Houston • Royce O’Neale’s challenge has gotten tougher.

In the Western Conference first round series against the Oklahoma City Thunder, the Utah Jazz rookie had to guard Thunder star Paul George for the bulk of two weeks. But Sunday was a different beast.

Thrust into the starting lineup with Ricky Rubio out due to a hamstring strain, O’Neale served as James Harden’s primary defender in a 110-96 loss in Game 1, the first postseason start of O’Neale’s career.

“I’m used to a bigger role with Ricky being out,” O’Neale said. “I just tried to go out there and make the right plays. I just wanted to make plays that help my team win.”

O’Neale played well in spurts, scoring four points in 28 minutes with four assists and three rebounds. There were times he played perfect defensively against Harden, and yet Harden still made the shot. O’Neale also was a part of Utah’s run that allowed the Jazz to pull within 11 points in the fourth quarter.

But O’Neale has to be more of a threat offensively, because the Rockets were able to hide Harden on him defensively. He turned the ball over twice, and missed both of his 3-point attempts.

Still, O’Neale’s main focus going forward will be his ability to contain one of the NBA’s most dangerous offensive weapons. And if Harden continues to play like he did in Game 1, going 7 of 12 from 3-point range and scoring 41 points, winning will be difficult for the Jazz.

Avoiding a scare

The Jazz say star rookie Donovan Mitchell is healthy after turning his ankle in a second half collision with Houston guard Eric Gordon. Mitchell initially laid on the floor in pain, then hopped up quickly and walked the injury off. He was re-inserted into the game a short time later.

“He’s fine,” Jazz coach Quin Snyder said. “If there were any danger, we wouldn’t have put him back into the game.”

Put to the side

Much like Mitchell and George in the OKC series, Mitchell and Houston point guard Chris Paul have something of a big brother-little brother relationship. When the Jazz eliminated the Thunder on Friday, Paul sent Mitchell a congratulatory text message, then added the two will talk only after the semifinal series is finished.

“It’s all competition,” Paul said. “It’s never anything personal.”

Houston • James Harden was asked a question: How do you break down a defense as good as Utah’s?

How does an elephant crack a nut? It steps on it. The force will be too much to bear.

Harden, the 28-year-old Rockets star reaching the height of his offensive prowess, has a similar impact on NBA defenses. When he’s at his best, there’s little that can be done — Harden doesn’t have to change his game for anyone.

“I mean, for the most part,” he said, “I’m going to do what I do.”

In Game 1, Harden illustrated how hard what he does is to guard in a 110-96 Rockets victory. He hoisted stepback 3s. He managed to get inside steps to the rim against Rudy Gobert. He dribbled in isolation enough times to make the crowd dizzy.

In all, the most lethal scorer in the NBA was 12-for-26 shooting for 41 points. It would’ve been difficult to make it look any easier.

“He’s a special player,” Jazz coach Quin Snyder said. “It’s hard to give him credit to all the things he does. He impacts the game in so many ways, you have to try to make it harder for him in so many facets, and it requires your whole team to guard him because he’s so capable of finding any weakness in a given situation.”

Harden’s isolation possessions are like one-move chess matches. If a defender steps too close, he can glide by to the rim. If a defender leaves too much space, he can hit a long shot without being contested. If a defender lurches, he can lean in to draw a foul (he made 10 of his 11 free throws Sunday).

The difference between Harden and Oklahoma City’s Russell Westbrook is the cast around him is equally lethal, and Harden knows how to use them. He also had seven assists Sunday and while the ball can stick in Harden’s hands on certain possessions, on others, the Rockets can cycle around to create mismatches.

“We watch film and we figure out how we can create threes and create oppotunities for each other,” Harden said. “And we just go out there and play our butts off — pretty simple.”

If there’s a bright spot for the Jazz, it may be that Harden’s 3-point shooting (7 for 12) might not be sustainable. There were defensive possessions where Royce O’Neale was able to doggedly follow him as he tried to dribble his way past. Other possessions against Gobert and Derrick Favors in isolation didn’t go so well for Utah — the Jazz will look to limit them.

But the problem is bigger than Harden: Four other Rockets had 15 points or more, and any one of them — from Chris Paul, to P.J. Tucker to Clint Capela — can get hot. Eric Gordon and Ryan Anderson have torched the Jazz before.

Harden himself isn’t merely a 3-point shooter. He’ll find ways to hurt defenses even when his shooting is off.

That’s just who he is.

While former Utes defensive end Kylie Fitts heard his name called by the Chicago Bears during the final day of the NFL draft on Saturday, some of his former teammates will try to make their pro dreams a reality as undrafted free agents.

Former Utah defensive linemen Filipo Mokofisi (Green Bay Packers) and Lowell Lotulelei (Denver Broncos), offensive lineman Salesi Uhatafe (Atlanta Falcons) and quarterback Troy Williams (Seattle Seahawks), signed undrafted free-agent deals.

Defensive back Kenric Young received an invite to minicamp with the Indianapolis Colts. Defensive back and All-Pac-12 punt returner Boobie Hobbs reached an agreement with the New York Jets, but it was unclear whether he signed as a free agent or received a minicamp invitation.

The Utes’ leading receiver this past season, Darren Carrington II, had not signed as a free agent as of Sunday evening. Carrington played through a foot injury the final month of the regular season and the bowl game. That injury hampered his pre-draft workouts, including the NFL Combine.

Lotulelei’s addition will give the Broncos six former Utes as he joins Garett Bolles, Devontae Booker, J.J. Dielman, Tim Patrick and Jeremiah Poutasi. A four-time all-conference selection with the Utes and a former Bingham High standout, Lotulelei is the younger brother of former Utes All-American defensive lineman and current member of the Buffalo Bills Star Lotulelei.

Williams returns to the Pacific Northwest where he started his collegiate career at the University of Washington prior to spending a year at Santa Monica College and then transferring to Utah for his final two seasons. Williams, who was beaten out for the starting job by Tyler Huntley as a senior, went 10-6 as a starting quarterback for the Utes and ranks 14th in school history in career passing yards (3,569).

Uhatafe’s signing means that all five starting offensive linemen from the 2016 team — including Isaac Asiata, Sam Tevi, Bolles and Dielman — have gone on to the NFL as either draft picks or free agents. Last week, Utes coach Kyle Whittingham pointed to assistant head coach/offensive line coach Jim Harding as the reason for that unit’s success in sending players in the NFL.

“I think it speaks to the coaching ability of Jim Harding and his ability to develop players and get the most out of them,” Whittingham said. “It also speaks to our recruiting, that we’re targeting the right guys that have the raw material that we’re looking for. It’s also a good recruiting tool when you can say hey our entire starting line ended up [in the NFL].”

In a review of almost 3,000 record requests, the Utah Department of Corrections (DOC) identified 74 active cases that needed a closer look to ensure they were handled appropriately, a spokeswoman said Sunday.

Attorneys for killer Steven Douglas Crutcher recently found that the department had withheld nearly 1,600 pages of medical records, even after 6th District Judge Wallace Lee had ordered that they be turned over, prompting the review. In Crutcher’s case, the discovery led prosecutors to withdraw their intent to seek the death penalty and he instead was sentenced in March to a prison term of life without parole.

DOC Executive Director Rollin Cook has said a list of medications prescribed to Crutcher had been provided to the inmate’s attorneys but that it did not include all the dates and times he received the medications due to a “misinterpretation” of the judge’s order. After Lee said he was “beyond angry” about Corrections workers withholding evidence and would ask the governor for an investigation, officials started reviewing court orders, subpoenas and requests under the Utah Government Records Access Management Act from the past several years.

Kaitlin Felsted, DOC public information officer, said among 2,708 requests, the department identified 74 active cases involving medical records. Officials at this time did not pursue any nonactive cases, she said.

Officials contacted attorneys in the 74 cases to see if they need additional documents and all but 12 have been resolved, Felsted said.

Steve Gehrke, DOC director of administrative services, said none of the attorneys have needed any additional documents so far.

The department also held two separate training sessions with its records contacts “to ensure everyone understands the importance and has the ability to be thorough and reliable in gathering records,” Gehrke said.

In addition, he said, every division and bureau was asked to create master checklists of all records they maintain so there is no question “all records” have been checked and provided in every applicable instance.

Crutcher, 36, admitted last year that he killed 62-year-old Roland Cardona-Gueton inside their shared cell at the Gunnison prison in 2013. Defense attorney Edward Brass told Lee that the documents he sought “went to the heart” of his client’s defense at trial, and it was important to know what kind of medical treatment and medications Crutcher had received around the time of his cellmate’s death.

When the music gets loud, Lisa McNett’s son Elijah gets louder.

“If the music is too loud somewhere, he’ll find a way to cope,” McNett said about her 7-year-old son, who is on the high-functioning end of the autism spectrum. “He’ll talk louder, or he’ll make observations.”

McNett and her husband, Will, who live in Sandy, are careful about visiting places, like museums, where there’s a danger of sensory overload.

“We try to limit ourselves to calmer places and to times when it’s not super-busy,” said McNett, a part-time fitness instructor when not caring for Elijah and his 4-year-old brother, Levi, who’s not on the spectrum. “We always have everything with us, and we have an escape plan.”

With autism diagnosed for one out of every 68 births in 2016, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the need for spaces that reduce sensory assault is growing. And many in Utah, from museums to the Utah Jazz, are answering that call.

Discovery Gateway, the Salt Lake County-operated children’s museum in downtown Salt Lake City, recently was certified “sensory-inclusive” by the nonprofit group KultureCity.

Museum staffers have identified which areas are more prone to loud traffic and which areas can be set aside and marked as quiet zones, said Laurie Hopkins, Discovery Gateway’s director. Volume levels also change throughout the day; mornings, when school kids visit on field trips, tend to be louder than afternoons.

The museum is also equipped with “sensory bags,” with gear designed to help sensitive kids get through crisis moments. The bags include noise-canceling headphones, sunglasses, toys for fidgety hands and a weighted lap pad that serves as a calming tool.

Discovery Gateway offers a monthly free “sensory-inclusive” afternoon for families. The next dates are May 29 and June 26. The costs are offset by a grant from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Foundation, Hopkins said.

The certification is recognition of the work the museum has done to be more welcoming to children with sensory issues, said Hopkins.

“We wanted to make sure we had the tools and training for our staff to provide the best experience we possibly could,” she said, “and be as inclusive as we can for that community.”

Other facilities are offering sensory-friendly events, some of them timed for World Autism Month in April.

Vivint Smart Home Arena, home of the Utah Jazz, opened its sensory-friendly room March 30. It’s open on a drop-in basis during Jazz games, concerts or other events.

“The response from our guests has been very appreciative,” said Frank Zang, spokesman for the Viv. “Families feel more comfortable attending games or events knowing that if they want to take a break, they don’t need to leave the arena.”

Two attractions at Thanksgiving Point in Lehi — the Museum of Ancient Life and the Museum of Natural Curiosity — have available sensory backpacks, with headphones, fidget toys and other calming tools.

TopGolf, the recreational driving range chain with a location in Midvale, will hold a “sensory-friendly” day, 9 to 11 a.m. on Saturday, with lowered sound and lighting, and reduced distractions and crowd sizes. Reservations are recommended.

A TopGolf spokeswoman said the company is testing the idea in some markets before deciding whether to offer it regularly.

Several movie theaters routinely offer sensory-friendly screenings, with the house lights on dim and the volume on low. Regal Theaters, which has a 14-screen multiplex in Taylorsville, has such screenings from time to time. AMC Theatres — with locations in Layton, West Jordan and Provo — has sensory-friendly screenings for kids on the second and fourth Saturdays of the month for select showtimes. And the Megaplex Theatres offers sensory-friendly screenings for its summer kids’ series.

For McNett, who hasn’t taken Elijah to Discovery Gateway since his fourth birthday party but is considering a return visit, having sensory-friendly facilities and events is a benefit for all families.

“Even kids not on the spectrum have sensory overload,” she said. “To have a safe place to go and chill out is important for everybody.”

Wild horse advocates are condemning a report the Bureau of Land Management quietly submitted to Congress that calls for massive removals of wild horses from public lands in Utah and nine other Western states.

Groups derided the 24-page document as a “roadmap for destruction of America’s wild free-roaming horse and burros” because it calls for permanent sterilization, euthanasia and “sale without limitation,” a euphemism for slaughter.

The report lays out several options for reducing the number of horses roaming public lands to populations the BLM has determined to be the “appropriate management level,” or AML, pegged at between 17,000 and 27,000 — a number that horse groups say is not compatible with the long-term survival of wild equines.

“That’s the number that existed [on the range] in 1971 when Congress acted to protect them because they were fast disappearing,” said Suzanne Roy, executive director of the American Wild Horse Campaign, based in California. “The number BLM deems appropriate is the extinction level. It’s a nonsense document. It’s more kowtowing to the livestock industry and sending the bill to taxpayers for rounding these horses up.”

The 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act already authorizes slaughter and sale of “excess” horses, but Congress has barred these practices for the past decade.

‘New direction’

The BLM report, which was obtained by E&E News and posted Friday, asks Congress to lift those restrictions and amend the law to provide the agency greater latitude to dispose of horses, such as lowering the minimum age to sell a horse from 10 to 5 years and raising the four-horse limit on individuals buying horses.

The document lays out options for permanently reducing horse numbers to “appropriate” levels in 117 designated horse management areas covering 27 million acres of public land. Nineteen of these areas are in Utah, spanning 2 million acres.

Its findings and recommendations align with what Utah state officials have sought, along with solutions presented at last year’s Wild Horse Summit, sponsored by Utah State University in Salt Lake City.

Attendees, such as Utah Rep. Chris Stewart, argued that wild horses are proliferating at unsustainable rates, now at 83,000 animals, more than triple the upper range of those 1971 management numbers.

Stewart’s office did not respond to request for comment Friday.

Depleted range conditions are displacing livestock, much to the dismay of public-lands ranchers and rural county commissioners who have taken the BLM to court over the issue. The reports also notes damaging effects the herds have on wildlife.

“The current overpopulation of wild horses and burros threatens the overall health of the western rangelands, degrading ecosystem functions and limiting the forage and water available for domestic and wildlife species, including game and nongame species,” it states.

Some of habitat areas are already severely degraded and horses are dying from lack of forage and water.

“The damaging environmental effects may soon become irreversible and large die-offs of wild horses/burros and multiple species of plants and other animals could begin,” the report continues. “The most inhumane and costly solution is to continue to take no decisive action.”

But the BLM’s proposed solutions are neither humane nor politically viable, Roy complained.

Specter of slaughter

Advocacy groups object to the goal of returning to previously set population levels, arguing those numbers are not based on sound science and instead place arbitrary ceilings on herd sizes that are not compatible with healthy genetic diversity.

Depending on which of four options in the report the BLM adopts, reaching the lower numbers could take between six to 12 years.

Most objectionable, horse advocates say, is the option of unrestricted sales, which would likely fast track horses to slaughter, and the notion of euthanizing healthy horses that can’t be adopted.

Other more palatable proposals, they contend, include boosting adoptions by paying people $1,000 to take in a horse that would otherwise cost the government $48,000 for lifetime pasturing.

The report highlights an array of problems with the status quo to illustrate the BLM’s call for a new direction, including spiraling costs.

Nearly 60 percent of the program’s $81 million budget is spent on pasturing horses for life; currently 46,000 live in off-range pastures, a number that has declined in recent years as the BLM has cut back on roundups. Still the cost of caring for all the horses currently in custody could top $1 billion over the course of their lives.

The BLM’s wild horse advisory board never had a chance to vet the report before its release, according to Ginger Kathrens, who serves as the humane advocate on the board. She disputed several of its findings.

“These federally protected animals are being blamed for rangeland health problems caused by welfare ranching on public lands, and are falsely called ‘starving’ and ‘overpopulated’ as an alarmist tactic to remove them from their home ranges,” said Kathrens, a filmmaker who heads the Colorado Springs-based Cloud Foundation.

‘Free-romping nature’

The option most in line with horse advocates’ position calls for continued use of the fertility vaccine PZP. While the report said the vaccines are a key tool, they also have serious limitations.

“In order to maintain zero growth in the existing population it would be necessary to capture most wild horses every year for the administration of fertility control to target mares. This is not operationally feasible,” it says.

But Kathrens contends the report overstates the costs of fertility control, while downplaying its efficacy and benefits.

“The report is full of errors,” Kathrens said. A dose of PZP costs just $27 and versions of the fertility vaccine are now effective for multiple years, she added.

Another option calls for sterilizing 18,000 horses a year until lower management levels are reached, then spay and geld as needed to maintain those numbers. That tactic is unacceptable to most horse advocacy groups.

“Surgical sterilization will destroy their wild and free-romping nature, which is protected under the law,” Roy said. “You will have a bunch of pasture horses. It’s way more dangerous on wild horses and wreaks havoc on their hormonal system.”

Madrid • Barcelona is celebrating yet another Spanish league title to cap a nearly perfect season.

Unbeaten Barcelona added to its domestic dominance by winning La Liga for the third time in the last four seasons on Sunday, remaining unbeaten after 34 rounds. Lionel Messi scored a hat trick and Philippe Coutinho added a goal to give Barcelona a 4-2 win at Deportivo La Coruna and an insurmountable 11-point lead over Atletico Madrid.

“We know how difficult it is to win this league,” Messi said. “We were better than our rivals. There is a lot of merit to winning this title without any losses.”

Barcelona has won 26 league games and drawn eight, with four matches left.

It was Barcelona’s seventh league title in 10 seasons and 25th overall. Real Madrid, last year’s champion, leads with 33 La Liga trophies.

Barcelona has also thrived in the Copa del Rey, the country’s second-most important club competition, winning it for the last four seasons.

“The hardest thing is to keep winning,” said coach Ernesto Valverde, who is celebrating his first league title in his debut season with Barcelona. “You have to find a way to keep coming back.”

Barcelona’s next goal is to try to finish the league unbeaten, something which has never happened in the competition’s current format.

“It’s been an almost perfect season for us in the league,” midfielder Sergio Busquets said.

Barcelona’s biggest setback this season came in the Champions League, when it was eliminated by Roma in the quarterfinals after squandering a three-goal advantage from the first leg.

Andres Iniesta, who last week announced he won’t return for a 17th season with the club, started from the bench but entered the match close to the end to applause from most of the crowd at Riazor Stadium.

Iniesta and Messi each have won nine Spanish league titles.

Spanish Soccer Champions<br>2018 — Barcelona<br>2017 — Real Madrid<br>2016 — Barcelona<br>2015 — Barcelona<br>2014 — Atletico Madrid<br>2013 — Barcelona<br>2012 — Real Madrid<br>2011 — Barcelona<br>2010 — Barcelona<br>2009 — Barcelona<br>2008 — Real Madrid<br>2007 — Real Madrid<br>2006 — Barcelona<br>2005 — Barcelona<br>2004 — Valencia<br>2003 — Real Madrid<br>2002 — Valencia<br>2001 — Real Madrid<br>2000 — Deportivo La Coruna<br>1999 — Barcelona<br>1998 — Barcelona<br>1997 — Real Madrid<br>1996 — Atletico de Madrid<br>1995 — Real Madrid<br>1994 — Barcelona<br>1993 — Barcelona<br>1992 — Barcelona<br>1991 — Barcelona<br>1990 — Real Madrid<br>1989 — Real Madrid<br>1988 — Real Madrid<br>1987 — Real Madrid<br>1986 — Real Madrid<br>1985 — Barcelona<br>1984 — Atletico Madrid<br>1983 — Atletico Madrid<br>1982 — Real Sociedad<br>1981 — Real Sociedad<br>1980 — Real Madrid<br>1979 — Real Madrid<br>1978 — Real Madrid<br>1977 — Atletico Madrid<br>1976 — Real Madrid<br>1975 — Real Madrid<br>1974 — Barcelona<br>1973 — Atletico Madrid<br>1972 — Real Madrid<br>1971 — Valencia<br>1970 — Atletico Madrid<br>1969 — Real Madrid<br>1968 — Real Madrid<br>1967 — Real Madrid<br>1966 — Atletico Madrid<br>1965 — Real Madrid<br>1964 — Real Madrid<br>1963 — Real Madrid<br>1962 — Real Madrid<br>1961 — Real Madrid<br>1960 — Barcelona<br>1959 — Barcelona<br>1958 — Real Madrid<br>1957 — Real Madrid<br>1956 — Athletic Bilbao<br>1955 — Real Madrid<br>1954 — Real Madrid<br>1953 — Barcelona<br>1952 — Barcelona<br>1951 — Atletico Madrid<br>1950 — Atletico Madrid<br>1949 — Barcelona<br>1948 — Barcelona<br>1947 — Valencia<br>1946 — Sevilla<br>1945 — Barcelona<br>1944 — Valencia<br>1943 — Athletic Bilbao<br>1942 — Valencia<br>1941 — Atletico Aviacion<br>1940 — Atletico Aviacion<br>1936 — Athletic Bilbao<br>1935 — Real Betis<br>1934 — Athletic Bilbao<br>1933 — Real Madrid<br>1932 — Real Madrid<br>1931 — Athletic Bilbao<br>1930 — Athletic Bilbao<br>1929 — Barcelona<br>Note: There was no competition from 1936-37 to 1938-39 because of war.

Sunday’s result relegated Clarence Seedorf’s Deportivo.

The hosts paid tribute to Barcelona even before the match started with its squad lining up outside the tunnel and applauding their rivals as they entered the field. Most of the opposing fans at Riazor also applauded Barcelona’s players.

Coutinho opened the scoring in the seventh minute with a well-placed shot into the top corner after a pass by Ousmane Dembele, and Messi added to the lead in the 38th with a strike from near the far post after a perfect cross by Luiz Suarez.

Deportivo pulled one closer with a goal by Lucas Perez in the 40th and equalized with Emre Colak’s shot from inside the area in the 64th.

Messi put Barcelona ahead in the 82nd from close range after exchanging passes with Suarez inside the area, then sealed the victory in a breakaway in the 85th.

Messi has 32 league goals, leaving him with eight more than Madrid’s Cristiano Ronaldo in the race for top scorer.

It has been yet another disappointing coaching stint for Seedorf, the former Dutch midfielder who earned only two victories in 13 matches since arriving to try to save Deportivo from relegation. The team has lost six times and drawn five under his command, returning to the second division for the first time since 2013-14.

“We didn’t reach our goal,” Seedorf said. “Now the future is open. We’ll see what happens.”

Seedorf had achieved lackluster results in his previous coaching stints, including at AC Milan in 2014.

Atletico stays second

Atletico’s depleted team defeated Alaves 1-0 to strengthen its grip on second place.

Kevin Gameiro converted a second-half penalty kick to secure the away victory for Atletico, which rested most of its regular starters ahead of Thursday’s return leg against Arsenal in the Europa League semifinals.

The result gave Atletico a four-point gap to third-place Real Madrid, which has a game in hand.

Gameiro scored the 78th-minute winner from the spot less than 10 minutes after Fernando Torres had his penalty kick saved by Alaves goalkeeper Axel Werner.

Atletico forward Angel Correa was sent off with a second yellow card in second-half injury time.

Valencia draws

Fourth-place Valencia still has to secure its Champions League spot after a 0-0 home draw against Eibar.

Valencia, winless in four matches, has an 11-point lead over fifth-place Real Betis, which has four games left and hosts last-place Malaga on Monday.

Getafe moves up

Getafe moved to the final qualification spot for the Europa League with a 1-1 home draw against Girona.

The result left Getafe in seventh place, one point in front of Sevilla.

Girona, also in the fight for a spot in Europe’s second-tier club competition, stayed ninth. It has 48 points, the same as Sevilla which has a game in hand.

Until the “jokes” started, the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner was quite a good time. My colleagues at NBC/MSNBC hosted wonderful events, my friends at The Washington Post were welcoming, and the CNN gang with whom I worked during the presidential debates was as cheery and ebullient as usual. My dinner companions were the remarkable NBC Pentagon and national security correspondent Courtney Kube, who has been to war zones three times more often than I’ve been to Hawaii, and Geoff Bennett, a radio guy who has moved to the tube. So I actually got to hear war stories and talk about both forms of broadcast through the course of a fine meal.

I wasn’t the only avowed conservative in the room. Mary Katharine Ham, Matt and Mercedes Schlapp, and a few others were also there; together we might have made up a table or two.

Former Indians pitcher Dennis Eckersley popped up to say hello, leaving me starstruck. I can still hear Herb Score calling his no-hitter in 1977. And of course Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, my fellow alum from John F. Kennedy High School in Warren, Ohio, and I had to dissect the Browns draft and the launch of the Baker Mayfield era in Cleveland.

All was just fine, in fact, and even inspiring as the First Amendment was honored, young journalists were applauded and excellent journalists were feted for their best work.

And then comedian Michelle Wolf took the stage. She was funny about 10 percent of the time. The other 90 percent was vulgar and, of course, overwhelmingly anti-President Donald Trump. As she repeatedly told us, she knew we expected her to attack the president, a surprise to me as my understanding is that the entertainment is to be a bipartisan singe of all embedded in the city’s vanities. Wolf directed many inappropriate comments at White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, four seats away, whose dismissive stare was actually regal.

If, as someone once said, “the essence of good taste is never to be offended by bad taste,” that makes Sanders the Good Taste Person of the Year.

There wasn’t a decent person in the room who wasn’t at least often offended by the diatribe delivered in a near-scream, part of Wolf’s act. And yes, journalists by and large are decent folk. I had occasion yesterday to send a note off to a former George W. Bush aide that noted how gracious 43 was — as always — in the days after his mother’s death. I included a quote from T.H. White’s “The Once and Future King”: “Mordred and Agravaine thought Arthur hypocritical, as all decent men must be if you assume that decency cannot exist.” If you are from the extremes of left or right and assume there aren’t any decent folk across the aisle or in press gallery scribbling, you are not only wrong but lack a capacity to learn. Alas, Wolf did nothing but harden your prejudices.

There will be some who thought Wolf’s commentary just fine, part of the necessary “resistance,” but the best were, if not shocked, at least saddened. The New York Times’ Peter Baker, in a masterwork of understatement, tweeted out his judgment: “Unfortunately, I don’t think we advanced the cause of journalism tonight.”

However that “cause” is defined, it was certainly not advanced, at least for the audience watching at home — and certainly not for the Trump supporters, many undecideds and some propriety-bound moms and dads who had to usher children out of the room.

By the principle of transference, watchers of Wolf’s spasm of venom and vulgarity will conclude that she represents the journalists assembled. She does not — not my friends in the craft from the left, right or somewhere undetermined. When all of the slicing “humor” is directed at the president and his team, the Democrats are chided only for not doing enough and the media are gently mocked for their slogans or their failures to skewer Trump more thoroughly, what’s a viewer to conclude?

Well, that the president must be right about this “fake news” business and that the whole lot of them must be in opposition to all of red America. They are not, but if the only evidence in the debate was a tape of last night’s dinner, the verdict would be with the president.

I’ve been teaching law students the glories of the First Amendment for two decades. It is among my favorite stretches of class, to drill into them that the genius of a free press, combined with the rights of free expression and association as well as religious freedom, is truly the decisive factor that drives American creativity and protects its political debate.

Is it really impossible to find some speaker of amusing disposition who can elevate an evening rather than leave it trashed and stained? Because if the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner and its wrap-up “keynote” define the First Amendment for the layman, he or she will care very little if it is actually curtailed, actually someday threatened, which it has not been and should never be.

In other places, though, journalists suffer and give their lives for truth, not for low, hyperpartisan “humor” of the sort associated with failed lounge acts in the seedier venues of isolated casinos. What a fail.

Hugh Hewitt, a Post contributing columnist, hosts a nationally syndicated radio show and is author of “The Fourth Way: The Conservative Playbook for a Lasting GOP Majority.”

The 2018 White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner should be the last.

It never has been a particularly good idea for journalists to don their fanciest clothes and cozy up to the people they cover, alongside Hollywood celebrities who have ventured to wonky Washington to join the fun.

But in the current era, it’s become close to suicidal for the press’s credibility.

Trust in the mainstream media is low, a new populism has caught fire all over the Western world, and President Donald Trump constantly pounds the news media as a bunch of out-of-touch elites who don’t represent the interests of real Americans.

The annual dinner — or at least the optics of the dinner — seems to back him up.

And while Trump rarely sets a good example for anyone, his decision to hold a campaign-style rally in Michigan on Saturday night might be an exception.

He got to look like a man of the people, a guy who talks the language of autoworkers and waitresses.

Journalists — whose purported mission is to “afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted” — were meanwhile partying with their sources at the Washington Hilton.

And Trump was more than happy to disparage them, just as he did when he declined the invitation to attend.

“Why would I want to be stuck in a room with a bunch of fake news liberals who hate me?” he asked in an email invitation to his supporters.

He said he would much rather “spend the evening with my favorite deplorables who love our movement and love America.”

The reality is something quite different.

Journalists do not present false stories. When they get something wrong, they correct it.

They do their best to be impartial, and — contrary to what the president told his supporters — they aren’t out to get him but to merely cover him. They are not the opposition party.

They are simply trying to do their jobs of informing the public, a job often made difficult by the obfuscation from the briefing room podium and the president’s own lies.

As for Trump’s touted allegiance to working-class values, solid reporting has shown that many of his policies and actions favor the rich (and his own business interests).

Journalists are trying to keep his administration and the Congress accountable to citizens. And the job of White House correspondent may be tougher than ever.

“What was once one of the most prestigious gigs in journalism has become a daily slog” now that there’s no downtime in the Trump era, wrote Michael Calderone of Politico.

But far from highlighting that hard work, this annual event sends the opposite message. And it encourages an unfortunate, false impression that the president loves to cultivate.

The White House Correspondents’ Association no doubt has good intentions. Its annual dinner is meant to recognize excellent reporting and raise money for scholarships.

“Our dinner honors the First Amendment and strong, independent journalism,” the organization’s president, Margaret Talev of Bloomberg News, said as she announced Michelle Wolf, this year’s main entertainer, praising the comic’s Pennsylvania roots and her “truth-to-power” style.

But this event sure doesn’t look like truth to power.

Its defenders say that it’s perfectly all right to have “just one night” to enjoy a break from the supposedly adversarial relationship between government and press. But that relationship isn’t always as arms-length as it should be in a town noted for its mutual back-scratching.

Talev and her cohort certainly are dedicated reporters and editors. But this festive night, always unseemly, is now downright counterproductive to good journalism’s goals. It only serves to reinforce the views of those who already hate the media elite.

By Sunday morning, Fox News chief national correspondent Ed Henry was even calling for the WHCA to apologize to Trump spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who was in the audience as Wolf skewered her: “She burns facts, and then she uses that ash to create a perfect smoky eye. Maybe she’s born with it; maybe it’s lies. It’s probably lies.”

A mini-dustup, at most, but more bad optics for the mainstream press — which doesn’t need them.

“Unfortunately, I don’t think we advanced the cause of journalism tonight,” tweeted Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent of the New York Times. (The Times, for the most part, has not attended the event in recent years.)

Happily, the dinner may be fizzling out of its own accord. In previous years, the buzz has been palpable, with the glitterati arriving for a five-day celebration, bringing a sense of that rarest of all things: glamour in Washington. Last year and this year, it felt downright subdued.

Can’t the correspondents’ association come up with better ways to do its good work, ways that show journalists at their best?

That they are in the trenches digging out the truth.

Not schmoozing in the swamp while the president hustles the heartland.

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

There was a big party thrown Thursday for Rob Goulding, but the guest of honor wasn’t there.

Goulding, 62, died April 9 from pancreatic cancer. Many of his friends and family turned out at the Sun Trapp, the Salt Lake City gay bar he owned, to pay tribute with stories and remembrances.

It almost felt as if Goulding were still in the room.

“We were friends for 15 years,” said a watery-eyed Teresa Engle. “He was a bighearted guy and super friendly. I don’t think he ever met a stranger. I’ll miss everything about him.”

Engle was in Kentucky the day Goulding died, but friends made sure she would make it back to Utah for his wake.

“He absolutely would’ve enjoyed this,” Engle said. “He would tell everyone to not be sad, what’s done is done, just be happy. Because he would crack jokes, even when he was sick. He didn’t complain or sit around feeling sorry for himself.”

Kevin Hillman said he started going to Salt Lake City gay bars in the ’80s, not long after he was excommunicated from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He soon met Goulding and became fast friends.

“Whenever you saw him, there was always a hello and a hug,” Hillman said. “You never had to wonder if your friendship was in trouble.”

Utah gay bar culture was quite different decades ago when the Sun Trapp — then known just as the Trapp; the “Sun” was added years later as a nod to the Sun Tavern, which was destroyed in the infamous 1999 tornado — opened in 1990 under the ownership of Joe Redburn.

At one point in the 1970s, Salt Lake City could boast 10 gay or lesbian bars. Now there are two: the Sun Trapp and Club Try-Angles.

The slow demise of the gay bar scene, in Utah and nationally, has largely been attributed to the rise of the internet and dating apps.

Hillman said one of Goulding’s lasting legacies is that he kept the Sun Trapp a gay bar instead of selling it or turning it into a different business.

“Rob always knew it was important to have a place where we could come and meet and be who we are, a safe place to be out,” said Hillman.

That sentiment is echoed by the Sun Trapp’s new ownership team, made up of Dennis Gwyther, Riley Richter and Goulding’s brother Michael, who have vowed to not only keep the bar a meeting place for Utah’s LGBT community, but also make improvements.

Those have already begun. In recent days, bright flags of LGBT offshoot groups have been hung along the building’s roof — flags representing transgender, lesbian, leather, bisexual, bear and more, even a POW/MIA flag for gay military veterans. More upgrades are on the way, including a new patio to replace the wooden outdoor deck.

“It’s all about inclusiveness and keeping Rob’s memory alive this way,” said Gwyther. “He donated to so many charities. If he could help someone out, he would do it.”

“He created such a great establishment,” said Michael Goulding. “And it’s still successful. We have people outside the door every weekend and wall-to-wall people inside and on the patio. We’re going to make it bigger and better.”

Looking around the bar as Goulding’s wake drifted into the evening, as patrons and friends waxed lovingly about his life, it certainly felt that the Sun Trapp still plays a vital role in Utah’s LGBT community.

“People need physical interaction, to look at and talk to other people in person,” Gwyther said. “Apps just don’t cut it all the time.”

Walkers and bikers are hit more often on State Street than anywhere else in Salt Lake City, according to police crash records, a reality that may have helped drive a public perception that the road through town needs drastic changes.

The state-owned highway that cuts through all of Salt Lake Valley also is viewed as a hot spot for crime, a tough road to cross even at crosswalks, and a car-friendly climate that’s not great for biking, storefronts or housing.

Residents have told city and state leaders they want to feel safer along the road, and the city worked to put those ideas into a high-level vision for the road in a new draft plan called Life on State that will be presented to the public Monday night at Salt Lake Community College South City campus.

But some of the ideas that consultants say would spur economic growth and make the street safer, like slowing down cars and giving more space to bikers, walkers and buses, clash with policies of the Utah Department of Transportation. That puts in doubt whether the most drastic changes in the draft plan will happen.

“State Street needs to serve a high volume of vehicles,” said Heidi Goedhart, active transportation manager with UDOT. “People need to travel that corridor in downtown Salt Lake City.”

Salt Lake City spent months working with the county, South Salt Lake, the state and Utah Transit Authority to see what residents wanted after what the draft plan says were “decades of change and benign neglect” that degraded the road in “many stretches.”

Residents who weighed in called for making the street safer for all users, plus better transit options and new businesses. Sixty-seven percent of people who gave input said they wanted the street to be safer for bikers, walkers and cars, reduced crime, or general wholesale change.

Indeed, as consultant John Fregonese put it in a recent interview: “There’s no way to get from one side to the other of State safely.”

Salt Lake City engineers confirmed an analysis by The Salt Lake Tribune: In 2016 and 2017, more walkers and bikers were hit on State Street than anywhere else in town. Those collisions occurred at intersections but also at designated pedestrian crosswalks with flashing yellow or red lights throughout the road in Salt Lake City.

Records from the Salt Lake City Police Department show 38 walkers and 27 bikers were hit in that time. (A city traffic engineer put the number at 37 walkers and 30 bikers, but confirmed that both were the highest of any road in the city.) None of the crashes during the two years was fatal.

“Safety was a big driving force behind this plan or the need for this plan because it is the most dangerous place to walk,” said Julia Reed, with Fregonese Associates. “There’s a real need to improve safety and security for pedestrians on State to make it a more enjoyable place to be.”

On much of the street, designated crosswalks are only at intersections that are a quarter-mile from one another. Pedestrians frequently cross midblock.

UDOT representatives say the agency is open to changes that focus on people traveling on foot and it will look at those when it repairs segments of road as part of its regular maintenance schedule. But altering the look and feel of the street — generally by taking some space from cars and giving it to bikers, walkers and buses — clashes with UDOT’s guidelines of keeping cars moving.

“In many respects, it could be true that the community is not seeing the regional aspect of the roadway,” said Molly Robinson, urban designer for Salt Lake City. “And it could be true that UDOT is not seeing the local needs and desires for the roadway.”

Like other state departments of transportation, UDOT conducts road planning using what’s called level of service guidelines, which is generally the ability to keep cars moving down the road without congestion.

“This is a regional roadway,” Goedhart said. “We’re still very focused on maintaining kind of the level of service for cars — the amount of cars that can still drive down this. We’re not looking at removing capacity” for cars.

Using that metric could prevent ideas that consultants and residents put together as part of the new vision, such as bike lanes that are protected from car lanes, wider sidewalks or lanes dedicated to buses, urban planners say.

“If we default to a level of service goal for cars, I’ve been in so many projects where that precludes so many other design elements that are included in” the Life on State draft plan, said Don Kostelec, a Boise urban planning consultant who has done work in Utah.

Business on State

If the biggest changes consultants and the public envisioned would lead to more congestion on State Street, they also likely would lead to more housing, offices and retail being built along the street, consultants said.

Those changes include taking a lane from parking and giving it to bikers who would be protected from traffic by trees. There would be wider medians separating traffic, with areas for pedestrians to take a break while crossing the 100-foot-plus-wide road, and wider sidewalks.

In the project area, which runs from North Temple to 3300 South and 200 East to 300 West, Salt Lake City and South Salt Lake could attract 30,500 new jobs and $4.4 billion in new development over 20 years, according to the draft. That’s up about threefold over the growth the modeling says would happen without any changes.

Sales tax collections from new businesses opening could climb fivefold, and annual property tax collections could climb from $12 million a year to $43 million. Eight-thousand housing units could be created in large and midsize apartment buildings under what the plan calls “full implementation,” up from 1,700 built by doing nothing.

People “don’t necessarily want to have their apartment located on a scene like this,” Fregonese, the consultant, said, showing a picture of State Street near 2300 South in South Salt Lake.

The modeling also looked at changes in retail and office and energy consumption with different changes in the street. It found that every metric but one could improve with more drastic street shifts, though rent would slightly climb compared to the existing setup.

“Converting that auto-oriented use is just a great per-acre return on property taxes for the city,” Kostelec said.

Bike on State

There are no bike lanes on State Street, yet bikers routinely use the shoulders and sidewalks and some join cars in the main lanes to travel north toward downtown or south toward Interstate 80.

Most of the changes proposed in the draft plan don’t include space dedicated to biking. They do include wider sidewalks and possibly eliminating a right-turn-only lane to make space for a bigger pedestrian waiting area that would make crosswalks narrower.

That irks some bike advocates who say residents out of cars face roadblocks to reach existing and possible future businesses there.

“Bicyclists have destinations on State Street,” said Dave Iltis, editor and publisher of Cycling Utah and a biking advocate. “What are we supposed to do?”

Goedhart said bikers have other options, like using parallel streets and side streets to get where they need to on State.

“We’ve kind of understood that a lot of the cyclists need to access destinations on State Street,” Goedhart said. “But predominantly they’re choosing to bike along lower stressed” routes like Main Street and 200 West.

Expecting bikers to use streets off State and still find businesses on State Street is unreasonable, Iltis said.

“The problem is their whole mentality is about moving cars,” Iltis said of UDOT. “They are why I’m participating in the process but I’m not very optimistic with any of it changing.”

UDOT spokesman John Gleason said the agency will continue working with Salt Lake City and others on next steps, and that changes would be put in place if needed and if money is available for them. That could take years, and it would be pricey.

“If funding becomes available and it’s determined that there’s a need there and that need is prioritized then we could potentially go in sooner than that and put in some of these recommendations,” Gleason said.

Consider what Purple has accomplished since the Alpine-based company started selling its innovative mattresses in late January 2016.

From nothing, Purple’s sales zoomed to $65.5 million in its first year. A clever marketing campaign propelled that surge, highlighted by a promotional video that went viral — it’s had 163 million YouTube views — of a hip Goldilocks doing raw egg tests on mattresses, with only Purple’s passing muster.

The pace picked up even more in 2017. Over the year’s first nine months, net revenue climbed to $134 million. And when Purple’s annual report comes out soon, income for all of 2017 is projected to reach $190 million, maybe even $194 million.

Brothers Tony and Terry Pearce, the company founders, have gone from having 50 employees to more than 900 today — 400 in Alpine, where company executives and a large marketing team are, and another 500 in rural Grantsville.

Last October, Purple opened a warehouse and manufacturing facility the size of 10 football fields in the Tooele County town to build mattresses with its trademarked hyperelastic polymer cushioning.

“Hiring 500 people in a year in a rural town like Grantsville is really important to our owners,” said company spokeswoman Savannah Turk. “One of their goals has been to create meaningful employment. To help the state they love has been very important to them.”

Unleashing the ‘gazelles’

That kind of payback is why state and local governments are well advised to do what they can to help “high-growth” companies, according to a recent analysis by the Brookings Institution, the century-old research group in Washington, D.C.

Policymakers, report author Ian Hathaway concluded, “should aim to develop a well-educated workforce, promote competitive high-tech and knowledge-intensive industries and recognize the relevance of entrepreneurial support [and] mentoring.”

He also recommended liberalizing immigration policies to help foreigners educated in the United States to stay here to start businesses.

Hathaway studied 25,000 companies that appeared on Inc. magazine’s list of high-growth companies between 2011 and 2017, firms defined as having annualized revenue growth of 20 percent or more over a three-year period.

He picked these companies because economists have known since the mid-1990s how important these “gazelles” are to job creation and the economy. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, he noted, 4 percent of high-growth companies accounted for 60 percent of all new jobs. On into the first decade of the 21st century, 2.4 percent of firms created 40 percent of new positions.

Examining these companies further, he found they tended to be relatively small (averaging 199 employees), populated by young owners and employees (ages 35 to 44) and concentrated in industries that require intensive knowledge of a specialized subject. Many were tech companies, but to Hathaway’s surprise, “the substantial majority are not.”

He also determined the Wasatch Front is as productive as any area in the country for incubating high-growth firms. Provo-Orem was second on the list of metropolitan areas for unleashing gazelles. Salt Lake County was sixth.

“If they could be seen as one single economic unit, it could have a positive effect,” Hathaway told The Salt Lake Tribune. “Long story short: A big collection of smart people creates great things, in excess of the sum of the parts.”

The results impressed Juliette Tennert, chief economist at the University of Utah’s Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute, applauding “Provo and Salt Lake [for] showing stronger postings than places like Silicon Valley and Seattle.”

“Our state is very much rising as a [center] for innovation,” she said. “We’ve got this virtual cycle going on — innovation begets innovation, growth begets growth.”

Metro areas with the most high-growth companies<br>1. Boulder, Colo. — 367.<br>2. Provo — 341.<br>3. Washington, D.C. — 329.<br>4. Huntsville, Ala. — 297.<br>5. Austin, Texas — 289.<br>6. Salt Lake City — 232.<br>7. San Francisco — 219.<br>8. Atlanta — 194.<br>9. Boston — 184.<br>10. Denver — 181.<br>Source: Brookings Institution

A royal idea

The Pearce brothers had pursued separate careers before they decided in 1989 to merge their complementary talents and go into business together. Tony Pearce had spent a dozen years working with advanced aerospace materials. Terry Pearce’s background was more in manufacturing, design and project management.

They started building high-tech, carbon fiber wheelchairs, learning over time that their wheelchair users really needed a better cushion to avoid developing painful pressure sores.

So the Pearces invented a lightweight cushioning fluid that has been used over the past 20 years in numerous products beyond their wheelchairs — Nike sports shoes, Dr. Scholl’s inserts, critical-care medical beds, angle and knee braces, golf bag straps, “nests” for premature babies in neonatal intensive care units, backpack straps and industrial knee pads.

Along the way, they also created the hyperelastic polymer and envisioned using it to make mattresses that will conform to a sleeping person’s body, sinking under pressure points such as shoulders and hips while rising elsewhere to provide back support.

Terry Pearce put his engineering skills to work inventing a sizable “Mattress Max” machine that can put out a hyperelastic polymer sheet that looks like a purple waffle the size of a king bed, in thicknesses of 2, 3 or 4 inches.

By the fall of 2015, the Pearces were ready to start selling mattresses. They were operating almost exclusively online, enhancing the attractiveness of their prices ($999 for a queen bed, $1,299 for a king) with free shipping and the right to a full refund if the mattress was returned within 100 days of purchase.

They conducted a Kickstarter campaign that raised enough money to get the business rolling at the start of 2016. That’s when they released the marketing video produced by the Provo-based Harmon Brothers (famous for similar videos for Squatty Potty and PooPourri toilet spray) that featured Goldilocks’ search for just the right bed. It was a hit.

They named their company Purple, in part because it mixes their allegiances — Terry wears University of Utah red while Tony is BYU blue.

“Purple is also a neutral color that no one really owned, so we made it our own,” said spokeswoman Turk. “It’s the color of royalty. We’re helping people feel like royalty using the bed’s quality products.”

Tapping into Utah’s talent pool

Because it’s only been around two years, Purple would not qualify for Hathaway’s study. But it was listed last fall on a similar list of fast-growing companies that Mountain West Capital Network puts out (placing third behind FireFly Automatix, a manufacturer of self-propelled turf harvesters and mowers in North Salt Lake, and PrinterLogic, a software company in St. George). Its revenue generation and job creation numbers also fit the high-growth definition used by Brookings.

Purple’s explosive growth also was influenced by many of the characteristics identified by Hathaway as conducive to stimulating the emergence of high-growth companies — “a well-educated workforce, a concentration of high-tech activity, a critical mass of midcareer professionals and an experience-based culture that is oriented toward entrepreneurship.”

The presence nearby of the U., BYU and Utah Valley University gave Purple access to an abundance of workers with college degrees. That translated, Turk said, into “Terry [Pearce] feeling lucky to find so many engineers to work on his machinery.” What’s more, Wasatch Front technical schools supplied numerous employees to keep machinery running and to experiment on ways to improve the manufacturing process.

Having other high-tech companies around also bolsters the talent pool, Hathaway said. Purple’s management ranks are thick with executives whose résumés include previous stints at companies like Traeger Grills, NuSkin, Overstock.com, Morinda and the venture capital firm Peak Ventures.

Purple received a postperformance tax-rebate incentive from Tooele County to develop the facility in Grantsville, County Commissioner Shawn Milne said. Worth up to $3.3 million, the incentive is based on the company meeting specified employment and investment goals.

Last December, the company also got a grant of up to $15,000 from World Trade Center Utah to help boost its export capabilities.

A couple of Hathaway’s findings struck a chord with Ivy Estabrooke, executive director of the Utah Science, Technology and Research Initiative (USTAR).

She was impressed with the variety of industries in which high-growth companies thrived, contending that diversity helps offset downturns in other high-growth business sectors, such as construction, that are subject to booms and busts.

But the importance of higher education also stood out to her, showcasing an important change in Utah’s ongoing employment situation.

“Having such a robust economy, growing these companies so quickly, provides lots of economic opportunities for individuals, so they can stay here in Utah,” Estabrooke said. “That’s a changing trend. Historically, there was a lot of brain drain in Utah as [college] graduates felt they needed to move to California or the East Coast to have good careers. But these high-growth companies are providing jobs here for these folks now.”

Future growth

Purple is expecting to provide people with good jobs for years to come.

The Pearces opened doors to more investment by executing a reverse merger in February with a “special purpose acquisition company” called Global Partner Acquisition Corp. That earned the company a slightly new name, Purple Innovation Inc., and a seat on the Nasdaq exchange with the call letters PRPL.

The company also is exploring expansions in the bedding industry, which is valued at $24 billion annually.

Rather than relying almost entirely on online sales, Turk said it is looking to move more mattresses and related products into brick-and-mortar retail stores. Purple also wants to enter more urban markets, in cities such as Chicago, Phoenix and San Francisco. Europe is a possibility, too.

“It’s a big undertaking. We’re slowly working our way out into the world,” Turk said. “There’s huge potential in Europe, but we’re learning what needs to be done to get in there.”

What are the nation’s top high-growth industries?<br>Information and technology services — 3,474 companies.<br>Advertising and marketing — 2,472.<br>Business products and services — 2,253.<br>Health care — 2,051.<br>Software — 1,816.<br>Source: Brookings Institution

U.S. Justice Department rewrites prosecutor manual, deleting sections on the “need for free press” and racial gerrymandering. Salt Lake County Mayor Ben McAdams secures Democratic nomination in challenge of Rep. Mia Love. The BLM asks Congress about removing wild horses.

Happy Monday. The U.S. Department of Justice has been updating and rewriting its manual that offers guidance to federal prosecutors. In the process, it has taken out a chapter called “Need for Free Press and Public Trial.” And it’s deleted references to racial gerrymandering. There are now new sections about religious freedom and protecting classified information. [Buzzfeed]

Topping the news: Salt Lake County Mayor Ben McAdams defeated his opponents at Saturday’s Utah Democratic Convention and will now appear on the November ballot to challenge Republican Rep. Mia Love. Salt Lake County Councilwoman Jenny Wilson also won the nomination and will avoid a primary to run for U.S. Senate. [Trib] [DNews] [ABC4] [KUTV] [Fox13] [KSL]

-> Babs De Lay complained for years about the noise TRAX trains made by her home and office in Salt Lake City. After she was appointed to the UTA board, more effort was made to reduce the noise there. [Trib]

-> The BLM submitted a report to Congress asking for a large removal of wild horses from public lands in 10 Western states, including Utah. [Trib]

Tweet of the day: From @UribeForbes: “I love getting my political science degree in this current political climate because my professors are just as confused about what’s going as I am and nothing makes sense anymore”

Happy Birthday: To KCPW’s Roger McDonough.

In other news: Members of Utah’s congressional delegation credited President Donald Trump, in part, for the meeting between leaders of North Korea and South Korea. [DNews] [KSL]

-> The BLM will offer Utah lands at its next online auction after a Houston firm failed to pay what it bid for multiple leases. [Trib]

-> Salt Lake City Mayor Jackie Biskupski will release a $275.5 million budget proposal today. [Trib]

-> Millcreek leaders are seeking resident input as they work toward redevelopment around City Hall. [DNews]

-> Experts at Friday’s 2018 Utah Economic Summit predicted a positive future for the state’s economy, though there are challenges ahead as well. [DNews]

-> The father of a U.S. Army veteran posted photos of an unclean patient room at a Veterans Affairs clinic in Salt Lake City, resulting in backlash online. The clinic apologized and is looking into the issue. [DNews] [ABC4] [KUTV] [Fox13]

-> Pat Bagley illustrates the long road to North Korean denuclearization. [Trib]

-> Paul Rolly argues the felony charges the San Juan County attorney’s office filed against a Colorado couple for closing a gate on a rancher’s grazing area are absurd. [Trib]

-> Frank Pignanelli and LaVarr Webb discuss whether the dysfunctional Utah Republican Convention earlier this month signals the end of the caucus/convention system. [DNews]

Nationally: The U.S. House Intelligence Committee said Friday its probe is over and President Donald Trump’s campaign didn’t collude with Russia during the 2016 presidential election. [APviaTrib]

-> U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan’s decision to replace the House chaplain sparked backlash from Republican and Democratic lawmakers. Ryan said he received complaints about the chaplain and thought replacing him was the best action to take. [WaPost]

-> Trump and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany met Friday to discuss the Iran nuclear deal. [NYTimes]

-> The EPA has drafted a proposal to weaken Obama-era regulations on car emission standards. [NYTimes]

Got a tip? A birthday, wedding or anniversary to announce? Want to sign up for our weekday email and get this sent directly to your inbox? Send us a note to cornflakes@sltrib.com.

— Courtney Tanner and Madalyn Gunnell

Twitter.com/CourtneyLTanner and Twitter.com/madmcgunnell

Fred Korematsu was a welder on the docks in Oakland, Calif., in 1942, when he was called into the union office one February morning and told he was fired.

It was months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and, based on an order from President Franklin Roosevelt, Korematsu was one of 120,000 Japanese-Americans ordered to leave their homes and report to internment camps.

Korematsu refused. He was arrested, and his case eventually made it to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the justices ruled Roosevelt could take what actions he deemed necessary in the interest of national security and upheld Korematsu’s conviction.

Forty years later, an attorney named Dale Minami persuaded a court to vacate the conviction based on new evidence that the government had lied about the grounds for the internment order.

The Korematsu decision is almost universally regarded as a stain on the Supreme Court’s history, on par with the reprehensible rulings that a slave named Dred Scott had no rights under the Constitution and that a man named Homer Plessy could be forced to sit in a “separate but equal” rail car.

But Minami says there are ominous echos of Korematsu in a case the Supreme Court heard last week on the constitutionality of President Donald Trump’s travel ban targeting a group of predominantly Muslim countries.

“The genesis of the entire immigration ban that Trump proclaimed started with the Chinese, the first immigration bans ever based on race or ancestry,” said Minami, who was in Salt Lake City last week.

“It was followed by bans against the Japanese,” he said. “So the whole legal genesis of the Trump theory is based on these outdated, racist stereotypes, like the claims the Chinese are unassimilable, trying to keep the ‘other’ from coming into the country.”

Minami was one of the lawyers from the Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality in Seattle who filed a “friend-of-the-court” brief with the Supreme Court, reminding the justices of the dark legacy of that case and urging them not to once again blindly accept the government’s national security arguments.

The government’s lawyers in the Muslim case told justices last week that the Trump administration did a global review and determined the security risks justified excluding immigrants from these countries. There’s no need to look any further.

Except, that’s exactly what the government argued in Korematsu. And the court bought it, only to discover years later the entire justification for the Japanese exclusion was a Navy general’s report that Japanese-Americans were disloyal, even though there was not a single example of espionage or sabotage.

It was racism that drove the Japanese internment, and when that came to light, Minami was able to win the reversal of Korematsu’s conviction. In 2011, the Justice Department admitted it had misled the court.

But then, as now, the government refused to release the assessment underlying Trump’s orders.

We’re supposed to believe it was all national security and not the president’s long record of anti-Muslim rhetoric — vowing to block all Muslim immigrants and his tweeting of racist anti-Muslim videos, for example.

“They’re saying, essentially, ‘Trust us, again,’” Minami said. “We’ve gone so far as to essentially ban an entire religious group. And it’s surprising that we thought, in this day and age, we were ending the journey, but now we’re starting again at square one and having to fight the same battles against the president’s claim of essentially imperial power.”

As Utahns, we should comprehend the danger of executive proclamations that target broad categories of people based on nationality, ethnicity or religion.

If you doubt that, spend an afternoon at the Topaz concentration camp near Delta, a windswept prison where more than 11,000 Japanese-Americans were held during World War II.

Add to that the history of persecution and discrimination against Mormons based on an unpopular faith — a history that a group of Mormon scholars called to the court’s attention in a brief filed in the travel ban case.

Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, they wrote, were called “a community of traitors, murderers, fanatics and whores.” Mobs drove early Mormons from their communities, burned their homes and churches and murdered the religion’s founder.

In response to the animosity toward the faith, immigration policies were enacted to restrict Mormon immigration from abroad and LDS immigrants were turned away at U.S. ports. Congress declared the church disbanded and stripped women in the territory of the right to vote.

And now? Now we risk traveling down that same path.

The only thing that can prevent it is a Supreme Court that gives careful scrutiny to the dubious claims of the Trump administration and keeps this country from repeating the mistakes that led us to one of the darkest chapters of our nation’s history.

Recently, I was in my bedroom checking my e-mail, and I saw something that made me scream, “Yahoo, yahoo, yahoo,” and then I ran into the other room to tell my husband: “KBYU has decided to keep their classical music programming!”

He said “Oh, I thought someone in our family had won the lottery!”

I am so happy with this decision. Thank you to KBYU for paying attention to your loyal listeners who decried the decision to abandon their classical music format, and for finding a way to keep this unique and treasured resource.

Alice Reis, West Valley City

I have wonderful memories of my family traveling through Utah to see the amazing formations that had become national parks. These travels were in the 1950s before the interstate. I remember driving from Zion National Park to nearby Bryce Canyon National Park — two places created by totally different elements (water and wind) and similarly awesome in their majesty.

My husband and I have dreamed about repeating these trips and adding the other natural wonders that your state can be proud of. This trip was planned for some time this year. But not now.

I have read about how the EPA under the ministrations of Scott Pruitt is selling these wonders and many more in the West to the oil companies. This is done because he, the Trump administration and others in Congress continue to deny climate change.

I will spend no more of my money in any state that welcomes the oil industry to despoil its lands and develop fossil fuels next to our natural wonders. Perhaps God placed these wonders in hostile lands to try to protect them from human greed. If so, God certainly underestimated that greed.

Becky Gage, Hempstead, Texas

When the Utah Jazz and Houston Rockets decide the winner of their best-of-seven playoff series, it’s going to cost a police chief a steak dinner and some embarrassing looks.

Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo over Twitter on Saturday offered a challenge to his counterpart in Salt Lake City, Mike Brown. Acevedo wagered a steak dinner that the Rockets would win the NBA Western Conference semifinal series.

I have a steak dinner (winners’s choice at the @TheIACP ) that @TilmanJFertitta @HoustonRockets will win the series. What say ye? Are we on @ChiefMikeBrown ? #RunAsOne🚀 https://t.co/V12fffTLVX

— Chief Art Acevedo (@ArtAcevedo) April 28, 2018

Brown accepted and increased the bet. The loser also had to wear the winning team’s hat, while in police uniform, for a day. Acevedo accepted.

I’m in!!

— Chief Art Acevedo (@ArtAcevedo) April 28, 2018

The two chiefs know each other through some national policing organizations. Acevedo took the early lead Sunday when the Rockets beat the Jazz 110-96.

The Steamboat Geyser at Yellowstone National Park can spout 300 feet of scalding water into the air, a feature of the world’s tallest active geyser. That is known.

What isn’t known is why is the geyser has erupted three times in the past six weeks, including one event on Friday in an unusual pattern that hasn’t occurred since 2003.

The spike in activity has puzzled scientists who closely monitor Yellowstone — the crown jewel of the national park system that rests on top of a violent supervolcano measuring 44 miles across.

Though scientists say the reasons for the spate of eruptions is unclear, officials with Yellowstone Volcano Observatory cautioned that the geyser activity is not a sign of impending doom.

“There is nothing to indicate that any sort of volcanic eruption is imminent,” observatory scientist in charge Michael Poland told The Washington Post. The last eruption was 70,000 years ago, and there are no signs of another one, including the recent Steamboat activity, he said Sunday.

Geysers are the result of magma heating water that has seeped into the ground, triggering an eruption of liquid through vents in the earth surface for as long as dozens of minutes, followed by billowing steam that may last days.

Yet geysers are difficult to study. Most have unpredictable eruptions that may happen in intervals lasting years, making it challenging to assign resources such as seismic monitors and cameras, Poland said. For instance, no scientists observed Friday’s eruption. It was reported by a visitor, he said.

Poland said he is not sure exactly what is going on with the Steamboat geyser.

One possibility he offered: The three eruptions on March 15, April 19 and Friday could point to thermal disturbances — heated ground that can change the behavior of geysers and springs or form new ones, he said.

The string of eruptions over a year in 2003 may have been connected to a particularly violent thermal disturbance that killed trees and nearly boiled trails in the Norris Basin, where several geysers, including Steamboat, are.

Poland also suggested that Steamboat is relieving pressure through smaller eruptions rather than one big event. The second and third eruptions were about the same size — about 10 times as large as that of the park’s famous Old Faithful geyser, Poland said.

But since most geysers produce erratic activity, the trio of eruptions “might just reflect the randomness of geysers,” Poland said. Steamboat erupted several times in the early 1980s but was inactive for five decades, ending its drought in 1961, he said. So it’s difficult to pin routine behavior on the geyser.

“This is what geysers do. They erupt,” Poland said.

The appropriately named Old Faithful to the south of Steamboat is an outlier, with eruptions so predictable that the park operates a Twitter feed of alerts with a 10-minute margin of error.

But geysers are not structurally similar to one another. Old Faithful has a straightforward plumbing system that probably includes chambers that produce heating, Poland said. The plumbing network underneath Steamboat’s vent may be more intricate, with uneven magma activity.

So what does the Steamboat activity mean for the risk of an eruption of the Yellowstone caldera, an event that could blanket Los Angeles, Seattle and Chicago in a foot of ash?

Essentially nothing, Poland said.

“Yellowstone has this strange psychology to it about a world-ending event,” he said, but the potential for an eruption in this lifetime is incredibly remote. Although Poland said volcanic eruptions do not follow a timetable, there have been no seismic activities that would point to an increased chance of a catastrophic event.

And, Poland said, the Steamboat eruptions are a good sign that there is no imminent danger. Rising magma would dry up pools of water, so geysers going dormant would be a worrying event.

Scientists will gather next week for a scheduled meeting about research priorities, and Poland expects the Steamboat eruptions to generate discussion. It may lead to more resources if researchers are thinking that there may be more activity to come.

“It’s cool, it’s exciting, it’s neat,” Poland said about the eruptions. “It’s nothing to be afraid about.”

Flagstaff, Ariz. • The Havasupai Tribe said three animal abuse cases in its tribal court have ended in convictions since it promised last year to make animal-cruelty offenses a top priority.

Two other people have also had animal cruelty charges filed against them in the past month, the Arizona Daily Sun reported .

Animal treatment concerns arose two years ago when federal authorities arrested a tribal member for abuse of his horses. The arrest brought widespread attention as well as calls for increased regulation, enforcement and pressure on trekking companies that use pack horses.

Pack animals like horses, mules and donkeys, the majority of which are owned by tribal members, are used to haul tourists’ gear to and from the famous blue-green waterfalls on Havasupai in the Grand Canyon.

The tribe responded that it would implement a permit system for packers, inspect and score horses based on body condition and then require that horses meet a certain body condition to be allowed to pack.

Last year, after the arrest of a second tribal member on animal cruelty charges connected to one of his horses, the tribe announced it had hired a tribal prosecutor for the first time and a tribal court judge.

“We are working diligently to identify those few tribal members who engage in this type of behavior and allow our tribal court system to prosecute such individuals,” former Tribal Chairman Don Watahomigie said.

Soleil Dolce, vice president of the Arizona Equine Rescue Organization, said the tribe’s response is notable, but the reality is there continues to be horses removed from the Havasupai’s canyon reservation.

Dolce said that has been the situation for “as long as anyone can remember.”

“I feel frustrated. Even though I get they’re taking measures and I know things take time it’s been two years and we’re seeing horses come out in just as bad of a condition as they ever have,” Dolce said.

Her organization helps rehabilitate animals removed from the reservation that are in an “extreme condition,” she said.

Tourists need to make sure they aren’t supporting packing operations that don’t care for their horses properly, Dolce said.

“Tourists have a lot of power in this situation if we can help them understand that,” she said.

Abbie Fink, who works with a public relations firm hired by the tribe, said an estimated 70 percent of tribal members own horses.

In the past few weeks, The Salt Lake Tribune has covered in detail every twist and turn of the Republican Party convention as they try to figure out who’s the truest of the true Republicans.

Then, in an article about the primary senatorial race between Mike Kennedy and Mitt Romney, the writer actually included a picture of the loyal opposition, Jenny Wilson, along with about one column inch of copy about her. I almost fell off my chair!

Thank you so much for letting your readers knows that Democrat is running for the office. At least we’ll be able to put a name to the opposition’s candidate when The Tribune prints its endorsements later in the year.

Stan Roberts, Salt Lake City