Every time Disney has produced “The Lion King,” it’s been a stylized rendition, and the question becomes whether the particular style — hand-drawn animation in the 1994 film, puppet performance in the Broadway production, or now photo-realistic computer animation — works for the story of a young cub maturing into a leader.

With director Jon Favreau and an army of animators and artists arranging pixels into realistic-looking African landscapes and talking animals, the answer is, yes, this lion still roars.

Now, as it did 25 years ago, the opening snaps the viewer to attention. The Zulu chant by South African musician Lebo M. again announces the sunrise and summons animals big and small to Pride Rock for a presentation of King Mufasa’s new heir, the lion cub Simba. As the king’s trusted aide, the baboon Rafiki lifts young Simba up so all may bow, the song “Circle of Life” — written, like most of the songs, by Elton John and Tim Rice — swells to a crescendo in a shot-for-shot remake of the 1994 version’s first minutes.

Missing from the ceremony is Scar, Mufasa’s scheming, scraggly brother and pretender to the throne. Mufasa (voiced by James Earl Jones, the lone holdover from the ’94 voice cast) refuses to exile Scar (voiced by Chiwetel Ejiofor), a fatal decision that leads to Simba (voiced by 12-year-old JD McCrary) running away into exile and putting Scar, backed by a pack of ravenous hyenas, in command of the Pride Lands.

Simba is found by the story’s comic duo, the fast-talking meerkat Timon (voiced by comic Billy Eichner) and the doofus warthog Pumbaa (voiced by Seth Rogen). They teach Simba their motto of worry-free living, “Hakuna Matata,” and the three frolic as Simba grows to adulthood in a single song, acquiring the voice of Donald Glover aka Childish Gambino.

Soon, Simba’s lioness friend Nala, who as an adult is voiced by Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, arrives on the scene. She provides Simba both a romantic partner (fueled by the song “Can You Feel the Love Tonight?”) and a chance at redemption over his father’s death. Meanwhile, Rafiki (voiced by John Kani, the elder king from “Black Panther”) catches something on the wind that Simba lives, despite what Scar told everyone in the Pride Lands.

The way Favreau depicts Rafiki’s discovery is one area where this “Lion King” diverts from the ’94 version. It’s a smart, evocative sequence depicting the “circle of life” across the African wilderness. It also forces unsuspecting audiences to contemplate a giraffe’s digestive process from leaf to poop.

Mostly, though, screenwriter Jeff Nathanson follows the same story beats and song cues as the ’94 film. Young McCrary belts out “I Just Can’t Wait to Be King” as energetically as ever, and John Oliver’s take on Mufasa’s hornbill majordomo Zazu provides many of the same laughs as the original did. The few variations, like a spot-on Disney inside joke or Beyoncé’s goosebump-inducing solo on the new song “Spirit,” are charming but don’t detract from the familiar theme of a prince accepting his royal responsibility.

Visually, Favreau, as he did with the remake of Disney’s “The Jungle Book,” creates a vivid, tactile world out of nothing. Everything, from the lush jungle foliage to the fur on Mufasa’s mane, was created in a computer, making the leap over digital filmmaking’s “uncanny valley” — the line in computer animation where realistic crosses into creepy — like no other movie before it.

The sumptuous look can be ascribed, in part, to veteran cinematographer Caleb Deschanel (“The Right Stuff,” “The Passion of the Christ”). He is credited as the movie’s director of photography, even though there’s not a frame of traditional “photography” in the film.

That doesn’t make this version of “The Lion King” better than the ’94 version — some parts, like Scar’s ominous “Be Prepared,” were superior the first time — but different. Every story comes down to the quality of its interpretation, and the stunning visual splendor of this rendition tells this story beautifully and dynamically.

★★★1/2

‘The Lion King’

Eye-popping photo-realistic animation brings the familiar Disney story to life in a whole new way.

Where • Theaters everywhere.

When • Opens Friday, July 19.

Rated • PG for sequences of violence and peril, and some thematic elements.

Running time • 118 minutes.

Video: Children growing up with toxic stress from abuse or neglect are more likely to have lifelong health problems. Migrant children being separated from their parents, students surviving a school shooting, kids growing up in homes with substance abuse or mental illness are all at risk. But Nadine Burke Harris, California’s surgeon general, says there is hope. (The Washington Post)

Children in dirty clothes who haven’t been bathed in days. Eight-year-olds caring for toddlers out of necessity. Kids deprived of the safe, stable and nurturing care that’s fundamental to their health and well-being.

As a pediatrician who has spent my career working to address childhood trauma, I've unfortunately seen it all. And I've had to make my share of reports to Child Protective Services. But whom do we call to report the mistreatment of children by the federal government?

Over the past few weeks, we've seen report after report about the alarming conditions that children are experiencing in our federal detention centers. These conditions aren't just heartbreaking; they're dangerous to a child's health. And I'm not talking about germs.

You don't have to be a doctor to recognize that the forcible separation of a child from her parent is deeply traumatic. But what the science tells us is that when kids experience trauma, without the buffering support of a nurturing caregiver, it can change their developing brains and bodies and cause serious consequences.

Research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Kaiser Permanente and other expert institutions has shown that severely traumatic events, or adverse childhood experiences, such as being forcibly separated from a parent or caregiver, substantially increase the risk for negative physical and psychological outcomes, both in the short term and later in life.

Here's why: When any one of us experiences something traumatic, our brains and bodies activate our fight-or-flight response that leads to the production of high levels of stress hormones. They stimulate our hearts to beat stronger and faster, raise blood pressure and blood sugar, activate our immune system, and alter brain functioning.

That's great if you're in the forest facing a wild animal and you're built to run, but science shows that too many stress hormones can lead to serious damage. Children require the nurturing care of a trusted adult to shut off the stress response. Without this, kids are at high risk of long-term changes in brain structure and function, weakening of the immune system, and impairment of hormonal levels.

These changes are what is now recognized by the American Academy of Pediatrics as toxic stress response. Toxic stress increases the chances that individuals will develop asthma and infections in childhood and develop cardiovascular disease, diabetes, substance dependence and depression in adulthood - cutting their life expectancy short by decades.

This is about medical science, not politics. Republicans and Democrats alike have called for more humane treatment of children at our border. Former first lady Laura Bush's eloquent opinion piece last year rightly cited that individuals of Japanese descent who were interned during World War II were twice as likely to develop cardiovascular disease or die prematurely as those not interned.

The CDC has called for using data about the importance of safe, stable and nurturing relationships and environments in our policies and actions, and the American Academy of Pediatrics strongly warned that our government should "eliminate exposure to conditions or settings that may retraumatize children, such as those that currently exist in detention, or detention itself."

Yet our immigration policies continue to forcibly separate children from their caregivers and place them in conditions known to harm their healthy development. This practice of injecting unnecessary and preventable suffering into the lives of migrant children and their families must be stopped.

The physical toll placed on these young, growing bodies and brains comes at a tremendous cost to the individuals, their families and communities, and ultimately, to our national conscience. Regardless of what one thinks about immigration, there's one price no child should have to pay: a shortened life.

Nadine Burke Harris is the surgeon general of California.

The Utah Transit Authority Board has approved three significant steps that show continuing evolution in its services.

One project soon will test converting transit in southern Salt Lake County into a cross between Uber and traditional bus service. Another continues a tweaked-over-the-years deal to offer Salt Lake City residents half-price monthly passes. And one seeks grants to resolve bottlenecks that cause delays and limit growth of the FrontRunner commuter train service.

Following is a look at each:

• Microtransit. The board approved testing a new ‘microtransit’ service that like Uber and Lyft will allow hailing a ride with a smartphone. But like traditional bus service, it will have flat fares that do not vary by distance, and rides will be shared with people heading the same direction.

The one-year $2.5 million agreement — renewable for two additional years — was awarded to the ridesharing app company Via.

That firm has 80 current and pending rideshare agreements with public transit authorities in 18 countries, said Via spokesman Andy Ambrosius. That includes such cities as Seattle, Los Angeles, Sydney and London. “We're excited to bring our technology to Utah,” Ambrosius said.

Jaron Robertson, UTA’s program manager for innovative mobility solutions, said Via was chosen over seven other bidders mainly because of its experience and ability to deliver new-generation services that UTA seeks.

Riders will be able to use a smartphone (or make a voice call to a service center) to request a ride within a 65 square-mile area in Bluffdale, Draper, Herriman, Riverton, Sandy and South Jordan. They will be given estimates about when they will be picked up and dropped off.

Transfers will be allowed to other UTA services. The project will focus initially on trying to connect people to transit stations but will drop them anywhere in the service area. It may eventually replace some lightly used bus routes — and expand evening and weekend service.

Via will provide contract drivers and Mercedes Metris vans, which accommodate a driver and six adults. Agreements say such vans provide “an extra layer of professionalism and attractiveness to the service.” Via will also offer some wheelchair-accessible vehicles.

Contracts call for achieving an average wait time of 15 minutes for a ride and allow a maximum wait of 25 minutes. The service is not exactly door-to-door and may require riders to walk to meeting points. Contracts call for achieving an average walk of 0.10 miles and allow a maximum of 0.25 miles.

UTA aims to launch the service this fall, evaluate it after a year and determine whether to continue or even, perhaps, expand it.

• Discount passes. The UTA Board renewed a deal with Salt Lake City that allows its residents to buy UTA monthly passes at half price — and incorporates some lessons learned over time.

The Hive passes were announced with hoopla back in 2014 — and then cost $360 a year, a discount of $2,016 from the full retail price then for passes allowing access to all UTA transit services. But the city sold only half the 6,000 passes it hoped that residents would buy during the first year — finding many residents could not come up with the $360 price all at once.

So the program was revamped to allow buying passes a month at a time, but the price was raised to $42 a month — and eliminated offering rides on FrontRunner trains, but covered service on bus, TRAX and the Sugar House streetcar.

Hive passes now allow transfers to FrontRunner but cover travel only to one stop without incurring extra costs. Also included is a one-year free GREENBike membership. Residents may also pre-purchase Hive passes for a year for $475, which is an additional $29 discount.

The 50% discount on the retail price of monthly passes comes from the city (which covers 30%) and UTA (20%). UTA figures the Hive passes generate about $1 million of revenue a year. The agency generates about $52 million a year from fares overall in a year.

• Double-tracking FrontRunner. The UTA Board have given officials the go-ahead to seek federal grants for projects to double-track more of the FrontRunner commuter rail system.

Most of it is now on single tracks. If a train breaks down, it can shut down the entire system in both directions. Also, the frequency of service is limited by timing that allows trains to pass each other at the few sections with double tracks.

UTA will seek up to $25 million in federal funds in proposals that call for double-tracking around the city of Vineyard in Utah County. It plans on using as a local match land UTA owns and construction of a station in Vineyard valued at $11 million.

Proposals also call for double-tracking between the Draper and South Jordan stations. Grant proposals are scaled to allow different amounts of double-tracking, depending on how much money is obtained.

Red All Over is a weekly newsletter covering University of Utah athletics. Subscribe here.

ESPN's Football Power Index is fascinating to me, because it provides a gauge of every college football matchup throughout the season and factors in the science of probability.

Here’s what I mean: The FPI formula favors Utah in 10 of 12 regular-season games, so the natural response is to think the Utes are expected to go 10-2 (losing at USC and Washington). But that’s not how probability works. The projection is for the Utes to win 8.6 games. I’ll list the FPI’s game-by-game look at the Ute schedule later in this newsletter.

First, a review of some recent stories. With the Pac-12 Media Day not quite two weeks away, I was able to get started on some looks into the Ute football team this week, catching up with the new safety tandem of Terrell Burgess and Julian Blackmon. What struck me about talking to them is how closely the two seem to be bonded, a vital part of managing the secondary from their positions.

Another theme continues to develop, how coach Kyle Whittingham is doing everything he can to maximize the 2019 roster. The Utes have lost some players to other schools as graduate transfers, but they’ve also restocked with incoming players. The latest addition is Hunter Thedford, a 6-foot-6, 260-pound tight end from Southern Methodist.

Donny Daniels is back on the Utah campus, where he initially arrived 30 years ago as a member of the new basketball coaching staff of the late Rick Majerus. He’s already a member of the Assistant Coaches Hall of Fame and was ready to retire, approaching his 65th birthday in August. But he’s revved up about his job as the Utes’ director of player development, and he explained his role to me.

Tribune colleague Jay Drew and I examined the FBS coaching staffs in the state and concluded that Ute defensive coordinator Morgan Scalley ranks No. 1 among future head coaching candidates. Scalley will turn 40 in October and is highly regarded inside and outside of Utah’s athletic department. That was illustrated by the 56-percent raise he received this past winter.

Speaking of percentages, here's the breakdown of Utah's schedule, with expectations of winning, according to the FPI: at BYU, 60.5 percent; Northern Illinois, 94.6 percent; Idaho State, 99.0 percent; at USC, 45.1 percent; Washington State, 68.2 percent; at Oregon State, 85.1 percent; Arizona State, 70.3 percent; California, 81.8 percent; at Washington, 31.4 percent; UCLA 57.9 percent; at Arizona, 63.8 percent; Colorado, 84.7 percent.

So of the 10 games the Utes are favored to win, UCLA at home and BYU on the road are considered the most challenging. The FPI surprisingly ranks UCLA (No. 20) ahead of Utah (No. 22), although having that game at Rice-Eccles Stadium gives Utah the edge. But the 60-40 projection for the Utah-BYU is a reminder that nothing is guaranteed about a ninth straight victory for the Utes in the rivalry.

The 94-percent rating for Utah-Northern Illinois masks how the Utes struggled to beat the Huskies last September. And the Pac-12 opener at USC shapes up as a pivotal game that could go either way.

Other voices

CBS Sports believes Arizona is undervalued in the Pac-12 South landscape, but also endorses the Utes (CBS).

Mike Sorensen of the Deseret News analyzes Utah’s young men’s basketball roster (DNEWS).

SB Nation’s BlockU site examines how far the Ute football program could advance in 2019 (SBN).

Around campus

• Utah has not yet published a 2019-20 men’s basketball schedule, but BYU’s visit is expected to be Tuesday, Dec. 3, based on discussions about the Huntsman Center’s 50-year anniversary event. The arena’s first basketball game was played Dec. 2, 1969.

• Former Ute second baseman Oliver Dunn has been promoted to Class-A Charleston in the New York Yankees organization, after batting .240 for rookie-league Pulaski. Dunn was drafted in the 11th round in June and signed with the Yankees after an outstanding junior season. Another former Cottonwood High School player, pitcher Porter Hodge, has signed with the Chicago Cubs as a 13th-round pick, forgoing his Ute scholarship. Hodge was among five Ute signees who were drafted in June; the program is awaiting a decision from one other player, according to a program spokesman.

• The Utah women’s cross country schedule includes home meet Oct. 25 at Sunnyside Park and the Utes will host the NCAA Mountain Region Championships on Nov. 15 at Rose Park Golf Course.

• Utah’s softball program has added a transfer for the 2020. Second baseman Charlee Pond, a southern Califiornia native, batted .323 in 41 games for Ohio University as a freshman.

• Ute lacrosse assistant coaches Marcus Holman and Will Manny will play in the inaugural Premier Lacrosse League All-Star Game, July 21 in Los Angeles. Holman is second in the league with 15 goals and Manny is third with 14 goals. They’re teammates for Archers LC in the PLL, which roams around the country and stages weekend tripleheaders.

Protesters involved in a demonstration that turned violent in downtown Salt Lake City earlier this week sought to offer their side of the story at a news conference on Thursday: one that blames overly aggressive police.

Amid calls from state and city leaders for civility and elevated discourse — and after Utah Gov. Gary Herbert decried the protests as “borderline terrorism,” noting that some protesters self-identify as anarchists — the people who were involved pointed to police actions as the source of escalated tensions.

“We were not prepared for the massive amounts of police brutality placed on our protesters,” a local community organizer who identified himself only as Anco told reporters during a 45-minute news conference at the Sierra Club’s offices downtown.

The Salt Lake City Police Department, in turn, released footage Thursday afternoon of officers’ interactions with protesters on the sixth floor of the Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce. The video shows a crowd of 40 to 60 people singing and chanting as police informed them and media they needed either to leave or be arrested.

“There’s no reason to be jailed for this,” an officer tells them. "We’re trying to be cool.” Several protesters started up chants of “Abort the port!” and refused to move.

Salt Lake City Police Chief Mike Brown told reporters at a news conference that the department has 119 body camera downloads and has documented six assaults against officers. Seventy-five officers responded to the scene over the course of five hours and ultimately arrested eight people.

"Our officers were spit on, scratched, kicked, punched” and had items thrown at them, Brown said.

The department has opened a criminal investigation to look at the assaults and reports of destruction of property. It has also opened an internal affairs audit to look at the actions of officers, is conducting an after-action review of the incidents and is seeking input from the city’s civilian police review board.

Additional body camera footage was released to The Tribune on Thursday evening after an open records request. That footage begins several minutes before the footage shown at the news conference. It opens with two police officers stationed on the sixth floor who realize they aren’t enough to control the crowd.

“We might want more [police],” one officer says, as protesters chant outside.

More arrive, and an officer asks the reinforcements, “How many sets of cuffs you got?", worried they wouldn’t have enough.

Minutes pass before police start handcuffing protesters on the sixth floor. Before the arrests, two protest liaisons confer with police and relay a message to the crowd: Leave or you’ll be arrested. Police soon echo that sentiment.

Officers arrest some people and then begin trying to arrest the handful who remain hooked together in a circle with their arms inside lock box tubes constructed from carabiners, chains, PVC pipe and duct tape. Protesters can be heard shouting and singing in the background. Some yell at police who are attempting to break the tubes, saying officers are fracturing their wrists or hurting them.

Officers tell the protesters to let go of the handles inside the lock boxes. “We don’t want to hurt you,” one officer says. The footage ends once police arrest all the protesters in the lock boxes.

Opponents of the Utah inland port development gathered for what began as a peaceful demonstration outside Salt Lake City Hall Tuesday denouncing the inland port, a massive distribution hub development planned for the city’s northwest side, as well as capitalism, colonialism, climate change and immigration laws.

The group of more than 150 people then crossed 400 South to the Salt Lake Chamber offices, where they filled the lobby and made their way to the sixth-floor offices. After police arrived on the scene and ordered the crowd to disperse, some protesters resisted removal while others spilled into the surrounding streets in an escalating scene of pushing, shoving and thrown punches.

Organizers said during their news conference Thursday that they had specifically instructed their demonstrators not to engage in any force or destruction of property, and that those who had taken such actions were not affiliated with their groups.

“I don’t condone the destruction of that wall but that wall can be replaced,” Anco said, noting that climate change, in contrast, will do irreversible damage to the planet — and that that should be the focus.

Inland port activist statement by The Salt Lake Tribune on Scribd

The activists denied Chamber CEO Derek Miller’s claims that some of them had urinated in offices.

Jack Noftsger, a spokesman for Unico Properties, which owns and manages the City Centre 1 building where the chamber offices are located, told The Salt Lake Tribune on Wednesday that property damage in the lobby related to the protest was “very minor” and did not affect the building’s security.

He wouldn’t comment on damage inside the chamber’s offices on Thursday, saying, “We don’t speak on behalf of our tenants.”

An activist who gave his name as Brooks said the event’s significance had “been lost in the media” as the Salt Lake City Police Department and other government officials “have misconstrued the activists as agents of violence rather than agents of change.”

“I saw people getting punched in the head, corralled and pinned,” Anco noted later. “This is the story and this is where the violence is.”

Darin Mann, a community advocate who ran for the state Legislature last year, posted a pair of videos to Facebook that showed an officer dragging a demonstrator along the ground and another punching a protester in the face. He said an officer had choked him to the point he nearly vomited.

Carlos Martinez, an activist with the Rose Park Brown Berets, noted that while police asked individuals to leave, there was no unified request for dispersal. If there was, he said demonstrators would have complied. He also criticized the media for trying to manipulate the public by showing what he argued were selective moments of violence on behalf of unaffiliated group members rather than moments as when he says an officer choked him.

“I was unarmed; I had my hand back,” he said. “That’s not being shown to you. What you are seeing is a sensationalized microscopic view of what actually transpired.”

The Tribune’s coverage included claims of police brutality from protesters and the newspaper republished a video clip supplied by Mann.

Despite what they believe was a show of extreme force, protesters pledged to continue direct action and other more community-based organizing around issues facing primarily communities of color and those of lower socioeconomic status. Activists also said they plan to do more training on what organizers should do if violence breaks out.

And while they admit they made some mistakes, calling Tuesday’s event a “learning experience” for all involved, they say they felt it was their only option.

“Many individuals organizing this have had public meetings with state officials and we have gone through the civil process of raising our hand, waiting our turn, being in a place where we can discuss ideas and that’s gotten us nowhere; absolutely nowhere,” Martinez said. “This is not just an isolated incident, this is something that has been a collaboration of struggle for many people here today.”

Jack Hedge, the newly hired executive director of the inland port, said Tuesday that stakeholders were meeting even as the demonstration was getting out of hand. The board has not scheduled its monthly July meeting and it’s unclear when it will next convene. Spokeswoman Aimee Edwards has said the open schedule is unrelated to earlier protests that shut down one meeting and disrupted another and is an effort to get Hedge on board and up to speed.

Activists have raised concerns about the possible impacts the inland port — a sprawling distribution hub planned in Salt Lake City’s northwest side — could have on air quality and wildlife in an already fragile ecosystem. The planned development is expected to bring increased rail, truck and air traffic along with tailpipe emissions.

The port board is developing a business plan and an environmental impact statement, and it’s unclear how the project will develop. But as activists delivered a strong message on the urgency of climate change, Utah Against Police Brutality activist Dave Newlin — a former Tribune employee — said he thinks it’s “naive” to think it’s possible the project won’t have a “massive environmental impact."

While many politicians have issued calls decrying violence in the days following the protest, the House Democratic Caucus, in a statement released Wednesday, was one of the few to also point to any actions on behalf of police.

“It is never acceptable for protesters to attack anyone, destroy property, or create mayhem, nor for law enforcement to use inappropriate force,” they wrote. "It is incumbent on police and protesters not to escalate tensions into what we saw yesterday. We applaud Utah’s highly engaged citizenry who care about good public process and policy. We all want a safe place to exercise free speech.”

House Speaker Brad Wilson countered with his own statement on Thursday, calling the House Democrats “irresponsible" for insinuating “that law enforcement did anything other than work to restore peace and order during this violent protest.”

“They weren’t the ones attacking journalists, urinating in offices, or destroying public property,” he wrote.

- Tribune reporter Paighten Harkins contributed to this report.

Washington • A nationwide immigration enforcement operation targeting people who are in the United States illegally is expected to begin this weekend after it was postponed last month by President Donald Trump, according to two administration officials and immigrant activists.

The operation, which is sparking outrage and concern among immigrant advocates, would target people with final orders of removal, including families whose immigration cases had been fast-tracked by judges in 10 major cities.

The sweep remains in flux and possibly could begin later, according to the officials, who were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. Activists are circulating information about hotlines for immigrants to call and bolstering know-your-rights training.

The operation is similar to ones conducted regularly since 2003 that often produce hundreds of arrests. It is slightly unusual to target families, as opposed to immigrants with criminal histories, but not unprecedented. The Obama and Trump administrations have targeted families in previous operations.

But this one is notable really because of the politics swirling around it.

Trump announced on Twitter last month that the sweep would mark the beginning of an effort to deport millions of people who are in the country illegally, a near-impossibility given the limited resources of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which makes the arrests and carries out deportation orders.

Then he abruptly canceled it after a phone call with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., while lawmakers worked to pass a $4.6 billion border aid package . Plus, details had leaked and authorities worried about the safety of ICE officers, railing against suspected leakers.

At the request of Democrats, I have delayed the Illegal Immigration Removal Process (Deportation) for two weeks to see if the Democrats and Republicans can get together and work out a solution to the Asylum and Loophole problems at the Southern Border. If not, Deportations start!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 22, 2019

The agency said in a statement that it would not discuss specifics about enforcement operations.

"As always, ICE prioritizes the arrest and removal of unlawfully present aliens who pose a threat to national security, public safety and border security," according to the statement.

Pelosi said she hoped the administration would think again about the operation. "Families belong together," she said.

The administration has been straining to manage a border crisis , and some officials believe flashy shows of force in deporting families would deter others migrants from coming. But others have criticized drawing resources away from the border at a time when the Border Patrol is detaining four times the number of people it should. Also, a watchdog report found filthy, potentially dangerous conditions at some stations.

Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington state, co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and a former immigrant advocate, accused the administration of showing a "willingness to be cruel at every turn. It sickens me that this is this is the United States of America, we are so much better than this."

Activists have been preparing for more raids, publicizing hotlines for immigrants to call and stepping up know-your-rights trainings on what to do if agents show up. Some said they were gearing up for them to start Sunday. Activists in Chicago planned a Saturday rally with roughly 10,000 people expected to attend.

Others said they continued to do what they had since Trump took office and were skeptical of him following through on the threat.

"We don't want to alarm folks, but we want to alert folks," said Melissa Taveras of the Florida Immigrant Coalition.

Tareen reported from Chicago. Associated Press writers Lisa Mascaro and Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.

Is there anyone on the planet who doesn’t know who lives in a pineapple under the sea? You don’t even have to watch the animated series to know that absorbent and yellow and porous is he. Heck, you don’t even have to own a TV.

According to Nickelodeon, more than $13 billion in SpongeBob SquarePants-related consumer products have been sold since the show premiered in 1999.

Rodger Bumpass, who voices Squidward, said his own “world’s largest merchandising collection” of those Bikini Bottom treasures has taken over his house. “I’ve got a special room for it now,” he said. “I’ve got everything from food to candy to dental supplies — which, of course, follows the candy part — and models. Everything.”

Nickelodeon is celebrating the 20th anniversary of the show — TV’s No. 1 kids’ animated program for the past 17 years — with “SpongeBob’s Big Birthday Blowout” (Friday, July 12, 5 and 6 p.m., Nickelodeon). It will include a live-action segment that’s surreal, even for this series.

Tom Kenny voices SpongeBob and has appeared as Patchy the Pirate in live-action segments. But he’ll be joined for the first time by Bill Fagerbakke (the voice of Patrick Star), Carolyn Lawrence (Sandy Cheeks), the show’s writer, known as Mr. Lawrence (Sheldon Plankton and Larry the Lobster) and Clancy Brown (Mr. Krabs), all playing doppelganger versions of their characters.

It’s a tribute not just to the show and its voice actors, but to creator Stephen Hillenburg, who died due to complications of ALS in November; he was 57.

“It was really weird, and then really fun,” Carolyn Lawrence said. “Eventually, I think it became very familiar and it seemed just like a natural thing for us to do. But at first, just wearing the outfits and standing in that set was really strange.”

“Trying to actually look like your character, that was a pretty tough thing to try to do,” Bumpass said.

“Clancy couldn’t not call Rodger Squidward, even though his character’s name was something else, because he’s been calling him Squidward for 20 years,” Fagerbakke said.

In the hourlong episode, the residents of Bikini Bottom are planning a big surprise birthday party for SpongeBob, so Patrick takes him to the surface world to get him out of the way — and they visit a restaurant that looks suspiciously like the Krusty Krab, the restaurant where SpongeBob works.

‘The million-dollar question’

“SpongeBob” is seen in more than 200 countries and territories, translated into 55 languages and watched more more than 100 million people worldwide — according to Nickelodeon, its most widely-distributed property ever.

The network has produced a lot of really good, really successful animated shows — “Doug,” “Rugrats,” “Hey Arnold,” “CatDog,” “The Wild Thornberrys,” “Fairly OddParents” and more — but none have had the same broad, long-lasting appeal.

What made “SpongeBob” catch on and kept it popular for two decades?

“Man, that’s the million-dollar question,” Fagerbakke said. “I don’t know if there’s a formula. There’s something mercurial and enigmatic about it. And I’ve come to think it’s a magical combination of shapes, colors and sounds.”

Bumpass also pointed to the show’s animation style — bright colors and sight gags. Executive producer Vincent Waller said he thinks SpongeBob is wish fulfillment for kids.

“He has the life they want,” Waller said. “He has a job he loves. He doesn’t have parents to answer to. He lives in a house by himself. But he is still obviously a child at heart. And I think they see that, and they just go, ‘Ooh, I want that.’”

“He’s also the-glass-is-half-full all the time,” said Carolyn Lawrence. “He’s the person you want to be with that’s always looking at things from a positive angle. ... I think it’s a really fun place to go be.”

Way back in 1999, (the official series debut was July 17 of that year) my kids got an early look at “SpongeBob.” (TV critics get to preview shows. And, 20 years ago, that meant popping a tape in the VCR.) The three of them then kept bugging me about when the show would premiere so they could see more.

For 8-year-old Jonathon, it was love at first sight. “It was funny,” Jonathon remembers today. “It made me laugh.” And it was a show that I could watch with him, because I found it funny, too.

“I always feel like we’re writing a comedy show, not necessarily a kids’ show,” said the writer Mr. Lawrence (real name: Douglas Lawrence Osowski). “We’re writing a show for families to all be able to watch together, but we’re thinking of the comedy all the time.”

Besides the “physical humor,” he said, there’s always an emphasis on being witty and “visually stunning.”

‘SpongeBob’ spreads!

By Season 2, Fagerbakke recalled, there was a “John Lennon kind of buzz around the playground” when he “would pull up to the elementary school to pick up my daughters. ... I was kind of stunned that all those kids were so hip to it.”

Carolyn Lawrence said the kids in her neighborhood started calling her by her character’s name.

“I was recognized in my dentist’s office the other day,” Bumpass said. “I said, ‘How in the world did you know me?’”

When former President Barack Obama entered the White House in 2009, he cited “SpongeBob” as one of his favorite shows and said he watched it with his daughters. “That blew our minds,” Kenny said.

The series is a habit for a whole lot of people, and it’s continuing to find new fans with new generations of kids. “It found its way into the fabric of people’s lives, and it kept finding new life in new ways like memes and things like that,” Kenny said.

And “SpongeBob” continues to branch out. Nickelodeon has ordered a prequel series, tentatively titled “Kamp Koral,” about 10-year-old SpongeBob at summer sleep-away camp. A third movie, tentatively titled “It’s a Wonderful SpongeBob,” is scheduled for release in May 2020.

There’s no end in sight. “We want to be popular on other planets, too!” Kenny said. And, well, we can’t rule that out.

Sandy • For nearly the entire 2019 season, the Utah Royals FC have not been at full strength.

There were injuries to start the season, then just as the Royals had some of those players get healthy, six starters left Utah for France to compete in the FIFA Women’s World Cup. Three of those six — Becky Sauerbrunn, Kelley O’Hara and Christen Press of the United States — only played two games with the Royals. The other three — Katie Bowen, Rachel Corsie and Desiree Scott — left later.

And even as the tournament chugged closer and closer to the USWNT winning its fourth title, other Utah players became unavailable. Midfielder Lo’eau LaBonta was suspended for two games. Midfielder Vero Boquete hurt her ankle and has missed the previous two games. Center back Samantha Johnson retired.

But despite all the roster shuffling, the Royals have managed to win games. They have been atop the National Women’s Soccer League standings more than once, and are only three points away from being there again. And now that the World Cup is over, some familiar faces are starting to trickle in.

Bowen, Corsie and Scott returned to Utah recently and have been training with the team in preparation for Friday’s road game against Sky Blue FC in New Jersery. And with Utah not playing a game last week due to a bye, Boquete could have had enough rest to be available Friday.

Sauerbrunn, O’Hara and Press are slated to return July 19, when the Royals play the Portland Thorns at Rio Tinto Stadium.

Now the challenge, particularly for those returning from the World Cup, is reintegrating back into a Royals team from which they’ve been away for almost two months.

“It’s difficult,” Bowen said of readjusting to her club team. “But you kind of get a few trainings in and it’s kind of like riding a bike — you get back into the swing of things.”

Katie Bowen on adjusting back to the Utah Royals FC, particularly in regards to a position change. #URFC #NWSL #woso pic.twitter.com/bjdpiTydbY

— Alex Vejar (@AlexVReporting) July 11, 2019

Bowen, Corsie and Scott all started the first three games of the season before they began joining their respective national teams. They would presumably go back to those roles up their return, but they’re not taking anything for granted.

“The group have been here working hard every single day and their focus hasn’t changed,” Corsie said. "Obviously you have to work to get your spot back, to get a place on the team, to add something and bring something back to the group. That’s what’s expected of you. … All of us who have been away on national team duty will do their absolute best to give everything they can to be a support and to be a positive for the group in whatever way that looks.”

Rachel Corsie on the challenge of reintegrating with the Utah Royals FC after being away at the World Cup for so long. #URFC #NWSL pic.twitter.com/isc62GLLlc

— Alex Vejar (@AlexVReporting) July 11, 2019

Bowen said coming back to the team will be a smooth transition because of the environment around and the closeness of the team. But she also is of the opinion that her spot in the lineup won’t just be gifted to her.

“These girls have worked hard while we were away, so nothing’s a given,” Bowen said. “So you just have to work your a-- off to make sure you get your spot back and help in any way that you can.”

For the Royals, this season is playoffs or bust. And for the three players returning from France after not getting far in the World Cup, that goal could alleviate some of the disappointment they’re currently feeling.

“It’s nice to have something to still fight for and play for,” Scott said.

The Trump administration's explanation for why it wants to put a citizenship question on the U.S. census was "contrived," Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote in late June, voting with the four liberals on the Supreme Court. That is a polite way of saying that the stated rationale - that the question would help the government enforce the Voting Rights Act - was a lie.

After that decision, government lawyers at first told both the opposing counsel and the courts that the Census Bureau was ready to give up, ending the effort to add the controversial question. But on the president's orders, the Department of Justice reversed course and announced it would try to present a lawful reason that the court would accept - a tall order, given ample documentation that the question was intended from the start to give an electoral advantage to white Republicans and the court's warning against presenting disingenuous justifications.

Then something strange happened: The DOJ asked the courts to allow all the lawyers on its team to withdraw from the case, to be replaced by a new set of government attorneys. The motion to withdraw led to widespread speculation among legal observers - as yet unproved - that the original team was unwilling to help make up a new excuse for the law. "There is no reason they would be taken off that case unless they saw what was coming down the road and said, 'I won't sign my name to that,'" Justin Levitt, who was a senior official in the Justice Department in the Obama administration, told the New York Times. (On Tuesday, one judge denied most of the requests, but gave the attorneys an opportunity to try again, if they explained their reasons more fully.)

The lawyers certainly would have been justified in requesting to withdraw on ethical grounds. And so the episode makes clear the precarious position that career DOJ attorneys occupy in the Trump administration - raising the question whether the rules of professional responsibility allow them to defend the indefensible.

These lawyers were already on an ethically slippery slope. Up to a point, they were willing to defend the government's census policy, one widely understood to work to depress the counting of Latino residents and so diminish federal funding and political representation for their communities. But being asked to make up a second bogus excuse may have been a bridge too far for the original census team. The lawyers must also explain why they repeatedly told the courts that June 30 was the final deadline to finalize the census, which led the judiciary to accelerate the case - and why they now say they have more time.

Legal ethics differ from normal human ethics - the kind of moral compass that keeps you from stealing from babies and cutting in line - in important ways. Medical doctors take an oath to "do no harm." The legal profession, in contrast, is built on a shared norm that there is no shame in helping your client do a great deal of harm so long as you stick to a narrow set of professional rules.

Represent your client's interests as best you can. Don't steal from your client, sleep with him or help him commit a future crime. Don't lie to the court. Don't make obviously frivolous arguments (though you can get pretty close). An attorney who breaks those rules may be sanctioned by the bar, or even have the license to practice law revoked. But so long as she stays within these lines, she will face no professional sanctions, and, at least among her lawyer friends, few social ones either, even if her work makes the world a worse place.

There are often reasons not to condemn a lawyer based on the choice of client: People charged with serious crimes have a constitutional right to an attorney, even if they are guilty. But the ethical duty to serve those vulnerable to state power does not extend to advocacy for government abuses.

We are too hesitant to judge lawyers who employ their considerable talents in service of the horrific agendas of the Trump administration. I graduated from law school a few months before the 2016 election, and it has been distressing to watch my classmates join prestigious offices in the Justice Department, where their job is to defend the president's agenda.

It is often said in D.C. legal circles that the crux of those offices' work is apolitical: They guard the power of the executive branch generally, regardless of the agenda of the person in the White House. But this administration's priorities mean that these lawyers work to defend - and to sanitize - President Donald Trump and his Cabinet's xenophobia and lawlessness. Most of these line attorneys, especially at the junior level, are in no position to shape the White House's agenda for the better, although they may justify their continued employment on that basis. Instead, they construct seemingly reasonable rationales for reprehensible policies such as the Muslim ban or the border wall. As a result of their talents, these policies are more likely to pass judicial muster.

The neutrality of the professional rules provide these lawyers cover: Technically, a DOJ attorney has done a great job as a lawyer - if not as a human - when she vigorously defends her client's policy of turning away asylum seekers at the border or shutting down family-planning clinics.

But now, the administration's legal positions have grown so unreasonable that the professional rules may finally provide a check. As Georgetown law professor Marty Lederman put it on Twitter, devising "contrived" legal arguments, as the DOJ lawyers have effectively been asked to do yet again, amounts to "a breach . . . of duty" and "an abuse of . . . office" - and is therefore sanctionable under professional guidelines.

Even for those who believe in a vision of career civil service that transcends political party, Trump and Attorney General William Barr have put them in an untenable position. The risk of conflict between professional rules and their boss's demands continues to grow.

I wish normal human ethics were enough to persuade smart lawyers to stop advancing the president's agenda. But if professional legal ethics make more of them think twice, I will take it. And if Trump administration lawyers choose to ignore those rules, the bar associations charged with punishing professional misconduct should get to work.

Alexandra Brodsky is a civil-rights lawyer. She lives in Brooklyn.

This week in Utah, inland port protesters clash with police at the offices of the Salt Lake City Chamber; teachers and the Salt Lake City School District reach a tentative agreement over pay; and the Utah Jazz shake up their roster.

At 9 a.m. on Friday, Salt Lake Tribune reporters Taylor Stevens and Andy Larsen and news columnist Robert Gehrke will join KCPW’s Roger McDonough to talk about the week’s top stories. Stream “Behind the Headlines” at kcpw.org, or tune in to KCPW 88.3 FM or Utah Public Radio for the broadcast. Join the live conversation by calling (801) 355-TALK Every Friday at 9 a.m.

One of my favorite sports quotes of all-time was written by former Major League pitcher turned author Jim Bouton: “You spend a good deal of your life gripping a baseball, and it turns out it was the other way around all along.”

He also wrote: “Baseball players are smarter than football players. How often do you see a baseball team penalized for too many men on the field?”

And: “It never hurts to apologize, especially if you don’t mean it.”

Bouton, maybe more than any other person, moved and influenced an entire generation as to how it perceived professional baseball and, really, every other pro sport. My generation.

He died at the age of 80 on Wednesday, transitioning to the great clubhouse in the sky, to whatever comes next. And I’ll forever be grateful for the courage and honesty it took for him to write his monumental book, “Ball Four,” a memoir that, as it was described at its publishing back in 1970, “tore the cover off of baseball.”

I read it when I was 14, and, although I’ve never gone back to re-read or study it, it changed my view of the so-called heroes that played and play sports at a high level. They were and are great at what they do — hitting and catching and throwing and shooting and rebounding and kicking a ball on a diamond, a field, a court, a pitch. But they are only human, with remarkable skills and contributions to be appreciated. In some ways and cases, though, they are ordinary, less than ordinary, not to be aggrandized or worshipped.

In his book, Bouton, who pitched for the Yankees over a notable stretch of his career, chronicled his one season with the Seattle Pilots in 1969, that team’s only year of existence, and later being traded to the Houston Astros. He included raucous, bawdy, sometimes obscene, sometimes hilarious anecdotes that revealed the actual inner workings of the game, of the famous and not-so-famous folks who played the game.

He told the story, for instance, of Mickey Mantle, a giant in baseball adored by millions back in that day, being called on to pinch hit while suffering from a massive hangover, the result of excessive drinking the night before. At first, Yankees manager Ralph Houk protected Mantle, recognizing his sorry condition and allowing him to, as Bouton said it later, “Sleep it off in the trainer’s room. We’ll put somebody else in center field.”

The game went into extra innings, and when Houk needed Mantle, he sent somebody to go wake the Mick up. “He comes out, put a bat in his hands,” Bouton said. “He walks up to home plate, takes one practice swing and hits the first pitch into the left field bleachers, a tremendous blast. Guys are going nuts. He comes over, crosses home plate. Actually, he missed home plate. We have to send him back for that. He comes over to the dugout, and he looks up in the stands, and he says, those people don’t know how tough that really was.”

When Mantle was asked later how he hit that home run, he said: “Well, it was very simple. I hit the middle ball.”

Bouton’s book gave a glimpse of the rampant womanizing that went on among some major leaguers, and the profane joking, and the fighting, and the cheating, and the drug use, and the petty jealousies and backward thinking among certain players. It might be relatively tame when compared to more modern revelations about some athletes nowadays, but it was most controversial back then. Bouton also included passages about his own frailties and imperfections, his anxieties and self-doubt that often plagued him as his career fell into decline.

Until “Ball Four” came out, few outsiders, including the majority of fans, knew about such behaviors. They saw the game and its players solely as they were presented in a kind of indestructible, scrubbed-clean form. Fans fawned over the players. Sports reporters of the day often shielded those players from candid scrutiny.

Baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn subsequently called Bouton into his office, demanding that the pitcher renounce his own book. The commish wanted him to sign a statement claiming that much of what was included was fiction. Bouton would not acquiesce, refusing to change a word.

Players were mad at him, managers and executives and owners were angry. Even sports writers criticized him. Pete Rose thereafter famously yelled at Bouton when he saw him on the field, “F--- you, Shakespeare.”

Prompted in part by the commotion, the book sold millions of copies and pointed an even hotter spotlight on, as Bouton described it, “the nonsense” that went on in and around the game. “Ball Four” since has been hailed as one of the best sports books ever written, and a book of note in any genre. Time placed it on the magazine’s list of the best 100 non-fiction books of all time.

What was missed by some were all the positives Bouton wrote about baseball in his book. The game is great, and nonsensical, as well. It’s both. It gripped Bouton, not the other way around. The book was gripping, too.

GORDON MONSON hosts “The Big Show” with Jake Scott weekdays from 3-7 p.m. on 97.5 FM and 1280 AM The Zone.

A new Congressional Budget Office analysis of a nationwide minimum wage increase has stirred up lots of debate, since it predicts that an increase would have both good and bad effects.

The CBO examines three possible levels for the federal minimum wage — $10, $12, and $15 versus $7.25 an hour now (although some states have higher floors). For each level, it asked how much take-home pay would rise, and how much employment would fall. The most common economic theory — good old supply and demand — says that there’s a tradeoff between these two effects. According to this well-known theory, minimum wage forces pay above the level that a competitive market can bear, throwing some people out of work even as it raises incomes for those who keep their jobs.

The CBO analysis estimates that the most ambitious and popular proposal, a $15 federal minimum, would decrease employment by anywhere from 0 to 3.7 million. It placed the likeliest estimate at 1.3 million jobs lost. That would lower total U.S. employment by about 0.85 percent — a serious negative effect, though not catastrophic. Meanwhile, the CBO estimates that the $15 minimum wage would raise the incomes of poor families by a modest amount.

All in all, the CBO forecasts that even taking job losses into account, a total of about 1.3 million people would be lifted out of poverty.

Policy makers and pundits will no doubt disagree on whether this tradeoff is worth it. But we should remember that CBO analyses are, by their very nature, quite uncertain things. It's the CBO's thankless job to make official predictions about policies that are hard or impossible to anticipate, and there are many ways their analysis could be misleading.

First, to get their estimates, the CBO researchers relied on a large body of past research. They looked at a bunch of studies on the employment and income effects of minimum wage, and used their own judgment to extract what they felt were the most plausible numbers. But many of the studies the CBO relied on are old, using data sources and methods that are now out-of-date.

More recent studies, drawing on large numbers of minimum wage changes for evidence, and using sophisticated new statistical methods, tend to find very small job losses from raising pay floors. Perhaps the most authoritative study is a 2018 paper by economists Kevin Rinz and John Voorheis of the Census Bureau, who had access to the most detailed and comprehensive earnings data that exist. They found no evidence that minimum wage hikes caused any immediate job loss. After five years, they concluded, there might be a very small amount of job loss, but much smaller than what the CBO projects.

But even more fundamentally, the CBO might be implicitly relying on the wrong mental model of how labor markets work. The basic model of supply and demand in a competitive market generally does a poor job of explaining wages and employment, for a number of reasons. One big reason is that employers have monopsony power.

In this context, monopsony power means that workers can't just quit their jobs and immediately find a new one if their wages are lower than they'd like. Switching jobs is expensive, risky and time-consuming. And some towns or neighborhoods may just not have that many alternative jobs that utilize a worker's skills. Thus, employers are typically able to hold wages below what a competitive market would offer. Artificial wage suppression has the added negative effect of reducing the number of people who are willing to work. In recent years, some studies have suggested that monopsony power in local labor markets is widespread.

When employers have excessive power, minimum wages cause much fewer job losses, and modest pay increases can actually raise total employment by drawing marginal workers into the labor force. An interesting new paper by economists José Azar, Emiliano Huet-Vaughn, Ioana Marinescu, Bledi Taska, and Till Von Wachter found exactly this sort of effect. The authors concluded that when there are fewer general merchandise stores (think: Wal-Mart) in a particular area, minimum wages tend to cause less unemployment among store workers. In areas with only a very few stores, higher minimum wages actually raise the number of store employees — just as monopsony theory would predict.

This single study isn't definitive, and needs to be replicated with alternative methodologies. But it suggests that minimum wages could work very differently from how the CBO predicts. The CBO's analysis relies on the idea that the job loss from minimum wage is proportional to the amount that it would raise earnings in a given area - in places like rural Kansas, where wages are low, this implies that the impact of a federal $15 minimum wage could be ruinous. But since small towns are precisely the kinds of places that are likely to have only a few employers, the negative impact of a higher federal minimum wage might be more muted than the CBO expects.

In other words, though the CBO report gives policy makers reason to be cautious about embracing a $15 federal minimum wage, it's also important to be cautious about the CBO report itself. Labor markets are not well-understood, and the more economists learn about them, the more they seem to find that raising minimum wages isn't as scary as conventional wisdom suggests.

Noah Smith is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He was an assistant professor of finance at Stony Brook University, and he blogs at Noahpinion.

Washington • President Donald Trump abandoned his controversial bid to demand citizenship details from all respondents in next year’s census Thursday, instead directing federal agencies to try to compile the information using existing databases.

"It is essential that we have a clear breakdown of the number of citizens and non-citizens that make up the United States population," Trump said at a Rose Garden announcement. He insisted he was "not backing down."

His reversal comes after the Supreme Court blocked his efforts to include the citizenship question and as the government had already begun the lengthy and expensive process of printing the census questionnaire without it.

Trump had said last week that he was "very seriously" considering an executive order to try to force the question's inclusion, even though such a move would surely have drawn an immediate legal challenge.

But he said Thursday that he would instead be signing an executive order directing agencies to turn records over to the Department of Commerce.

"We're aiming to count everyone," he said.

The American Community Survey, which polls 3.5 million U.S. households every year, already includes questions about respondents' citizenship.

Critics have warned that including the citizenship question on the census would discourage participation, not only by those living in the country illegally but also by citizens who fear that participating will expose noncitizen family members to repercussions.

Keeping the prospect of adding the question alive could in itself scare some away from participating, while showing Trump's base that he is fighting for the issue.

Trump's 2016 campaign was animated by his pledge to crack down on illegal immigration, and he has tied the citizenship question to that issue, insisting the U.S. must know who is living here.

An executive order, by itself, would not have overridden court rulings blocking the question, though it could have given administration lawyers a new basis on which to try to convince federal courts the question passes muster.

Trump had previewed his remarks earlier Thursday at a White House social media event, where he complained about being told: "'Sir, you can't ask that question ... because the courts said you can't.'"

Describing the situation as "the craziest thing," he went on to contend that surveyors can ask residents how many toilets they have and, "What's their roof made of? The only thing we can't ask is, 'Are you a citizen of the United States?'"

The Census Bureau had stressed repeatedly that it could produce better citizenship data without adding the question to the decennial census, which had not been done since 1950.

The bureau recommended combining information from the annual American Community Survey with records held by other federal agencies that already include citizenship records.

"This would result in higher quality data produced at lower cost," deputy Census Bureau director Ron Jarmin wrote in a December 2017 email to a Justice Department official.

But Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who oversees the Census Bureau, ultimately rejected that approach and ordered the citizenship question be added to the census.

Trump's administration has faced numerous roadblocks to adding the question, beginning with the ruling by the Supreme Court temporarily barring its inclusion on the grounds that the government's justification was insufficient. A federal judge on Wednesday also rejected the Justice Department's plan to replace the legal team fighting for inclusion, a day after another federal judge in Manhattan issued a similar ruling, saying the government can't replace nine lawyers so late in the dispute without satisfactorily explaining why.

Refusing to concede, Trump had insisted his administration push forward, suggesting last week that officials might be able to add an addendum to the questionnaire with the question after it's already printed. He has also toyed with the idea of halting the constitutionally mandated survey while the legal fight ensues.

Trump has offered several explanations for why he believes the question is necessary to include in the once-a-decade population count that determines the allocation of seats in the House of Representatives for the next 10 years and the distribution of some $675 billion in federal spending.

"You need it for Congress, for districting. You need it for appropriations. Where are the funds going? How many people are there? Are they citizens? Are they not citizens? You need it for many reasons," he told reporters last week, despite the fact that congressional districts are based on total population, regardless of residents' national origin or immigration status.

If immigrants are undercounted, Democrats fear that would pull money and political power away from Democratic-led cities where immigrants tend to cluster, and shift it to whiter, rural areas where Republicans do well.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer on Thursday called Trump's efforts "outrageous" and accused him of pushing the question "to intimidate minorities, particularly Latinos, from answering the census so that it undercounts those communities and Republicans can redraw congressional districts to their advantage."

"He thinks he can just issue executive orders and go around the Congress, go around established law and try to bully the courts," Schumer said from the Senate floor. He predicted the effort would be thwarted by the courts.

House Democrats next week will vote on holding Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Ross in contempt for their failure to comply with congressional subpoenas investigating the issue.

Alarmed by last week's change of course by the administration, the plaintiffs in the New York census citizenship case already have asked U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman to permanently block the administration from adding the question to the 2020 census. Furman has set a July 23 hearing on the request.

___

Associated Press writers Zeke Miller and Matthew Daly contributed to this report.

Ogden • Authorities say a former football player at Weber State University has died after he was booked into a Utah jail.

The Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office tells the Standard-Examiner that 32-year-old Trevyn Smith was taken to a hospital after he "suffered a medical incident" at the county jail on July 4.

Utah Highway Patrol troopers arrested Smith in downtown Salt Lake City on July 1.

Authorities say he had outstanding warrants, including failure to appear in court, driving under the influence and driving on a denied license.

Sheriff’s Sgt. Kevin Hunter says South Salt Lake City police are investigating the death. The jail also is conducting an internal investigation.

When it comes to poking fun at Utah’s polygamist past, North Carolina just doesn’t get the joke.

A request to sell Wasatch Brewery’s Polygamy Nitro Porter in the Tarheel State was rejected in mid-June, because the name and the label promote an unlawful activity.

“Polygamy is illegal. Therefore these products will not be approved,” states the rejection letter sent to the Utah Brewers Cooperative, which produces and sells beers made by Wasatch and Squatter’s Breweries.

Wasatch officials plan to appeal the decision, said spokeswoman Lauren Boyack. Lawyers will make their case Aug. 14, before the North Carolina state liquor commission.

Boyack said Wasatch wants to sell its Polygamy Nitro Porter on tap at the Collaboratory, in Asheville, N.C. The new brewery and restaurant, owned by Wasatch’s parent company — the CANarchy Craft Brewery Collective — already serves Wasatch Apricot Hefeweizen and Squatter’s Hop Rising Double IPA.

“We are in on the [polygamy] joke here in Utah,” Boyack said. “It’s just a fun beer name and it certainly is not meant to promote illegal activity.”

North Carolina is one of 17 states — including Utah — that controls sales of alcohol.

“The NC ABC Commission always gives thoughtful consideration to each label,” said Kat Haney, public affairs director of the North Carolina commission, “and uses the criteria outlined in the statutes as the basis for every rejection or approval.”

North Carolina laws prohibits certain statements in alcohol advertising and labels, she said. The specific clause affecting the Polygamy Porter request bans any label that “depicts the use of alcoholic beverages in a scene that is determined by the Commission to be undignified, immodest, or in bad taste."

Polygamy Porter launched in Utah in 2001, and now is sold in 19 states. None of them have had problems with the name or the label, which features a drawing of a man and two women lounging in the nude. Arms and fabric were strategically drawn to cover private parts.

While polygamy was a common practice among early members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the church abandoned polygamy in the late 19th century as a condition of statehood and now excommunicates members found practicing it.

While it’s not Wasatch’s top-selling beer, Polygamy Porter “has always been popular in large part because of the branding and funny name,” said Boyack. “We sell a lot of merchandise [with the logo]. It’s something that catches the eye for locals and visitors to the state.”

Washington • With a disgust commensurate with the fact, Michael Bennet, the Colorado Democrat, says that during 40% of his 10 Senate years the government has been run on “continuing resolutions.” Congress passes these in order to spare itself the torture of performing its primary function, which is to set national priorities. Bennet is too serious a person to be content in today’s Senate, and if Democrats are as serious as they say they are about defeating Donald Trump, Bennet should be their nominee.

The painfully revealing first phase of the Democratic presidential sweepstakes culminated with two remarkably efficient debates. This phase clarified the top four candidates' propensity for self-inflicted wounds. When replayed in Trump's negative ads, what they have already said might be sufficient to reelect him.

Bennet checks a requisite number of progressive boxes: He is impeccably (as progressives see such things) alarmed about the requisite things — the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, climate change, Mitch McConnell, etc. And he has endorsed — perfunctorily, one hopes — other candidates’ gesture-legislation to “study” reparations for slavery (Sen. Cory Booker) and for same-sex couples who lived in states where same-sex marriages were legal but who could not file joint tax returns before the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision overturning the Defense of Marriage Act (Sen. Elizabeth Warren).

Bennet has, however, refrained from frightening and mystifying voters with plans (Sens. Harris, Warren, Sanders) to eliminate their private health insurance. Or with nostalgia for forced busing that shuffled children among schools on the basis of race (Harris). Or with enthusiasm for the institutional vandalism of packing the Supreme Court. Or with disdain (expressed by advocating decriminalization of illegal entry) for the principle that control of borders is an essential attribute of national sovereignty. And because Bennet, 54, was 8 when Joe Biden came to the Senate, Bennet has not had to conduct a Bidenesque Grovel Tour to apologize for deviations, decades ago, from today's progressive catechism.

If, as Bennet believes, the Democratic nomination competition has become "more fluid," it is because Harris, Sanders, Warren and Biden have imprudently spoken their minds. And they probably are not done shooting themselves in their already perforated feet.

Unlike them, Bennet has won two Senate races in a swing state that is evenly divided between Democrats, Republicans and independents. He can distinguish between what he calls "the Twitter version of the Democratic Party" and the "actual" version.

Bennet’s father, a descendant of a Mayflower passenger, earned a Harvard Ph.D. (medieval Russian history), and was an aide to a U.S. ambassador to India, and later worked for Democrats Hubert Humphrey, Ed Muskie and Tom Eagleton. Bennet’s mother, who survived the Holocaust by hiding in a Warsaw suburb, reached New York — via Stockholm and Mexico City — where her parents opened an art gallery. The city was the center of the postwar art world, and they did well. Bennet says that in second grade he won both ends of the competition to see who had the oldest and newest American family branches.

He edited the Yale Law Journal, became an associate at the Washington firm Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, then prospered working for a Denver investment firm before entering public service, which included four years as superintendent of Denver's public schools, in which 67% of the pupils were poor enough to be eligible for free or subsidized lunches.

Bennet believes that Trump is more a symptom than a cause of political dysfunction, and he regrets that "the capitalists have lost control of the Republican Party," which now is controlled by Trump cultists. China's perfection — and exporting — of the "surveillance state" makes American democracy more important, and therefore its current degradation especially alarming. American politics has become a dialectic of "preemptive retributions" of "do it to them before they do it to us." Trump's politics of "I alone can fix it" has, Bennet says, "stripped the American people of their agency."

In his new book ("The Land of Flickering Lights: Restoring America in an Age of Broken Politics"), he quotes Thucydides on the civil war in the city of Corcyra: "With public life confused to the critical point, human nature, always ready to act unjustly even in violation of laws, overthrew the laws themselves and gladly showed itself powerless over passion but stronger than justice and hostile to any kind of superiority." Such hostility is the essence of populism. Fortunately, the Democratic field includes one person familiar with Thucydides' warning and who is unafraid to assert its contemporary pertinence.

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

Ephraim • Spend any amount of time in Sanpete County, and you will learn that the rural communities in central Utah treasure the now defunct Mormon Miracle Pageant in Manti, lieutenant governor Spencer Cox of Fairview, Wasatch Academy’s nationally prominent high school basketball program in Mount Pleasant, and Snow College football in Ephraim.

The latter, folks along US-89 will quickly and proudly point out, isn’t going the way of the pageant seven miles down the road.

“Snow College football is far too important to this community and this school to let die,” says Snow athletic director Robert Nielson, who also doubles as the school’s head men’s basketball coach.

It could also be said that the state’s only junior college football program is also too important to Utah’s five four-year college football programs — Utah, BYU, Utah State, Weber State and Southern Utah — to see go away because all five use it as a pipeline for talent.

“That’s something we pride ourselves on — being a place where the local Division I schools can look for immediate help,” said new Snow football coach Andrew Mitchell, a tall, energetic and gregarious former Badgers offensive lineman who took the head job last December despite plenty of offers to go elsewhere when two-year Snow coach Paul Peterson left for Dixie State in St. George.

So many former Badgers have made it to the NFL that school officials have lost count, but the list of notable alumni who made it to the NFL includes former Utah linemen Garett Bolles and Star Lotulelei, ex-Utah running back Matt Asiata and former BYU defensive tackle Brett Keisel.

“I wouldn’t have taken the job if I didn’t think this program would be here for a long, long time,” Mitchell said.

Some prominent college coaches have also passed through Ephraim, including Virginia’s Bronco Mendenhall and Central Florida’s Josh Heupel.

To outsiders, however, Snow’s football demise appeared to be a distinct possibility last December when its conference, the Western States Football League, announced it was going out of business due to six members — all in Arizona — dropping football. Shortly after that, two more Arizona schools, Eastern Arizona College and Arizona Western, announced they, too, were dropping football.

That left Snow a college football independent — just like BYU up the road — and sent Mitchell scrambling to find teams to play. He spends at least an hour a day working on the schedule, while also teaching four classes per semester and doing everything else associated with being a head football coach.

“Over the past six months, I feel like I’ve contacted every junior college football program in the country, so the challenge was there, certainly,” Mitchell said last week.

As of the end of June, Mitchell had lined up eight games — four on its 2-year-old artificial turf field at Badger Stadium and four on the road, including a game in Florida against a school called ASA Miami College that the Badgers walloped 71-27 last year at home.

“We would like to get into a conference — that would be our preference,” Nielson said. “Scheduling has been difficult. But there’s no danger of Snow College giving up football.”

As proof, Mitchell and Nielson point from their offices in the building that houses the swimming pool and the basketball gymnasium on Center Street in the direction of the football stadium to a $5.8 million building currently under construction — the Eric and Chandra Bergeson Athletic Center. When completed, the facility will include a new weight room, football offices, a study hall, a fitness center for the campus and community, and more.

Eric Bergeson is a former Snow College and BYU defensive back who played briefly in the NFL, then got his MBA at Stanford and has made it big in the financial advising business and, like many former Badgers, wants to ensure the program stays afloat, Mitchell said.

“One of my big things, aside from winning games, is a more structured financial support system for Badger athletics, specifically football,” Mitchell said. “We haven’t come up with a name, yet. Maybe Badger Club, or Badger Boosters. We will see.”

Of more immediate concern for the former NFL player — after his All-America career at Snow, Mitchell moved on to Oklahoma State for two years and then spent time in the pros with the Bengals, Seahawks and Jaguars — is continuing the tradition of winning established by predecessors such as Steve Coburn, Britt Maughan and Peterson, who compiled an 18-4 record before taking on the task of guiding Dixie State into Division I college football.

“We’re absolutely, 100 percent committed to it,” Mitchell said. “You’ve got more skin in the game when you are a product of this place, obviously. It is special to me. We’ve put together a great staff. We’re excited about what the future holds.”

Former BYU standout Jan Jorgensen is the new defensive coordinator and Matt Mitchell joins the staff as offensive coordinator after spending the last two years at Western Kentucky. Former BYU player and Skyline High coach Zac Erekson is the associate head coach and defensive backs coach, while former Ute Lei Talamaivao is the defensive line coach. Nelson Fishback is the special teams coordinator and receivers coach and Harry Wright is the running backs coach and recruiting coordinator.

“It is really good football,” Nielson says. “It is great football. It is going to be good for the future of two-year college football in the nation, because we are going to be playing everybody. We are going to become kind of the measuring stick across the country in a lot of ways to help [people] figure out the rankings, decide who’s good and who isn’t.”

When Mitchell was named head coach, Snow College president Gary Carlston addressed the future of the program, saying it was vital to provide increased opportunities for young men to continue their education and to enhance campus life and involvement with the community.

“There is still work to do to find membership in a football conference to sustain the program, and we are hoping to make progress in the near future,” Carlston told KSL.com.

Mitchell and Nielson said they have reached out to many schools in California, but those schools don’t belong to the National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) and are hesitant about playing Snow, let alone allowing the Badgers into one of their conferences, because they don’t give out scholarships like Snow does.

They’ve also reached out to the Northwest Athletic Conference (NWAC), which includes community colleges in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and British Columbia, Canada. Talks to add some NWAC teams to the schedule are in the works.

But for now, they’re bullish on moving ahead as an independent.

Travel will increase “just a little bit,” Nielson says, but “we committed to the school that it really wasn’t going to be too much of an increase in our budget to keep football. It means too much to us to let it fade away.”

Like that other community treasure down the street.

Millcreek • Like too many drivers on summer road trips, Chris Draper didn’t get much sleep before he left on an overnight journey through central Nevada toward Utah. About dawn, he was drowsy.

“I had the air conditioning blasting at me,” he remembers. His head nodded and startled him, “but I said, ‘I can keep going. I’m OK,’” and slapped himself in the face and turned up the radio.

The next think he remembers is waking up as a nearby truck blared its horn as Draper was off the road and headed for a wall. He overcorrected “and flipped five or six times,” mangling his car. He survived thanks to a seat belt.

Now, 11 years later, he says, “I never ever drive drowsy.”

The Utah Department of Transportation featured Draper at an event Thursday at St. Mark’s Hospital urging drivers to guard against drowsy driving — which caused at least 1,299 collisions in Utah in the past 12 months through June, and 10 deaths.

Driving drowsy “is just as bad as driving drunk,” said Kris Mitchell, trauma medical director at St. Mark’s. “The tired brain is very similar to a drunk brain, to be quite honest.”

In fact, “If you just skip two hours of [regular] sleep and get behind the wheel, your brain actually acts like you're under the influence of alcohol,” he said.

If a driver goes 18 hours without sleep, Mitchell says, “It’s like a 0.5 [blood alcohol content], which is essentially the legal limit here in the state of Utah. If you stay up a full 24 hours, it’s like being at a 1.0 percent alcohol in your system, which is well over the legal limit in any state.”

UDOT spokesman John Gleason adds that virtually all drivers likely have driven drowsy at one time or another — and probably don’t realize the extreme danger.

“Not all of us drink. Hopefully none of us drink and drive,” he said. “But drowsy driving really affects every one of us” and is as dangerous.

So officials offered plenty of advice on how to better avoid it.

“The No. 1 thing is get well rested. Get a full night’s sleep before you’re going to make a long road trip,” Mitchell said.

Gleason said many people fail to do that as they try to finish up loose ends at work before a trip, are busy packing, or leave late at night or early in the morning to squeeze in extra vacation time. “Getting a good night’s sleep should be considered part of the preparation for a trip,” he said.

Mitchell also advises taking road trips “when you are normally awake, and not when you are normally sleeping. A lot of people make the mistake of trying to drive overnight when they’re normally awake during the day.”

Officials also advise pulling over immediately when drivers notice any sign of fatigue or drowsiness.

“I’m often asked, ‘How do I know if I’m too tired to drive?’ If you are asking yourself that question, the answer is: pull over,” Gleason said.

Mitchell suggest that with any signs of fatigue, “pull over and take a power nap. There are plenty of rest stops along the way. Actually, a 15- to 20-minute power nap is an essential key factor to help prevent crashes if you’re starting to feel drowsy.”

Gleason suggests stopping every 90 minutes to two hours to stretch legs.

And Mitchell said drivers should not drive more than eight to 10 hours in a day “unless you are used to it, and most people are not.”

If more than one driver is in the car, “share the driving,” Gleason adds.

He also stresses that “a lot of the tricks that people use to try to stay awake just don’t work,” from turning up the radio to slapping themselves and drinking caffeine. “So pull over and get some rest.”

Draper said he learned that hard away about what can happen when driving drowsy. “I’m lucky to be alive,” he said. So now when he notices any sign of drowsiness, “I don’t care where I am, I pull over on the side of the freeway, roll up my windows and take a nap.”

Salt Lake City hopes to use a Trump administration tool to turn the seven “opportunity zones” located within its boundaries into a “life sciences corridor” spanning from the University of Utah’s research park to the city’s northwest side.

The zones, designated low-income communities based on census data, are part of a program created in the 2017 federal Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that will allow big institutional investors, such as banks, to defer capital gains and earn tax-free interest by putting their money into housing and business development efforts within the areas.

“One of the things we found is that over the last year, the number of prospects that have come and worked with our department have really been in that life science space,” Lara Fritts, the city’s director of economic development, told the City Council during a briefing on the plan Tuesday. “And so if there’s all these companies coming and talking to us, maybe it’s an industry we need to be focusing even more attention on. And so we wanted to make sure we were doing that.”

That presentation to the City Council came just two days before Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson traveled to South Salt Lake to tour a 200,000-square-foot mixed-use real estate development known as the HUB of Opportunity and located within an opportunity zone.

Wearing a hard hat and a bright yellow vest, Carson watched as workers erected the new building at 3900 S. West Temple, adjacent to the UTA Meadowbrook TRAX station in South Salt Lake and heard about the vision for the project. Once it opens next spring, the development will include 156 apartments, space for a specialized employment training center for young adults with autism and a commercial space to attract small businesses.

The planned development “looks like the 22nd century,” he marveled as he looked at the plans.

Carson’s team touted opportunity zones as a way to drive economic growth, revitalize communities and allow more Americans to experience economic vitality — as well as a way to help stem Utah’s affordable housing crunch.

“Americans are very entrepreneurial, innovative people and we’ve come up with some fabulous things that really bring down the cost [of housing] and increase resiliency,” he told reporters after his tour of the facility. “But, you know, there are regulatory barriers," he said, adding that erecting such developments in Utah and elsewhere “will make a big difference.”

Some 60 percent of the units in the HUB of Opportunity development are considered affordable, adding 126 units to the stock in South Salt Lake.

Overall, Utah had 181 census-designated areas that qualified as opportunity zones, 64 of them in Salt Lake County. Gov. Gary Herbert was then able to choose up to 25 percent of the identified sites to receive the benefit, leaving 46 statewide and 15 in the county.

Salt Lake City’s opportunity zones are located mostly on the city’s west side, including in the Glendale, Fairpark, Poplar Grove and Granary neighborhoods. The Northwest Quadrant, home of the future inland port, and area directly south of the Salt Lake City International Airport and east of the Northwest Quadrant, are also included. All are in redevelopment areas and have the zoning necessary to support the kind of development the city envisions.

A life sciences corridor would make sense in Salt Lake City, Fritts argued. The state’s capital is already ranked No. 4 across the country in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) job growth, is home to a number of major life sciences businesses and is in a strategic location near two interstate highways.

Development in these areas, she said, could spur economic opportunity in Salt Lake City as well as help “accelerate technology” within the targeted industries.

Fritts said she sees particular potential to take advantage of opportunity zones in the Granary District, where there’s already “so much activity” happening. She also pointed to the North Temple area around 300 and 400 West as “an incredible opportunity because there are smaller office buildings there that could easily be converted, purchased and invested in.”

Albuquerque • “It’s on!”

New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham says she's ready for a culinary duel with her neighbors to the north after the governor of Colorado proclaimed on social media that chile grown in his state is the best and will be stocked in grocery store across four western states.

Gov. Jared Polis fueled the fiery debate when he said stores in Lujan Grisham’s state would be supplied with inferior chile from New Mexico.

"If Colorado wants to go chile to chile, no question that New Mexico can bring the heat — Hatch chile is, has always been and will always be the greatest in the world," Lujan Grisham proclaimed in a tweet.

New Mexico's chile peppers have woven their way into the state's cultural identity over centuries, and their distinct flavor has been adopted more recently by palates as far away as Korea.

The state in 2014 even adopted its own trademark and certification program to protect the reputation and integrity of its signature crop, much like Idaho has capitalized on potatoes, Maine has its lobsters and Florida has its fresh fruits and juices.

New Mexico's chile experts contend there's no mistaking its hot peppers. Once a person tastes them or smells them roasting at farmers markets and grocery stores, the craving begins, they say.

And there’s some science involved, as researchers at New Mexico State University say soil conditions, warmer temperatures, the right amount of water and a longer growing season result in a unique flavor.

According to the university’s Chile Pepper Institute, the cultivation of chile peppers likely began 15,000 years ago when the first humans arrived in the Western Hemisphere. People would select them for various traits and new varieties also are easily developed since the plants are good at cross-pollinating.

While the acreage of chile planted in New Mexico is half of what it once was because of labor and irrigation pressures, federal agricultural statistics show the 2018 crop increased 4% from the previous year to 8,400 acres. Value also jumped to nearly $54 million.

In the valleys of southern Colorado, chile has been grown for more than a century, with the elevation and shifts in weather affecting how the peppers taste. Some say they're hotter than New Mexico's varieties.

In 2015, officials in Pueblo County received a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture so farmers could form a growers association to better promote their peppers. Since then, Whole Foods opted to go with Pueblo chile for its stores in Colorado and elsewhere in the Rocky Mountain region.

Colorado and New Mexico also both have chile-themed license plates and the towns of Pueblo and Hatch — the rural community in southern New Mexico dubbed the "Chile Capital of the World" — have been hosting annual festivals dedicated to the spicy fruits for decades.

Battles like this between states are not uncommon. Tourism promoters in Arizona and Vermont skirmished in 2013 over which state's fall colors were more impressive.

And Lujan Grisham on Thursday threatened to rile anglers when she tweeted about efforts to boost the outdoor recreation economy in northwestern New Mexico. She claimed Montana had nothing on New Mexico's quality fishing waters.

That tweet followed another in which Lujan Grisham posted a photo of a cheesy plate of enchiladas, aiming to set the chile record straight.

“Eat your heart out!” she said.