be more like 2019 Budapest.

And in Salt Lake City, average daily highs are likely to rise from the low 90s to the low 100s, similar to summer temperatures in Las Vegas, the study says.

But don’t brace for brown landscapes and snowless peaks just yet, climate experts in Utah say. While temperatures are already rising, precipitation levels are likely to stay the same, and may even rise in some parts of Utah.

“It’s easy to envision Las Vegas, with how hot and dry it is down there — but it’s hard to say that’s what we’d end up seeing,” said Mike Seaman, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Salt Lake City.

The biggest difference, precipitation-wise, is that Salt Lake City’s water is far more likely to come as rain, rather than snow.

“We wouldn’t be holding that water in the snowpack as long,” Seaman said. “That would obviously impact reservoir storage.”

It also is likely to impact the ski industry — but more so at lower elevation resorts, Seaman said.

“One concern for the ski industry is, lower elevation resorts would trend toward more rain, less snow,” Seaman said. “Higher elevation sites wouldn't be impacted quite as much.”

Residents of the Salt Lake Valley also should expect to change their landscapes — but maybe not to the river-rock-and-cactus yards popular in Vegas.

“As temperatures continue to rise, our plants are going to require more water,” acknowledged Bart Forsyth, assistant general manager of the Jordan Valley Water Conservancy District.

“Climate models predict the growing season will increase, meaning the water we’ll have to apply will increase — unless we change the landscape,” Forsyth said.

But with more precipitation than Nevada, Utahns may be able to get away with a little more green — just not the rolling lawns of grass that are popular now, Forsyth said. The Water Conservancy District is promoting the “Localscapes” model, which calls for no more than 35 percent of a landscape to be turfgrass — about half of what is now used.

Look instead for a central open space, likely of grass, surrounded by border beds of waterwise shrubs and perennials, trees, and paths connecting other gathering spots and activity areas, like fire pits and patios.

“You’ll see yards that still look lush and green, but there won’t be as much turfgrass,” Forsyth said.

Converting to drip irrigation will be crucial. “Currently, what we have is a lot of overhead spray systems, even in planting beds,” Forsyth said. Drippers focus water only on the plants that require water and prevent evaporation.

If all else fails, Seaman joked, Utahns could consider moving toward more indoor entertainments.

“Sometimes it’s a pretty good cold front when you walk from the Strip into one of the casinos,” he said.

Washington • Embattled Labor Secretary Alex Acosta on Wednesday defended his role as a federal prosecutor in brokering a decade-old plea deal for sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, but lawyers for victims criticized his explanation and Democrats called for him to appear at a congressional hearing in two weeks.

Acosta, the top federal prosecutor for the Southern District of Florida when the 2008 deal was struck, portrayed his actions and those of his fellow federal prosecutors as heroic and possibly unprecedented.

He said the state attorney was preparing to allow Epstein to plead to a single charge of solicitation that did not make a reference to the age of the female minor. That deal would have carried no jail time and would not have required Epstein to register as a sex offender.

"We wanted to see Epstein go to jail," Acosta said. "He needed to go to jail."

The federal non-prosecution agreement that Epstein signed allowed him to plead guilty in state court to two felony solicitation charges, one involving an underage girl. He served a 13-month sentence in a private wing of a Palm Beach, Florida, jail, and was allowed to leave 12 hours a day, six days a week to work out of a nearby office.

A federal judge this year ruled that prosecutors violated the rights of the victims by failing to notify them of the plea deal.

Epstein is facing a new raft of federal child sex trafficking charges. Federal prosecutors on Monday unsealed sex trafficking charges against him, alleging that the politically connected multimillionaire had abused dozens of young girls at his New York and Palm Beach homes and enlisted his victims to bring him others.

During Wednesday’s news conference, Acosta said that new evidence and a change in climate for sex abuse victims — since they are now more likely to be believed — has made the case against Epstein more viable.

"This is very, very good," he said of the new case. "His acts are despicable."

Acosta said that, a decade ago, the female minors were either too afraid to testify or wanted to put the incident behind them, making it difficult to put together a case. His staff distributed an affidavit from Marie Villafana, an assistant state attorney, who gave the same account and also said that one accuser had changed her statement, saying Epstein had not sexually assaulted them.

Acosta said, "In our heart, we were trying to do the right thing for these victims."

Spencer Kuvin, a Florida-based attorney for the 14-year-old girl who first alerted police to Epstein's conduct, said Acosta stopped investigating long before he should have, giving up on the case and settling for less than he should have.

"Mr. Acosta's office did not take this matter seriously back in 2008 and still refuses to accept responsibility for his failed leadership, which lead to a sweetheart deal for a pedophile," Kuvin said.

The former state's attorney for Palm Beach County at the time of the Epstein plea deal released a statement disputing Acosta's account.

"I can emphatically state that Mr. Acosta's recollection of this matter is completely wrong," wrote Barry Krischer. "Federal prosecutors do not take a back seat to state prosecutors." Krischer said Acosta could have moved forward with a 53-page indictment that Acosta's office had drafted.

Former assistant U.S. attorney Neama Rahmani said that Acosta's claim that sexual assault cases were handled differently a decade ago is "absolutely not true."

"There's no difference in how these cases were prosecuted 10, 11 years ago than today," said Rahmani, president of West Coast Trial Lawyers. "He gave them a sweetheart deal. . . . Sex crimes against minors have been very aggressively prosecuted by U.S. attorneys' offices for many years."

Acosta's statements did not help him with Democrats as pressure mounted for his resignation and for him to offer a better explanation for the plea deal.

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., tweeted, "Acosta is trying to defend the indefensible. He put a monstrous predator above survivors of sexual abuse, and he's got to go — period."

"Secretary Acosta had a chance to do right by Jeffrey Epstein's victims. He failed," Democratic Policy and Communications Committee Chairman David Cicilline of Rhode Island said in a prepared statement. "Today's press conference doesn't change that. The only appropriate thing for him to do now is to resign."

Before the news conference, House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings, D-Md., joined by four of his Democratic colleagues, sent a letter to Acosta demanding he appear before the powerful investigative panel to testify July 23 on the Epstein plea deal.

"Your testimony is even more critical now that federal prosecutors . . . have unsealed a new indictment earlier this week outlining a host of additional charges against Mr. Epstein," said the letter from Cummings and Reps. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, Jackie Speier of California, Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida and Lois Frankel of Florida.

The committee also asked the Justice Department for a briefing on an ongoing review of Acosta's conduct by the agency's office that investigates potential misconduct by Justice employees.

Attorneys for Epsteins' victims also called for Acosta's resignation and questioned the explanations he gave during the hourlong news conference.

"Secretary Acosta's repeated reference to a criminal prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein as a 'roll of the dice' is grossly offensive," said Jack Scarola, an attorney who represents many of Epstein's alleged victims. "It demeans the credibility of the dozens of victim-witnesses available to testify against Epstein. It ignores the strength of the abundant corroborating evidence, including irrefutable documentary support."

Several Democrats in Congress, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., have called for Acosta's resignation. But no Senate Republicans — who all voted for Acosta's confirmation in 2017 — have explicitly called on Acosta to resign, although several are awaiting the results of a Justice Department probe into the handling of Epstein's plea deal before commenting on Acosta's fate.

Asked at Wednesday's news conference whether he would have made the same deal today, Acosta declined to say. He argued that "today's world treats victims very, very differently" and that if a trial were held today, there would be little of the "victim-shaming" that would have taken place 12 years ago.

"I'm here to say we did what we did because we wanted to see Epstein go to jail," Acosta said. "He needed to go to jail, and that was the focus."

In a statement about the case in 2011, Acosta said he and his fellow prosecutors were under great pressure from an army of superstar defense lawyers who used hyper-aggressive tactics, including investigating the prosecutors and their families for "personal peccadilloes." Acosta wrote then that the negotiations were a "year-long assault on the prosecution and the prosecutors." Acosta didn't mention the defense's tactics Wednesday.

Trump has stood by Acosta and pushed Acosta to hold the news conference to defend himself. Acosta described his relationship with Trump as "outstanding" when asked if the president was still supporting him.

Following the news conference, some in the White House said they believed Acosta started out strong — making a compelling case that he had pushed for a harsher prosecution of Epstein than he might have otherwise faced — but allowed the questioning to drag on for too long.

A senior administration official who asked not to be named said it would not have been appropriate for Acosta to offer a fiery defense of himself, in part because of the heinous nature of the crimes of which Epstein is accused. Acosta had a fine line to walk, the official said — behaving like a lawyer and explaining the challenges he faced prosecuting Epstein. The official thought Acosta had been successful in that goal.

The Washington Post’s Lisa Rein, Josh Dawsey, Damian Paletta and Donna Cassata contributed to this report.

Eye On The Y is The Salt Lake Tribune’s weekly newsletter on BYU athletics. Subscribe here.

Provo • Just when it appeared the prospects of BYU’s football program joining the American Athletic Conference were dead, former WAC and Sun Belt commissioner Karl Benson revived them with some comments to the Sports Business Journal recently.

In his weekly SBJ College Newsletter, reporter Michael Smith penned a piece that laid out “two scenarios that truly elevate the AAC” after UConn announced recently it was joining the Big East in basketball and other sports and most likely going independent in football, as BYU did in 2011.

Quoting Benson, who recently retired as commissioner of the Sun Belt, the SBJ reported that the AAC will remain at 11 members if ESPN permits the league to keep all of its media-rights revenue.

“Benson believes that once ADs see the potential for more revenue, they will take that option and stay at 11,” Smith wrote.

That would obviously keep BYU out. Of course, nobody in Provo has given any indication whatsoever that BYU is even thinking about joining the far-flung league. And AAC commissioner Mike Aresco has repeatedly said he hasn’t heard from BYU since UConn’s pending move became public.

Here’s the second scenario, which involves BYU, according to Benson:

“If ESPN exercises the composition clause in its contract — which calls for the network to be compensated for UConn’s lost value — the AAC will seek a replacement to get to 12 teams. That replacement would be BYU as a football-only member,” Benson said.

The SBJ newsletter goes on to say that BYU already has an agreement with ESPN (which expires at the end of the 2019 season but supposedly will be extended soon) and that agreement could be “absorbed” into the AAC’s deal with the network.

“BYU enhances AAC football more than any other non-P5 school, and AAC membership provides the Cougars with a shot to get into a major bowl,” Smith wrote, referencing his conversation with Benson. “And that will never happen as long as BYU is an independent.”

So, if Benson knows what he’s talking about, don’t dismiss the notion of BYU joining the AAC some day. But don’t hold your breath, either.

More BYU football news

July is probably the slowest month of the year for BYU sports news, but we’ve tried to keep the coverage flowlng until preseason training camp opens at the end of the month.

I caught up with former BYU basketball coach Dave Rose recently, and it was easy to tell that he’s already enjoying retirement.

I got together with my colleague, Kurt Kragthorpe, who covers the University of Utah, to rank the top 10 assistant coaches at Utah, BYU and Utah State with an eye towards which are closest to becoming a head coach some day.

In another piece, I wrote about how BYU had a good month of football recruiting in June, but it could have been better if four-star Colorado offensive lineman Andrew Gentry had made his decision known. He’s delayed it, which isn’t a good sign for the Cougars.

Who will be BYU’s best football player this season? Here’s one vote for mammoth defensive tackle Khyiris Tonga.

Finally, the Cougars are rightfully crowing about their No. 31 finish in the Directors’ Cup standings for the recently completed 2018-19 school year.

Other Voices

• Former BYU basketball star Jimmer Fredette abruptly quit the Golden State Warriors summer league team after two games and is not reportedly heading to play in Greece, according to this report in the Deseret News.

• Athlon Sports, to no one’s surprise, is predicting BYU to play in the Hawaii Bowl on Christmas Eve against Hawaii of the Mountain West Conference.

• Jeff Call of the Deseret News captured many of BYU football coach Kalani Sitake’s comments at media day.

• Jared Lloyd of the Provo Daily Herald outlined the golfers with BYU ties who are playing in the State Amateur this week at Soldier Hollow Golf Club in Midway.

Quotable

We’re reaching back to BYU football media day for this week’s quotable, an utterance from star safety Dayan Ghanwoloku when he was asked about facing USC’s speedy receivers in Week 3 on Sept. 14 at LaVell Edwards Stadium:

“I just like it. I like being the underdog. That’s how I got my five picks when I played corner. I was just like, ‘I am a smaller corner, but let’s throw it up.’ You want that. It is an opportunity to make a play, so if they are going to throw it up, I am going to make a play. You want that challenge. I like that challenge. If USC wants to throw the ball, they can throw it all day. As a DB, I would rather have them throw the ball than run it, because there are opportunities to make plays.”

Around campus

• BYU women’s volleyball libero Mary Lake recently showed the world what Cougar fans already know. She’s really good. Lake, who will be a senior this fall, helped the U.S. Women’s National Team win the FIVB Volleyball Nations League title on July 7 with a 3-2 victory over Brazil.

Lake, from Palm Springs, Calif., finished up a two-month experience that began in early May when she was named to the team’s preliminary roster. The team competed in Bulgaria, Italy, Nebraska and China. She was one of three college players on the U.S. squad. In all, she played in 24 sets over the course of eight matches and totaled 44 digs and 134 receptions.

• Meanwhile, another BYU women’s volleyball star, one whose eligibility with the Cougars has been exhausted, has been selected to play for the U.S. Women’s National Team in the 11-team Pan American Cup in Peru. Roni Jones-Perry, an All-American at BYU, is one of 14 players picked to play for Team USA. The playoffs begin Friday with quarterfinal matches.

• BYU finished No. 29 in the nation in the Learfield Directors’ Cup standings, as was reported by The Salt Lake Tribune last week. It is the highest finish for any school in the state and the highest among schools not in a Power 5 conference. BYU’s average ranking in 25 years of the Cup is No. 31, and it has had 13 top-30 finishes. It’s highest finish was No. 12, in 1998-99.

• BYU sophomore steeplechaser Matt Owens is a Google Cloud Academic Third Team All-American. Owens was named a first-team All-American in the 3,000 meters after taking eighth place last month at the NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships in Austin, Texas.

Durango • A mining company says it won’t carry out cleanup work ordered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as part of a Superfund project in southwest Colorado.

The Durango Herald reported Wednesday that Sunnyside Gold Corp. sent the EPA a letter saying the company isn’t responsible for pollution flowing from inactive mines in the area.

The EPA wants Sunnyside to help pay for some of the initial investigations into the Bonita Peak Superfund cleanup, citing the company's previous mining activity there.

The EPA says it will review Sunnyside's letter before deciding its next step.

The Bonita Peak Superfund project includes the Gold King Mine, source of a 2015 spill that polluted rivers in Colorado, New Mexico and Utah. An EPA-led contractor inadvertently triggered the spill while excavating at the mine entrance.

The Mormon Land newsletter is a weekly highlight reel of developments in and about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, whether heralded in headlines, preached from the pulpit or buzzed about on the back benches. Want this newsletter in your inbox? Subscribe here.

The ‘B’ word

Stories of “baseball baptisms” — join a sports league, join the church — are legendary in Latter-day Saint missionary circles.

But those rushes to baptize, intended to bring about a rapid rise in converts, especially among young men, proved to be off base.

Even less-aggressive approaches, including invitations to baptism during first lessons, were misguided.

“It was never our intention to invite people to be baptized before they had learned something about the gospel, felt the Holy Ghost, and had been properly prepared to accept a lifelong commitment to follow Jesus Christ,” apostle M. Russell Ballard, acting president of the Quorum of the Twelve, told new mission presidents last month, according to a Church News report. “Our retention rates will dramatically increase when people desire to be baptized because of the spiritual experiences they are having rather than feeling pressured into being baptized by our missionaries.”

Extending a baptism invitation too soon can scare off not only prospective converts, Ballard warned, but also members from sharing with missionaries the names of friends and families who may be interested in learning about the church.

“Missionaries need to be careful not to push people down the path,” the longtime apostle said. “Instead, they should invite them to take the next step on the path.”

So, how soon should the “B” word be broached?

Ballard said all invitations to nonmembers, especially baptism, should be “Spirit-led.”

That echoed the advice of Gary Crittenden, managing director of the church’s missionary department, who told The Salt Lake Tribune earlier this year that Latter-day Saint leaders “still rely on missionaries when they sit across the table from someone and talk about the gospel to feel impressed about what they should ask them to do.”

There’s “always a balance,” Crittenden said, between moving too quickly and too slowly.

Splitting hairs

There are do’s and don’ts to entering and working in a Latter-day Saint temple. But, thanks to Tekulve Jackson-Vann, members now know that dreadlocks will do just fine.

The Payson Temple worker initially was told that his new look wouldn’t cut it, because it violated church guidelines that say temple workers’ appearance should be clean and conservative.

The temple president then got the word from higher-ups: The dreadlocks could stay and so could Jackson-Vann as an ordinance worker.

“I didn’t see it as racism, per se,” Jackson-Vann told The Tribune of the initial ruling. “I saw it as [evidence that] there is room for some cultural sensitivity in the church.”

Tribune humor columnist Robert Kirby later commented that it’s time for faith leaders to let their hair down, so to speak, and stop obsessing over “trivialities.”

“If a global church is what Latter-day Saints truly hope for,” he wrote, “then we’re going to have to back off our Utah corsets a notch or two.”

Truth is ‘stranger’

In Season 3 of the megahit “Stranger Things,” Dustin describes Mormons as “super-religious white people.”

Unfortunately, writes Religion News Service senior columnist Jana Riess, there’s more fact than fiction in that characterization — at least on the racial front in America.

Studies show the U.S. church is overwhelmingly white and holding steady at about 85%. That is happening even as the nation itself grows more diverse.

Of course, global Mormonism is a different story, thanks to dramatic proselytizing progress through the years in Africa, Latin America and Asia.

This week’s podcast: How art can enhance worship

Retired Columbia University professor Richard L. Bushman is best known for his biography of church founder Joseph Smith and as an expert in early American history.

In the past few years, though, he and his historian wife, Claudia Lauper Bushman, have taken a keen interest in the arts — specifically those associated with Mormonism.

This week, the two talk about what prompted them to help organize the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts in New York City, which just completed its third annual festival, and what they see as the faith’s aesthetic.

Listen here.

More Honor Code reforms

The push for reforms at Brigham Young University’s Honor Code Office continues to pay dividends.

This week, officials announced changes intended to “reduce misunderstanding and anxiety” among students at the church-owned Provo school.

The updates include detailing the appeals process, allowing a second person to accompany students in Honor Code meetings and no longer calling Honor Code Office employees “counselors.”

“The feedback from the students has been an essential component to this process, as it has provided a comprehensive perspective on the realities and perceptions of the Honor Code and the Honor Code Office,” Kevin Utt, director of BYU’s Honor Code Office, said in an online statement. “We will continue to communicate updates as they are rolled out so that students know what to expect as they arrive on campus for the fall semester.”

Filmmaker sentenced

Prominent Latter-day Saint filmmaker Sterling Van Wagenen, executive producer of “Jane and Emma,” has been sentenced for a second time to six years to life in prison for sexually abusing a young girl between 2013 and 2015.

“It’s clear that any kind of apology I can make is meaningless at this point,” he told the judge during his first sentencing. “So I am not even going to attempt one. I want you all to know I feel the consequences of what I’ve done. I feel them deeply.”

The punishment comes after Van Wagenen’s admission in an audio interview released in February — by the Truth & Transparency Foundation, the nonprofit group behind the MormonLeaks website — that he had molested a 13-year-old boy in 1993.

The boy, now an adult, praised the girl for stepping forward, calling her “my little hero.”

Quote of the week

“One of the best things about being retired now is I can actually cheer for the [University of Utah] Utes. That will be fun.”

Dave Rose, former BYU men’s basketball coach

Mormon Land is a weekly newsletter written by David Noyce and Peggy Fletcher Stack. Subscribe here.

“Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” is returning to television next year, and production of the show is returning to Utah for a pair of episodes.

The Ogden-based Wadman Corporation announced Thursday that it will be the contractor for home rebuilds for two families in the “greater Ogden area.”

“When the producers of ‘Extreme Makeover: Home Edition’ called us, there was no doubt we were willing to take on the challenge of organizing the building of two new homes in one week for two deserving families,” said Wadman president Dave Hogan.

(That’s one week per house, by the way.)

“Wadman Corporation’s ability to execute two projects of this size was clear to us, as was their passion and desire to give back to the community,” said executive producer Brady Connell, who returns to the series he helmed from 2007-12.

As was the case with the original series, the revival will undertake a massive makeover of a home in each episode and highlight why the family deserves it. Past episodes have featured families who suffered all sorts of hardships, from deaths to life-threatening illnesses, tornadoes to house fires.

“Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” aired 200 episodes from 2003-2012, including three in Utah — in Bountiful in 2005; in Logan in 2006; and in South Jordan in 2011.

The show, which originally aired on the ABC broadcast network, is being revived on cable. HGTV has ordered 10 episodes, which will begin airing in early 2020.

The new host will be a familiar face — it’s Jesse Tyler Ferguson of “Modern Family.”

(Original host Ty Pennington will not be involved; HGTV has not announced if any of the other original cast members will be on board.)

HGTV president Jane Latman said hiring Ferguson “is one of the ways HGTV will be its own creative lens on the series.” She said the new version will include “some variations to the creative aspects of the show,” but that it will retain the “great storytelling” of the original.

According to Wadman, the Utah families — which have not yet been chosen — will be surprised by Ferguson in the second and third weeks of August. (Families are sent on weeklong vacations while their homes are remodeled.)