Gail Halvorsen, better known as the Candy Bomber, greets Regine Lovely in St. George on July 3. Lovely was one of the first children in Germany who received candy from Halvorsen’s candy drops after World War II. Utah’s congressional delegation recently introduced a bill to rename the Provo Vet Center in honor of Halvorsen. | Ashley Imlay, KSL.com
Utah's congressional delegation wants to rename the Provo Vet Center after Gail S. Halvorsen, who is better known as the Candy Bomber.
The center, which is actually located in Orem, would be renamed the Col. Gail S. Halvorsen 'Candy Bomber' Veterans Center. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Rep. John Curtis, R-Utah, introduced the bill in Congress this week, with all four other members of Utah's congressional delegation signing on as co-sponsors, according to Lee's office.
"Col. Gail Halvorsen exemplifies the best of the Utah spirit of service," Lee said in a prepared statement. "His creativity and compassion helped to heal the wounds of the Second World War, and softened the relationship between occupied Germany and the United States. Renaming the Provo Vet Center in his honor is a fitting and deserved recognition of this American hero."
Halvorsen, who was born in Salt Lake City in 1920, was a pilot for the U.S. during World War II. He served as part of an air support campaign that saw Allied pilots drop food, fuel and other supplies over West Berlin after the Soviet Union blockaded that part of the city in 1948.
Once, while waiting for his plane to be unloaded, he encountered a group of hungry German children standing at a fence. He gave them all he had in his pockets: two sticks of gum. He promised the children that he would return the next day and drop chocolate bars from the sky.
Halvorsen delivered on the promise many times over. He and his co-pilots dropped 23 tons of chocolate and other candy over West Berlin through the course of the blockade. He earned the nickname "Uncle Wiggly Wings" because he would wiggle the wings of his plane after dropping the candy. He later became known as the Berlin Candy Bomber.
"What began as a gesture of compassion quickly grew into an official U.S. Air Force operation as he and his fellow pilots dropped candy rations from their planes to the children of West Berlin." Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, said in a statement. "Gail is an American hero who exemplifies the best of humanity and embodies our state's kindness and spirit of service, and it is only fitting that we rename the Provo Vet Center in his honor."
Halvorsen retired from the military in 1974, but has continued to be an active humanitarian.
Most recently, he participated in a flight over St. George during the city's Fourth of July celebration, boarding a helicopter to drop handfuls of candy over the crowd of spectators.
"Gail Halvorsen represents all that is good about Utahns — and our men and women in uniform," Curtis said, adding that he is proud to help honor his legacy with a renamed "Gail S. Halvorsen 'Candy Bomber' Veterans Center."
United States’s Damian Lillard (6) steals the ball from Czech Republic’s Martin Peterka (15) during a men’s basketball preliminary round game at the 2020 Summer Olympics, Saturday, July 31, 2021, in Saitama, Japan. | Eric Gay, Associated Press
Former Weber State star Damian Lillard scored eight points in USA basketball’s 119-84 win over the Czech Republic.
The United States’ win improves its record to 2-1, good enough to move on to the quarterfinal round. Quarterfinal play starts on Tuesday.
At halftime, the USA led 47-36, but blew the game open in the second half, outscoring the Czech Republic 72-41.
Jayson Tatum and Kevin Durant were the stars, scoring 27 and 23 points, respectively.
Lillard had three rebounds, three assists and a steal to go along with his eight points.
Eddy Alvarez, USA baseball advance to knockout stage
Former Salt Lake Community College baseball player Eddy Alvarez and USA baseball beat South Korea 4-2 to advance to the knockout stage.
Alvarez went 1-for-3 with a single while playing second base for the United States.
The USA’s Tristan Casas hit a two-run home run that scored Alvarez, who was hit by a pitch, to take the lead in the fourth inning.
The USA went 2-0 in the group stage and will play Japan in the double-elimination knockout stage on Monday.
Joe Ingles, Australia improve to 3-0, advance to quarterfinals
Utah Jazz guard Joe Ingles and Australia improved to 3-0 and advance to the quarterfinals with an 89-76 win over Germany.
Ingles scored six points and had five rebounds, three assists and three steals in the victory. Former Jazzman Dante Exum scored eight points for Australia, which was paced by Patty Mills’ 24 points.
Miye Oni, Nigeria bounced from Olympics
Utah Jazz guard Miye Oni scored three points as Nigeria lost 80-71 to Italy, dropping the Nigerian’s record to 0-3, which means they will not advance to the quarterfinals.
Oni had two assists, a rebound and a blocked shot in the loss
Nico Mannion, son of former Utah Utes and Utah Jazz basketball player Pace Mannion, had 14 points for Italy.
Up Next
7/31, 7 p.m. MDT: Kim (Smith) Gaucher (Team Canada, former Utah women’s basketball player), women’s basketball vs. Spain.
8/1, 2:52 a.m. MDT, MyKayla Skinner (Team USA, former Utah gymnast), women’s gymnastics vault final.
8/1, 6:45 a.m.. MDT: Taylor Sander (Team USA, former BYU volleyball player), men’s volleyball vs. Argentina.
My sister lives together with her boyfriend, but sometimes she stay with us in our parents house I keep the tradition of spying on her. She showers very sensual and horny!<br />
The most relaxing and joyful moments in my life as housewife and mom I treat myself on a sensual masturbation I start with my tits and next I enjoy a wonderful clit massage.
Zane Rich, a Weber Fire District wildland firefighter, is pulled from the water as a mock victim of a boating accident while Weber Fire District and Weber County Sheriff’s Office personnel practice water rescue training at Pineview Reservoir near Huntsville, Weber County, on Monday, June 28, 2021. Rich’s would-be rescuers are, clockwise from bottom right, firefighter and advanced emergency medical technician Mike McKinney, firefighter paramedic Rashelle Johnson, Capt. Brian Lutz and engineer Scott Buehler. | Spenser Heaps, Deseret News
Summer is anticipated to bring over 11 million visitors to Utah state parks and trails, and with that comes risk of heat exhaustion, dehydration, fatigue, injury, and death.
Volunteers are unpaid, and yet they complete extensive training, including for rescues in swift-water, open water, diving and recovery, ice, caves and avalanches, as well as for K-9 work, man-tracking, mass casualty events, down aircraft, medical response and evacuations. They see injury, death, and abandonment on a regular basis. Some work hundreds of hours a year with no expectation of payment.
As more people trek through Utah’s open parks, canyons, and wilderness this summer, sheriffs worry about the potential strain on manpower and resources.
“The biggest support we could use is resources, equipment, money and manpower,” said Garfield County Commissioner Leland Pollock. “Our volunteers are getting burned out. Our guys are working five or six days a week and get one day off. If he’s in Grand Staircase-Escalante, and he gets that call that he’s going down into that miserable heat to go save someone’s life, he goes, but it burns him out.”
Pollock’s team of rescuers isn’t alone. Volunteers are expected to attend trainings in grueling heat and be on call to scour hundreds of acres at the drop of a hat. They recall team members having to take weeks or months off from volunteering to cope with the physical and emotional toll that rescuing takes.
“If we’re looking for children, that’s always really tough, especially for people who have children of the same age,” said Marci Shaver-Adams, a volunteer with Utah County SAR. “You want to go fast, but going fast is not always the right thing to do. There’s a sense of urgency that you have to fight because you want to be thorough, which isn’t necessarily going fast. You have to put your blinders on and focus on your mission so you can have whatever outcome to bring back to the family.”
It’s even worse when people don’t have a working cell phone to accurately pinpoint their location.
“Not being able to get to you via cell phone can make a rescue operation take hours or, in some cases, days,” said Unified Police Sgt. Melody Cutler. “We always tell people to have a full cell phone battery before you go, and to not completely deplete it while taking photos.”
One way to help rescuers avoid burnout has been collaboration. Weber and Davis County assist each other when one county has too few volunteers to help a given situation. Weber County also doesn’t ask its volunteers to be generalists, and to mainly help in situations where they have expertise.
“If you rock at rock climbing, we want you to be an awesome rock climber and not a diver,” said Lt. Mark Horton, who works in Weber County Search and Rescue. “It’s good for not every member going out every time.”
Unprepared hikers
Commissioners in Utah, Salt Lake, Davis and Weber counties are also noticing more people coming to the parks without proper preparation or experience as they handle some of the country’s most difficult hikes and trails. This is leading to an increase in search and rescue missions across counties. Unified Police Sgt. Melody Cutler saw 65 search and rescues in Salt Lake County in 2019, 73 in 2020, and already 32 halfway through 2021. The team is on track to rescue even more than previous years. At one point on July 4, the county received four simultaneous calls for search and rescue.
Lt. Mark Horton says Weber County typically gets about one call for rescue a week, with an uptick in numbers happening in the last two years, when more people abandoned their overseas vacations for campers and backpacks.
Different areas have different incidences of searches and rescues. Counties like Salt Lake and Utah typically see more rescues in the summer, when more people recreate. Garfield reports that many of their numbers come from late fall and early spring hikes, when fewer people are on the trail to assist someone who’s showing signs of dehydration or heat exhaustion.
Over the summer, Garfield County SAR usually performs about 50 rescues, but those searches can be extensive, with upwards of 3 million acres of land in Bryce Canyon and a million acres at Grand Staircase Escalante. Perkins says that 80-100 search and rescue volunteers are scattered throughout the county on any given day.
“When the trailheads are full of people, and you get turned around, you can ask for directions and beg a bottle of water,” said Garfield County Sheriff Danny Perkins. “Believe it or not, when we get really, really busy, our search and rescues go down.”
In Zion National Park, an estimated 110 search and rescue operations happen each year. While some cost about $750 for a quick rescue, others can cost into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, especially when helicopters become involved.
The most common search and rescues are called for lower extremity injuries, like a borken ankle or a torn ligament in a knee. According to Zion chief ranger Daniel Fagergren, these can occur five to six times a week during the summer, as more visitors flood the park and walk in the Narrows. Fagergren describes the slippery rocks there as being like “wet bowling balls.”
Another key reason for searches and rescues is a hiker being insufficiently informed about a hike. Utah County Sheriff’s Sgt. Justin Gordon acknowledges that magazines offering easy hikes in the state may be underscoring certain areas.
“One of the hikes they always put in there is Stewart Falls, marking it as ‘very easy,’” Gordon said. “But people with no hiking experience go out there, and that becomes our busiest spot, with twisted ankles and fatigue everywhere. The media is a huge help, but a huge hindrance.”
Strain on resources
Many search and rescue teams work with locally-supplied equipment and, in extenuating circumstances, will borrow state resources like underwater drones and helicopters.
Volunteers had to spend several hours mapping out the drowning that occurred at Pineview Reservoir on June 20, where a 37-year-old father went under when he attempted to swim out to retrieve his son who had floated out into the water while using a flotation device. Another drowning at Spring Lake took hours due to low visibility in the water, with divers searching through the lake by hand before reaching out the Utah Division of Parks and Recreation for a remotely operated underwater vehicle.
Most counties need new equipment as even low-cost equipment experiences wear and tear. Each county has different ways of allocating funds, but most send reports to Utah’s SAR Committee to cover only a portion of their costs.
The rest can come through donations, county budgets, and sometimes directly billing those rescued. The Utah Search and Rescue Assistance card is a way for recreationists to give back to SAR by paying an annual fee to the state’s fund. The cardholder is then never charged for a search and rescue, which can be up to $2,000 outside of medical and EMT payments.
“We’re always looking for donations to buy better equipment for the team — harnesses, new spikes for shoes,” Gordon said. “We’d rather see some of those expenses come from donations to search and rescue rather than to the sheriff’s office.”
Another obstacle to search and rescue teams is dwindling numbers of volunteers. Though counties like Weber are seeing an uptick in volunteers this summer, the SAR team in Garfield County has lost about 20 of its members since 2017, according to Perkins.
Volunteering for search and rescue requires paying for your own training, car, gas and often equipment. It requires a person to have discretionary cash and a very flexible job that will let them go at a moment’s notice — something that a newer generation often doesn’t have. Blake Jorgensen, who has volunteered with Utah County SAR for the past two and a half years, estimates he’s spent around $12,000 for equipment, trainings and EMT certifications.
“We’re not at a point where we can’t function, but there’s a decline in our county, and a decline in neighboring counties,” Perkins said. “The younger generation does not volunteer like the older generation, period.”
Park officials and sheriffs have outlined a list of preparations that all recreators should make before heading out on the trail or into the wilderness.
Schedule your hike for early morning or early evening if the weather is hot. If you go out in the middle of the day, seek shelter often and take breaks.
Pack plenty of liquids, not just water. Electrolyte loss can lead to a sharp decline of fluids in the body. Experts advise a gallon of liquids per hiker. The most common factor that contributes to people needing help is fatigue or physical ailment.
Pre-plan your gear. If you’re climbing up a mountain, be prepared for it to get colder at the top, and pack additional clothes if needed. Pack food if the hike will take more than an hour.
Wear appropriate clothing and shoes — no flip-flops (a common footwear seen by volunteers.)
When you’re hiking and you get to a spot that looks more risky than what you thought, turn around and go back.
Go in groups, and go with someone who’s done it before. This helps manage expectations for the hike and in locating anomalous areas that may not look unsafe, but might be for an unseasoned traveler.
Be flexible. If you planned a day to go on a hike somewhere, and the weather’s not great, go a shorter distance, or go another day.
Even though the West is in a historic drought, be extremely cautious when rain falls. Flash floods can happen quickly (as two hikers in a slot canyon in Escalante found out), and they can be deadly. If you notice rain, get to high ground and get back to civilization. Watch the weather and be safe.
If there is a definite, right way to understand the world, how can so many people be completely wrong, and why do our debates seem to go nowhere? | Nicole Wilcox, Unsplash
A letter to my students
Dear students,
The confusion and cacophony of conflicting opinions that you see around you today has had a deep effect on all of you. It’s natural that it would. Americans disagree dramatically on an amazingly broad range of questions, including many of the most important ones.
Is climate change an urgent threat to national security, or a noble lie concocted by activists? Is socialism the path to prosperity for all, or to poverty for all but the ruling class? Is the U.S. the least racist country on Earth, or a country founded to preserve slavery? On issue after issue, where half the country feels strongly in one way, the other half passionately affirms the opposite. We disagree on the questions where we most badly and urgently need the truth.
Given what you see, it can be hard to take seriously the idea that there could be such a thing as “objective truth,” even on some of the questions where we most want to say that there is. If there is a definite, right way to understand the world, how can so many people be completely wrong, and why do our debates seem to go nowhere?
One of the central aims of education is to be able to see beyond the blindness of the cultural moment. And our culture at this moment is seriously blind. Given how deeply and broadly we disagree, there’s no question that at least half of us are seriously wrong about a significant number of deeply important issues. However, if you think the disagreement you see around you is proof that there is no objective truth, you are giving people too much credit.
Objective truth doesn’t mean something that everyone already agrees on. It means something that everyone should agree on if they took the time and trouble to study the evidence and figure it out. How many people are doing that?
The fact that many people you hear talking so loudly around you clearly are not in touch with objective truth does not mean that there is none. It does mean that if you want to be in touch with objective truth, you will have to see better than they do.
Here are some choice words by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, spoken in a Harvard commencement address, that prompted me to write to you:
“Harvard’s motto is ‘Veritas.’ Many of you have already found out and others will find out in the course of their lives that truth eludes us if we do not concentrate with total attention on its pursuit.”
Truth is elusive, but we can find it. Many important truths we know today were hardly known by anyone for most of human history. Most people thought it was obvious that the sun goes around the earth until Galileo and Kepler showed the opposite. Everyone can see that children inherit traits from their parents, but no one could explain why until the discovery of DNA in the 1950s. There are a lot of truths that are objectively known and generally accepted. We may even forget about these because no one is arguing about them. These truths seem straightforward now, but it may have taken a huge amount of skill, creativity and persistence to discover them and make them clear to others. The same is true for many important truths today. Other truths may not require skill or creativity to learn, but do require a pure heart.
The serious pursuit of truth calls for courage and self-confidence, partly because most people aren’t making such a pursuit, and many of them hardly know what truth even means any more. Often people seem to adopt beliefs more to express their tribal affiliation than as statements about “things as they are” in the world. By contrast, the serious pursuit of truth means being very choosy about how far to believe what people around you are saying.
This is especially true in the age of the internet, when most of the messages you hear are designed to bring (someone) money, popularity, emotional thrills and power. Truth is pretty far down the list of priorities when speech is commercialized or prioritized by the number of views or “likes.” We have built elaborate mechanisms for rewarding people who tell us what we want to hear, regardless of whether it is true.
The richer the media we can easily produce and disseminate with our fancy gadgets, the more effectively people can achieve the goals of money, popularity, emotional thrills and power in ways that are disconnected from reality. We now have enough bandwidth to bury reality under a mountain of fabrication — another word for fiction — or even fantasy. The more we immerse ourselves in our media, whether entertainment or “likes” or political theater, the farther we sink into a fabricated world where truth is increasingly invisible.
In other words, there are special circumstances today, which have arisen just in your lifetimes, that make it uniquely difficult to find or be confident in the truth. We have built a social ecosystem of thought that is actively hostile to truth. In fact, we have built an information ecosystem in which controversy — dramatically disagreeing with one another — is one of the most profitable commodities. Our “information age” has made truth even harder to find than it was before, and given even greater power to ignorance and manipulation. To see truth, then, requires finding your way through the social fog and the internet funhouse of mirrors.
Perhaps you don’t feel very confident that you will see the truth when so many apparently smart and well-credentialed and institutionally validated people around you either can’t see it or are actively misrepresenting it. You’re young, and finding truth is hard, but don’t give up. Truth is out there, behind, beneath and beyond the smoke and mirrors, and it continues to be vitally important. In fact, sometimes truth is obvious. In front of your nose. When you are in touch with it, truth will provide much greater rewards than our fictions, as powerful as they may be. Truth will save us from hazards that no amount of multimedia obfuscation can eliminate. We still live in a real world, whether we are paying attention to it or not.
Truth, at least on the hardest and most urgent questions, is often not easy to find. However, it is not nearly as hard as you would think from the levels of confusion and error you see in our cultural circus, in which the shallowest thinking is given the biggest megaphone. Give yourself some credit and keep after it.
Best regards,
BH
Benjamin Huff is a professor of philosophy at Randolph-Macon College.
Utah Jazz forward Derrick Favors (15) shoots the ball during the game at Vivint Smart Home Arena in Salt Lake City on Thursday, April 8, 2021. | Annie Barker, Deseret News
With the NBA’s free agency period set to start next week, a major topic of conversation over the past few days is how the Utah Jazz’s roster will be very expensive next season.
Well, the Jazz reportedly are making a trade to alleviate that at least some, a deal that many have figured would happen if the team was going to look to cut costs.
At almost 2 a.m. on Friday morning, The Athletic’s Shams Charania reported that Utah was “in serious talks” to trade Derrick Favors to the Oklahoma City Thunder, and a few hours later, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported the rest of the parameters of the deal.
According to Wojnarowski, the Jazz will also include a future first-round pick and get a future second-round pick in return.
That deal may seem unbalanced, but it’s the common price teams have to pay to move off a contract. Essentially the Jazz are giving the Thunder a future first rounder for their trouble of taking Favors’ salary, which is about $10 million in each of the next two seasons.
According to ESPN’s Bobby Marks, the deal will put Utah $13 million under the luxury tax as it looks to bring back Mike Conley next week. As Marks noted, the Jazz will surely still be a tax team if they bring Conley back, but the penalty will be smaller after moving Favors.
The trade puts Utah $13M below the luxury tax. Will likely still be a tax team if Mike Conley Jr. is brought back but at a lesser financial penalty. https://t.co/9dB6xPLUK8
For the Thunder, it will add to an absolutely massive trove of future first-round picks it owns as it goes through a rebuilding process.
A core piece of the Utah franchise for a decade, Favors returned to Utah last offseason to be the team’s backup center after spending a year with the New Orleans Pelicans. There was recognition that the Jazz paid far more than the general going rate for a backup center, but the thought was that Favors would be good against big teams like the Los Angeles Lakers in the playoffs.
Favors’ production dropped off big time, however, and the Jazz’s Achilles’ heel during their second-round playoff exit against the LA Clippers (Favors played the best he had all season in the first round against the Memphis Grizzlies) was that they had no options to go small at center to match the Clippers.
Following the trade, the lone traditional center on the roster behind All-Star Rudy Gobert is second-year man Udoka Azubuike, the 2020 first-round pick who played in just 15 games his rookie season.
A woman receives a COVID-19 vaccination at the Mountain America Exposition Center in Sandy on Feb. 11. Utah exceeded 1,000 new daily cases of the virus this week for the first time since February. Rather than renewing efforts to wear masks or get shots, many politicians are content to redraw old familiar battle lines. | Laura Seitz, Deseret News
Calls to reimpose mask mandates have politicians redrawing old battle lines rather than working to get more people vaccinated.
A friend once noted that getting the economy restarted would be harder than shutting it down had been at the beginning of the pandemic. True, as some news stories have noted, a few people feel scared to venture out of their homes and back into the normal flow of people on the streets. And yes, some things have changed for good.
But those difficulties don’t compare with something much harder: Getting people who are tired of the mere mention of COVID-19 to take a step backward and wear masks again. Or to do the one thing that would make the most difference — get a shot.
No one’s talking about shutting things down, mind you. Just those two things.
Utah passed a grim milestone Thursday that observers have known was coming for a while. The number of new cases topped 1,000 in one day for the first time since February. To be exact, the 1,113 new cases were the most since the 1,151 reported on Feb. 18. The difference is that back in February, the state was on the way down.
But the resurgent delta variant is reinforcing familiar, if also tedious, political battle lines that have marked this pandemic from the beginning. These are battle lines only a generation of softies — separated by decades from the last time Americans were required to make any sort of sacrifice — could mistake as threats to freedom.
“Floridians are free to choose, and all Americans should be free to choose, how they govern their affairs, how they take care of themselves and our families,” he said. “And they should not be consigned to live, regardless of which state in the union, … in a ‘Fauci-an’ dystopia in which we’re governed by the whims of bureaucratic authorities who care little for our freedom, little for our aspirations and little for our happiness.”
That dig at Dr. Anthony Fauci, the chief medical adviser to both presidents Trump and Biden, got the crowd reaction DeSantis no doubt had hoped for. Politicians know their audiences.
And yet the record of his native Florida during the pandemic has been, despite what he implied, nothing to brag about. Florida ranks 25th among states in terms of COVID-19 deaths per 1 million population, according to worldometers.info. It’s 10th in terms of cases per capita, and fourth in terms of total deaths, with 38,840.
But the other side of that line has been equally ineffective and weak. President Joe Biden on Thursday asked states to allocate stimulus money to give $100 checks to every newly vaccinated American.
Besides people like me wondering where our C-notes are for being quick to obtain a shot months ago, the strategy simply won’t work.
In a Deseret News/KSL poll conducted by Scott Rasmussen in June, unvaccinated Utahs were asked to choose from a list of possible incentives that would get them to submit to a needle. The most popular answer, at 65%, was, “Nothing could make me more likely to get vaccinated.” The second most popular answer, at 16%, was “No answer.”
Only 3% said they would do it in exchange for tickets to a sporting event, and that was when the Jazz still were in the playoffs.
Clearly, neither side is doing much to stem this resurgent tide of sickness and death.
In an earlier age, conservatives used to define freedom loosely as something that ended where the next person’s nose began. With that in mind, maybe the best question no one is asking is, should someone have the right to infect another person’s nose through negligence?
Or, perhaps, should someone have the right to unwittingly use his or her body as a host for a virus that might, at any time, mutate into something no current vaccine could guard against, then spread that to others through negligence?
“This pandemic of the unvaccinated is tragic because it is preventable,” Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said Thursday.
This is true, but getting even the vaccinated — who experts now say may be carriers — to take that step backward may be this generation’s biggest test.
A woman receives a COVID-19 vaccination at the Mountain America Exposition Center in Sandy on Feb. 11. Utah exceeded 1,000 new daily cases of the virus this week for the first time since February. Rather than renewing efforts to wear masks or get shots, many politicians are content to redraw old familiar battle lines. | Laura Seitz, Deseret News
Calls to reimpose mask mandates have politicians redrawing old battle lines rather than working to get more people vaccinated.
A friend once noted that getting the economy restarted would be harder than shutting it down had been at the beginning of the pandemic. True, as some news stories have noted, a few people feel scared to venture out of their homes and back into the normal flow of people on the streets. And yes, some things have changed for good.
But those difficulties don’t compare with something much harder: Getting people who are tired of the mere mention of COVID-19 to take a step backward and wear masks again. Or to do the one thing that would make the most difference — get a shot.
No one’s talking about shutting things down, mind you. Just those two things.
Utah passed a grim milestone Thursday that observers have known was coming for a while. The number of new cases topped 1,000 in one day for the first time since February. To be exact, the 1,113 new cases were the most since the 1,151 reported on Feb. 18. The difference is that back in February, the state was on the way down.
But the resurgent delta variant is reinforcing familiar, if also tedious, political battle lines that have marked this pandemic from the beginning. These are battle lines only a generation of softies — separated by decades from the last time Americans were required to make any sort of sacrifice — could mistake as threats to freedom.
“Floridians are free to choose, and all Americans should be free to choose, how they govern their affairs, how they take care of themselves and our families,” he said. “And they should not be consigned to live, regardless of which state in the union, … in a ‘Fauci-an’ dystopia in which we’re governed by the whims of bureaucratic authorities who care little for our freedom, little for our aspirations and little for our happiness.”
That dig at Dr. Anthony Fauci, the chief medical adviser to both presidents Trump and Biden, got the crowd reaction DeSantis no doubt had hoped for. Politicians know their audiences.
And yet the record of his native Florida during the pandemic has been, despite what he implied, nothing to brag about. Florida ranks 25th among states in terms of COVID-19 deaths per 1 million population, according to worldometers.info. It’s 10th in terms of cases per capita, and fourth in terms of total deaths, with 38,840.
But the other side of that line has been equally ineffective and weak. President Joe Biden on Thursday asked states to allocate stimulus money to give $100 checks to every newly vaccinated American.
Besides people like me wondering where our C-notes are for being quick to obtain a shot months ago, the strategy simply won’t work.
In a Deseret News/KSL poll conducted by Scott Rasmussen in June, unvaccinated Utahs were asked to choose from a list of possible incentives that would get them to submit to a needle. The most popular answer, at 65%, was, “Nothing could make me more likely to get vaccinated.” The second most popular answer, at 16%, was “No answer.”
Only 3% said they would do it in exchange for tickets to a sporting event, and that was when the Jazz still were in the playoffs.
Clearly, neither side is doing much to stem this resurgent tide of sickness and death.
In an earlier age, conservatives used to define freedom loosely as something that ended where the next person’s nose began. With that in mind, maybe the best question no one is asking is, should someone have the right to infect another person’s nose through negligence?
Or, perhaps, should someone have the right to unwittingly use his or her body as a host for a virus that might, at any time, mutate into something no current vaccine could guard against, then spread that to others through negligence?
“This pandemic of the unvaccinated is tragic because it is preventable,” Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said Thursday.
This is true, but getting even the vaccinated — who experts now say may be carriers — to take that step backward may be this generation’s biggest test.
A boater enjoys what water is left at Jordanelle State Park on July 16. With drought reducing water levels throughout the state, Sen. Mitt Romney’s infrastructure bill, focusing on transportation, water and power needs would help Utah survive. | Jeffrey D. Allred, Deseret News
With the Great Salt Lake evaporating and drought threatening Utah, a focus on transportation, water and power needs will provide climate-change resiliency to the state.
The other day, I saw a sign that said, “Satan wants his weather back.”
In Utah and across the West, the heat has been otherworldly. Over the last few weeks we’ve broken records for extreme heat across the state. In fact, June was the hottest month ever recorded in the U.S. When we want to see records broken, we prefer to watch the Olympics.
My personal discomfort is the least of my worries. Extreme drought conditions are hurting agriculture and recreation statewide. The Great Salt Lake is set to drop below its all-time low. That adds dangerous dust to existing air pollution, costing us both health and dollars. Lake Powell is at a critically low water level, as are many of our water supplies.
This is why most Americans support the provisions of Sen. Mitt Romney’s bipartisan infrastructure plan, which focuses on sustainable transportation, water and power infrastructure, and climate resiliency. The plan provides for investments in critical programs that improve our ability to manage drought, mitigate wildfires and other extreme weather events and prevent further environmental damage.
Investments for Utah’s public transit infrastructure will be key for the Wasatch Front, where air quality is a critical concern. The package also reflects a Utah priority, set by former Gov. Gary Herbert, of investing in electric vehicle infrastructure to create a charging network along highways and in rural communities. In addition, these investments could assist with electrifying the nation’s school and transit buses to reduce harmful emissions. According to the American Lung Association, many of our counties have failing grades for ozone and particulate matter.
Gone are the days when most of us could afford to ignore environmental concerns. More than three-fourths of Americans say it is important to pass federal legislation to address the underlying climate-related factors that cause drought. And 72%, including a majority of Republicans, support stronger pollution limits for vehicles and power plants in order to improve air quality. In fact, climate and environmental policies are cited as a key issue area by more voters under 30 than any other single issue except health care.
It’s great to have the public so united on a cause, and even greater to have a bipartisan proposal. What’s not great are extreme weather events that threaten our health, economy and food supply. The devil is in the details, so it’s vital that our senators work together to support this infrastructure bill. We don’t have to agree on everything to accomplish something. Let’s just do it.
Christine Graham is a writer and a longtime resident of Salt Lake City. She volunteers with the op-ed lab forMormon Women for Ethical Government.
Baylor guard Jared Butler (12) celebrates as he walks off the court at the end of a men’s Final Four NCAA college basketball tournament semifinal game against Houston, Saturday, April 3, 2021, at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. Baylor won 78-59. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings) | AP
The Utah Jazz entered Thursday night with the 30th pick in the NBA draft, but intel received by the front office indicated that the player they wanted, Baylor junior guard Jared Butler, would be available later in the evening.
So the Jazz traded the No. 30 overall pick to the Memphis Grizzlies for the 40th pick and two future second-round picks, and their intel proved right, as they were able to get Butler with the 40th pick, plus the future assets, without a hitch.
“He was somebody that we were really excited when we had the chance to get him,” Jazz general manager Justin Zanik said with a smile after the draft. “It was a no-brainer for us.”
Butler, who won a national championship with Baylor and was named the 2021 NCAA Final Four Most Outstanding Player, was originally projected as a mid-first round draft selection, but a heart condition that was flagged before the draft combine in June seemed to be the reason that his draft stock fell in recent weeks.
The 20-year-old Louisiana native was held out of on-court activities during most of the pre-draft process and was told that he couldn’t play or practice in any capacity with the NBA until he was cleared by a fitness-to-play panel — a panel of three physicians chosen by the NBA and players association.
That clearance came on July 17.
has unanimously confirmed my fitness to play in the NBA. Now, my focus is entirely on the Draft and working daily to prepare myself to fulfill my lifelong dream !!
While the inability to work out for NBA teams and possible lingering concerns may have been the reason he dropped in the draft, it never seemed to be much of a concern for Butler, who was diagnosed with the heart condition before his playing days at Baylor began.
Originally Butler had committed to play at Alabama, but was granted a release from his letter of intent and accepted a scholarship from Baylor — a spot that was coincidentally opened by the sudden retirement of Jake Lindsey, the son of former Jazz vice president of basketball operations Dennis Lindsey.
Butler’s condition was known and he was cleared to play in each of his three years with the Bears. After being cleared by the NBA’s fitness-to-play panel, the Jazz felt confident in moving forward.
“We’re comfortable with Jared as a player, as a person and we’re excited to add him,” Zanik said. “I don’t want to get into any of those other details. It’s just that we feel really good about him.”
So what are the Jazz getting in Butler?
The 6-foot-3 combo guard was named to the All-Big 12 first team and Big 12 All-Defense first team. He finished his junior year shooting shooting 47.1% overall and 41.6% from 3-point range, having increased his shooting efficiency every year.
Butler is good on and off the dribble, has really good handles and uses them to create space for shooting and driving. He isn’t afraid of playing through contact and is crafty around the rim, but there are times when he tries to get a little too creative. He’s a strong player with an NBA-ready physique, so it shouldn’t be a problem getting him to trust his play and power through for a foul or easy finish.
Butler’s passing is something that shouldn’t be overlooked. He’s good at reading a play and anticipating for lobs or guys who are cutting, and he’s not selfish at all. As his role increased at Baylor, so did his assist numbers.
Sometimes though, his confidence in his ability can lead to risky plays. He committed just under three turnovers per game (2.8) in his final season at Baylor. He’ll have to become a little more tempered against NBA defenses if he wants to keep the turnovers to a minimum.
While Butler’s shooting numbers were impressive and his range indicates that he’ll have no problem acclimating to the NBA, it’s his defensive abilities and upside that are likely the most attractive assets that Butler brings to the table.
Despite the fact that Butler doesn’t have the greatest wingspan (6-foot-4), it hasn’t held him back on the defensive end. He’s incredibly active with his hands, averaging two steals per game in his junior season, plus a ton of deflections.
But it’s not just his ability to strip the ball that makes Butler special on the defensive end. He’s good at applying ball pressure and creating problems for initiators while also being very instinctual and quick on rotations and in help defense. He a great individual defender and team defender, which makes his value to the Jazz huge.
It remains to be seen whether all of his skills will translate to the NBA or how long it will take for them to translate, but the Jazz aren’t worried about giving him time.
“We’re talking about a guy who is now about to become a rookie in the NBA with a highly competitive, championship competitive organization,” Zanik said. “He’s physically strong, tough mentally, tough being able to put up with the grind of the season. ... He’s got as good a head start as anybody that’s coming in without ever playing in the NBA.”
Butler will be heading to Salt Lake City in the coming days, but his availability for summer league play isn’t totally ironed out. The 40th pick is tied up in a trade between the Grizzlies and New Orleans Pelicans. Once that trade, as well as the trade with the Jazz are finalized, Butler will be available.
Even if we assume that all is not finalized until Aug. 6, which is when all free agents and signings can be made official, it should mean that Butler will be available to play in the NBA’s Las Vegas Summer League, which begins on Aug. 8.
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Baylor guard Jared Butler (12) celebrates as he walks off the court at the end of a men’s Final Four NCAA college basketball tournament semifinal game against Houston, Saturday, April 3, 2021, at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. Baylor won 78-59. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings) | AP
The Utah Jazz entered Thursday night with the 30th pick in the NBA draft, but intel received by the front office indicated that the player they wanted, Baylor junior guard Jared Butler, would be available later in the evening.
So the Jazz traded the No. 30 overall pick to the Memphis Grizzlies for the 40th pick and two future second-round picks, and their intel proved right, as they were able to get Butler with the 40th pick, plus the future assets, without a hitch.
“He was somebody that we were really excited when we had the chance to get him,” Jazz general manager Justin Zanik said with a smile after the draft. “It was a no-brainer for us.”
Butler, who won a national championship with Baylor and was named the 2021 NCAA Final Four Most Outstanding Player, was originally projected as a mid-first round draft selection, but a heart condition that was flagged before the draft combine in June seemed to be the reason that his draft stock fell in recent weeks.
The 20-year-old Louisiana native was held out of on-court activities during most of the pre-draft process and was told that he couldn’t play or practice in any capacity with the NBA until he was cleared by a fitness-to-play panel — a panel of three physicians chosen by the NBA and players association.
That clearance came on July 17.
has unanimously confirmed my fitness to play in the NBA. Now, my focus is entirely on the Draft and working daily to prepare myself to fulfill my lifelong dream !!
While the inability to work out for NBA teams and possible lingering concerns may have been the reason he dropped in the draft, it never seemed to be much of a concern for Butler, who was diagnosed with the heart condition before his playing days at Baylor began.
Originally Butler had committed to play at Alabama, but was granted a release from his letter of intent and accepted a scholarship from Baylor — a spot that was coincidentally opened by the sudden retirement of Jake Lindsey, the son of former Jazz vice president of basketball operations Dennis Lindsey.
Butler’s condition was known and he was cleared to play in each of his three years with the Bears, and after cleared by the NBA’s fitness-to-play panel, the Jazz felt confident in moving forward.
“We’re comfortable with Jared as a player, as a person and we’re excited to add him,” Zanik said. “I don’t want to get into any of those other details. It’s just that we feel really good about him.”
So what are the Jazz getting in Butler?
The 6-foot-3 combo guard was named to the All-Big 12 first team and Big 12 All-Defense first team. He finished his junior year shooting shooting 47.1% overall and 41.6% from 3-point range, having increased his shooting efficiency every year.
Butler is good on and off the dribble, has really good handles and uses them to create space for shooting and drives. He isn’t afraid of playing through contact and is crafty around the rim, but there are times when he tries to get a little too creative. He’s a strong player with an NBA-ready physique, so it shouldn’t be a problem getting him to trust his play and power through for a foul or easy finish.
Butler’s passing is something that shouldn’t be overlooked. He’s good at reading a play and anticipating for lobs or guys who are cutting, and he’s not selfish at all. As his role increased at Baylor, so did his assist numbers.
Sometimes though, his confidence in his ability can lead to risky plays. He committed just under three turnovers per game (2.8) in his final season at Baylor. He’ll have to become a little more tempered against NBA defenses if he wants to keep the turnovers to a minimum.
While Butler’s shooting numbers were really impressive and his range indicates that he’ll have no problem acclimating to the NBA, it’s his defensive abilities and upside that are likely the most attractive asset that Butler brings to the table.
Despite the fact that Butler doesn’t have the greatest wingspan (6’4), it hasn’t held him back on the defensive end. He’s incredibly active with his hands, averaging two steals per game in his junior season, plus a ton of deflections.
But it’s not just his ability to strip the ball that makes Butler special on the defensive end. He’s good at applying ball pressure and creating problems for initiators while also being very instinctual and quick on rotations and in help defense. He a great individual defender as well as a team defender, which makes his value to the Jazz huge.
It remains to be seen whether all of his skills will translate to the NBA or how long it will take for them to translate, but the Jazz aren’t worried about giving him time.
“We’re talking about a guy who is now about to become a rookie in the NBA with a highly competitive, championship competitive organization,” Zanik said. “He’s physically strong, tough mentally, tough being able to put up with the grind of the season. ...He’s got as good a head start as anybody that’s coming in without ever playing in the NBA.”
Butler will be heading to Salt Lake City in the coming days, but his availability for summer league play isn’t totally ironed out. The 40th pick is tied up in a trade between the Grizzlies and New Orleans Pelicans. Once that trade, as well as the trade with the Jazz are finalized, Butler will be available.
Even if we assume that all is not finalized until Aug. 6, which is when all free agents and signings can be made official, it should mean that Butler will be available to play in the NBA’s Las Vegas Summer League, which begins on Aug. 8.
A member of Utah Citizens’ Alarm who did not give his name gathers with others at Valley Regional Park in Taylorsville on Friday, July 10, 2020. | Jeffrey D. Allred, Deseret News
United Citizens Alarm works hand in tactical glove with police, but critics say it undermines law enforcement legitimacy
The following story was funded by support from The Fund for Investigative Journalism and was reported by The Utah Investigative Journalism Project in partnership with The Deseret News.
It started with a call on social media to “back the blue” in the summer of 2020, urging Utahns to stand together in support of police to intimidate potentially violent protesters and deter them from looting and pillaging. Soon 20,000 members online were cheering on Utah Citizens Alarm, a group referred to as a militia by local police, which a year later continues to evolve and thrive.
Group founder Casey Robertson says from the beginning he decided to organize the group just like his former business, a multilevel marketing company, where he says he and his ex-wife had 35,000 distributors working under them.
“The thing with network marketing is we are working with volunteers,” Robertson said, noting the model was easy to reestablish with a volunteer army of citizens supporting law enforcement.
Robertson fits the mold of a Utah County entrepreneur, looking more like a clean-cut salesman than any stereotype of a militia member sporting a long beard and long rifle. He’s proud of the discipline his organization brings and the role he says it had in preventing protests in Utah from devolving into violence and looting, though some in law enforcement dispute that claim. It’s an organization he says focused on rule of law and not on racism.
Spenser Heaps, Deseret News
A man affiliated with Utah Citizens’ Alarm who declined to give his name holds a rifle while standing with counterprotesters as Black Lives Matter Utah holds a protest outside the Cottonwood Heights police department on Friday, Aug. 7, 2020.
Still, critics worry that the organization’s relationships with police may make it something more dangerous than a typical militia: a paramilitary that operates outside the law and without the same rules of accountability as the police, potentially undermining law enforcement’s credibility and ability to do its job.
Carolyn Gallaher is a professor at American University in Washington, D.C., who has studied paramilitary organizations in the United States, as well as Colombia and Northern Ireland. She says the domestic variety of these groups aren’t as dangerous as international ones but pose the same problems of self-styled citizen soldiers allied with the state.
“It’s not just cosplay,” she said of American militia members and their tactical gear and assault rifles. “Maybe we need to realize that we’re not any different than these other places that have had paramilitaries.”
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center there were 169 militias active in 2020. These groups, heavily concentrated in the Intermountain West, run the gamut from loud but peaceful protesters to the more organized and dangerous. Some groups marched and shouted against mask mandates and pandemic responses, while some, like members of Wolverine Watchmen, are accused further in plotting to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
The Southern Poverty Law Center does not currently include Robertson’s organization, now called United Citizens Alarm, on the list of groups it follows.
Within days, Robertson’s ad hoc organization was showing up fully armed and decked out in bulletproof vests at protests, eventually reaching from Salt Lake City to Payson and even the small town of Monroe, in Sevier County, where residents claimed antifa activists drove by in blacked-out SUV’s but then cleared out.
Besides showing up as a counter to would-be agitators, Robertson says the group has always maintained close relationships with law enforcement.
So close that a few months after starting, Provo Police Sgt. Nisha King talked to Robertson about a job.
“Just a thought … you know we are hiring. You could apply and come tryout?” King texted on Aug. 13, 2020, according to electronic messages obtained through an open-records request.
Robertson laughed it off but did ask if she would put in a good word for him.
“Certainly, it would help that you have already met our command staff,” King replied.
The Provo Police Department did not respond to requests for comment when asked about United Citizens Alarm.
Ultimately, Robertson declined the invitation to apply, saying he was “too far gone to be a cop.”
Scott G Winterton, Deseret News
Counterprotesters organized by Utah Citizens Alarm stand and watch as another group of protesters gather across the street in Provo on Wednesday, July 1, 2020.
He’s not shy about his close relationships with police, given the organization is built around support for law enforcement. His father is a former Provo police officer and his mother worked for decades as a police dispatcher. His organization has also raised money for police causes, such as the $4,200 recently donated to two Salt Lake County sheriff’s deputies injured in a shootout outside the county jail.
“You know, we really do want to serve our community,” Robertson said. “That doesn’t get any media attention. But we do it anyway.”
He’s even planning on a new line of work separate from United Citizens Alarm, or UCA for short, selling ballistic armor products to local law enforcement.
The group has also shared information closely with law enforcement. In the same text thread as the job offer from Provo police, he passed on information about someone at a state Capitol rally, advising King that “We will only have five or six undercover blending into the crowd.”
Robertson says he has contacts with multiple police agencies, Taylorsville, Salt Lake City and West Valley City among them. At a Cottonwood Heights protest he says his group stepped in at one point and formed a perimeter around an officer arresting a protester to prevent anyone from interfering, though Cottonwood Heights Police Lt. Dan Bartlett says he’s not aware of anything like that happening.
“We had plenty of staffing and manpower. The UCA people were very polite and kind to us but we weren’t asking for their help and weren’t needing any help,” Bartlett said. However, the group’s presence did result in complaints from citizens about the heavily armed group that the department had to investigate. “It wasn’t all rainbows and unicorns.”
At a Black Lives Matter protest in April 2021, Robertson says his members even took photos of would-be agitators’ license plates and had police run them. Salt Lake Police Sgt. Keith Horrocks said he wasn’t aware of that happening.
“That wouldn’t happen because it’s illegal and against policy to run information on plates and give it to unaffiliated third parties,” Horrocks said.
But Robertson maintains, “The closer citizens can work with law enforcement, the better,” he said. “They appreciate it.”
Appreciation, however, isn’t found among the protesters who find themselves facing off with gun-toting strangers in body armor and dark sunglasses.
Carl Moore joined activists in a memorial for Zane James in the summer of 2020 outside of the Cottonwood Heights Police Department. He says UCA’s heavily armed presence there forced his group to leave the police station where they had rallied and move down to a nearby school park.
“They were totally intimidating,” Moore says of UCA, noting the police, who had clashed with protesters last August, were entirely hands off with the UCA members.
“Talk about a double standard,” Moore says.
Keeping the peace?
For Gallaher, however, the lesson of paramilitary groups across the globe is that they undermine the credibility of law enforcement by being seen as attack dogs let off the leash to do the state’s dirty work, without any of the accountability.
“The danger at the local level is that (paramilitary groups) undermine the legitimacy of the police,” she said. “There’s already a lot of communities that don’t view the police as legitimate.”
If police seem to favor one side, it erodes that trust further.
“The rule of law depends on the police acting impartially,” she said.
But whether or not law enforcement agrees with him, Robertson credits his group with helping uphold the rule of law, stating there has been no serious violence or looting at demonstrations where his group has come to back up police.
And yet the demonstrations have not always been peaceful. One UCA member, Landon Buttars, is accused of pepper-spraying an opposing protester at an event in Cottonwood Heights. Another member, Randall Craig Schroerlucke, left UCA and showed up later at a protest in West Valley City where charges say he shocked and pepper-sprayed demonstrators and brandished a weapon. Robertson says Schroerlucke had to be restrained by other UCA members. Both are now facing criminal charges.
“They wanted to go up and get in the mix and that’s why they’re not part of our organization anymore,” he said.
He stresses that the organization has evolved. Members receive tactical and self-defense training and now undergo rigorous vetting. He says UCA currently has roughly 200 dues-paying members who have to provide driver’s licenses and submit to scrutiny of their social media feeds to help weed out the “wackadoos.” They are now leaving their long rifles at home and carrying only sidearms, and they plan on getting uniforms.
“We’re getting pretty, pretty close to being like the real deal,” he said.
On Jan. 6, as the nation’s Capitol was engulfed in chaos, members who Robertson says have been well-vetted by himself and his leadership team also were in force at the state Capitol in Salt Lake City. While Robertson says the group is not political they nevertheless were providing security on a volunteer basis for the pro-Trump “Stop the Steal” rally and have done security for other “patriot” rallies.
Robertson says he oversaw more than 70 members at the event. Salt Lake Tribune photographer Rick Egan was pepper-sprayed in the face at the event, but Robertson stressed he does not believe it was a UCA member that attacked Egan and he didn’t see the assault as a lapse in his organization’s security work.
“Where are the police?” Robertson said. “We can’t be everywhere.”
Patriot politics
In a March legislative committee hearing on SB138, meant to enhance penalties against violent protest, there was a packed house — of United Citizens Alarm members. One of them told the committee about a lawmaker’s comment that if people cared about a bill they would attend a hearing to show their support.
“Everyone who cares, please stand up for this bill,” the commenter said, at which point every UCA member in the audience — almost the entire audience — got to their feet.
Robertson personally brought SB138 to the bill’s sponsor, Sen. David Hinkins, R-Orangeville, as part of the group’s new efforts on the political front. He was disappointed it didn’t pass (it cleared the Senate but never got a House hearing) yet plans on more political activism in the future.
That the bill was approved by the Senate Judiciary, Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Committee and then passed the full Senate is astounding to Mary McCord, a former Department of Justice lawyer and current director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown University Law Center.
She points out that these armed right-wing police-support groups don’t have local or federal standing. And while she notes that when founding father James Madison articulated the need for militias in The Federalist Papers, they had to be called up by the state.
“There is no statute in the country to allow private militias to summon themselves,” she said.
Robertson scoffs at this idea.
“Show me the rule that we can’t exercise our First and Second Amendment rights,” he said. “Show me a rule that citizens can’t unite to protect their community.”
McCord says it goes back to an 1886 case from Illinois. The state outlawed militias because disputes between labor and big business resulted in both sides creating their own private armies going to war with each other.
“We had these armed private armies engaging in violence and the state said ‘we can’t be having that,’” she said of the 1886 case.
She notes that even as recently as 2008 in the Heller case, the late conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia affirmed that the Second Amendment did not prohibit a ban on “private paramilitary organizations.”
The presence of armed groups tolerated by the state in Utah has certainly caused confusion.
Ty Bellamy, founder of Black Lives for Humanity, says the success of United Citizens Alarm opened the door for myriad groups, including the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, to start joining in exercises of armed intimidation at protests.
“(United Citizens Alarm) were treated like ... celebrities and then all the other yahoos joined the bandwagon,” Bellamy said.
Provo City Councilman George Handley also worried about the confusion over who was keeping law and order in a July 2, 2020, email he wrote to the mayor and police chief. In it he described talking with a group of heavily armed individuals at a protest, even meeting some who said they were part of a “snatch team” who would pull out and restrain demonstrators they saw as dangerous.
Handley asked a resident who the group was and the resident figured that it was National Guard because of the gear members carried.
He asked a member of the group, “Do the police want you here? Did they indicate your help was needed? He claimed they did and that (Sgt.) King was very supportive.”
Handley noted some residents had trouble discerning who was who among heavily armed participants in such a charged atmosphere. He also remarked how some residents were alarmed in their mistaken belief that militia members were stationed as snipers on nearby roofs, instead of the police.
“I think we need a more clear and unambiguous message that armed militia are not needed or welcomed ever in Provo to help with law enforcement in our city,” he wrote.
Robertson, however, sees the group only increasing in influence. After the group was kicked off Facebook last fall for violating the platform’s rules, Robertson rebranded the group United Citizens Alarm to give it a broader reach.
“Our focus is Utah, but we’re creating a blueprint that could be used in other states,” he said.
The Supreme Court doesn’t view human rights as a zero-sum game. Do lawmakers?
Can the government discriminate against religious entities because of their beliefs about marriage? The Supreme Court resolved that question with a resounding “no” in its unanimous decision in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia. Members of Congress must now decide whether to use that decision to further inflame political tensions between traditional faith groups and advocates for LGBTQ rights, or to help guide the nation on a path toward coexistence.
The court had already provided important guidance on the intersection of religious freedom and LGBTQ protections. In its decision on same-sex marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges, the court was careful to emphasize that “decent and honorable religious or philosophical premises” lead many people to believe in traditional marriage, and that the First Amendment protects these beliefs.
Then, in Masterpiece Cakeshop, the court reminded lawmakers everywhere that singling out a religious belief about marriage for hostile treatment is unacceptable: Such hostility is “inconsistent with the First Amendment’s guarantee that our laws be applied in a manner that is neutral toward religion.”
And when the court decided in Bostock v. Clayton County that Title VII covers sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination, the court again reinforced its commitment to “preserving the promise of the free exercise of religion enshrined in our Constitution” because “that guarantee lies at the heart of our pluralistic society.”
These commitments — embraced by justices across the ideological spectrum — were not throwaway lines. The court was being clear that protections for the LGBTQ community need not and should not come at the expense of religious communities that hold to a traditional sexual ethic.
In short, the court doesn’t view human rights as a zero-sum game.
Fulton provides another key constitutional guidepost: The government cannot deny religious organizations the opportunity to participate equally with secular organizations simply because they hold — and act on — religious beliefs about marriage.
The case was brought by two foster moms, both single women of color, and their chosen foster care agency partner, Catholic Social Services, after Philadelphia tried to shutter the agency because of its Catholic beliefs about marriage. The city cut ties with CSS despite the facts that it was experiencing a foster home shortage, CSS was one of the most successful agencies in the city, and approximately 70% of the children in CSS’s care were Black or other racial minorities.
In other words, bureaucrats were willing to let minority kids remain in institutional care, even sleep in offices, while beds in loving, qualified foster homes sat empty — because of an ideological crusade.
Fortunately, the court has now made clear that the First Amendment protects the right of religious organizations like CSS to participate in such programs on equal terms with others: “CSS seeks only an accommodation that will allow it to continue serving the children of Philadelphia in a manner consistent with its religious beliefs; it does not seek to impose those beliefs on anyone else.”
The decision is a significant win for peaceful pluralism: Yes, the LGBTQ community should be protected; its claims for protection are legitimate and overdue. But religious communities seeking to faithfully live out their beliefs on marriage and sexuality should also be protected.
The Constitution and the court have laid the boundaries of the field. Members of Congress now have an opportunity to set the rules of the game. And they have an obligation under their oath to do so thoughtfully and carefully, rather than at the behest of special interests and campaign endorsements.
In light of Fulton, some legislative proposals pending in Congress will need to be abandoned or substantially modified. Bills like the Equality Act and the Do No Harm Act would legislatively impose the very punitive and discriminatory treatment of religious institutions that the court just rejected.
Instead, the court’s rulings point the way to a better legislative path, one that recognizes peaceful coexistence as not just a possibility, but as a requirement imposed by the Constitution. It is also a political imperative given that America is a pluralistic society, filled with many cultures, beliefs and traditions. We will inevitably encounter conflict, but we can respect one another and protect many different rights amid our disagreements.
Many faith traditions, including my own, believe such a unifying approach is achievable nationally, just as it was achieved in 2015 in Utah. That approach is also consistent with President Joe Biden’s emphasis on unity during last year’s campaign.
Now is the time for politicians of every stripe to rise to that ideal, and in so doing ensure protection for all legitimate human rights, not just those that are politically favored.
Gordon Smith is a former U.S. senator from Oregon and currently serves as president and CEO of the National Association of Broadcasters.
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Spenser Heaps, Deseret News
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Scott G Winterton, Deseret News
