The pundit class was surprised last week by a stunning electoral upset, when 28-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defeated a 10-term incumbent in a Democratic House primary in New York City. That in itself would be a shock, but Ocasio-Cortez’s political affiliation is even more stunning — she’s a self-described socialist. The former Bernie Sanders campaign organizer — who will almost certainly win the general election in her heavily Democratic district this fall — is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, whose membership jumped after Ocasio-Cortez’s victory.

On one hand, it’s important to keep this primary in perspective. Turnout, as usual for primary elections, was low — only about 13 percent of registered Democrats in the district voted. And Ocasio-Cortez’s personality, energy and identity as a young Hispanic woman might have more to do with her victory than her party affiliation. Meanwhile, the DSA hasn’t come close to the level of primary election success enjoyed by the tea party in the Republican Party.

But it would be wrong to ignore the socialist surge. The stigma around the term has waned as fewer Americans remember the Cold War and the Soviet Union and most pay little attention to the economic disaster in Venezuela, which has a socialist government.

So what does socialism mean in the U.S. today? In a country where ideological labels are notoriously malleable, it’s useful to look at the actual policy platforms of candidates like Ocasio-Cortez.

The first plank of Ocasio-Cortez’s platform is “Medicare for All.” This actually doesn’t mean extending the Medicare program for the elderly to cover all Americans — a good idea that would make the U.S. health care system similar to Japan’s. Instead, it means single-payer health care in which the government is the only health insurance provider. Medicare allows people to buy supplemental insurance to cover the cost of relatively high deductibles, which help keep costs down; a single-payer system could cost more. Though a hybrid system like the current Medicare program would probably be safer, it’s hard to imagine single payer being worse than the system the U.S. has today, which is much too expensive and delivers middling results.

Ocasio-Cortez’s second plank is housing as a human right, meaning the elimination of involuntary homelessness. This would actually be a relatively cheap and easy thing to do — federal housing initiatives have already reduced U.S. homelessness substantially, and a ballpark calculation suggests that going the rest of the way would probably cost less than $10 billion.

On housing, however, there is the ominous possibility that the socialist approach might not be a healthy one. Ocasio-Cortez’s platform includes negative references to “luxury real estate developers” — a pejorative phrase that has been used in the San Francisco Bay Area to refer to any market-rate housing development. Cities need market-rate housing to prevent high-income workers from displacing low-income residents; let’s hope socialists will realize that this aspect of capitalism is a desirable one.

Another piece of the socialist platform is a federal job guarantee. Though implementation might be difficult, and the fiscal cost could be considerable, there are many advantages to providing government work for those who can’t find it in the private sector. It could help workers maintain their skills, networks and work ethic, as well as providing them with a sense of dignity and purpose. A job guarantee also provides a great automatic stabilizer, protecting the country against the damaging long-term effects of recessions.

Ocasio-Cortez also supports free public college for all. This, unfortunately, is a misguided policy idea. Because rich Americans tend to pay much more for college than poor ones, and tend to have major advantages in terms of getting admitted to expensive colleges in the first place, free college could easily end up subsidizing those with higher incomes. Meanwhile, there’s the question of implementation — federal tuition subsidies would cause universities to simply jack up prices, as they did in response to subsidized student loans. And price caps would hurt university budgets, causing quality to go down.

A great plank of Ocasio-Cortez’s agenda is to step up the fight against climate change. Although her goal of transitioning to 100 percent renewable energy by 2035 is probably impossible, promoting efforts to switch to renewables — and to encourage advancements in renewable-energy technology — would pay big dividends. Not only would carbon emissions be reduced, but better energy storage technology would give a boost to growth. The falling cost of solar power makes Ocasio-Cortez’s goal realistic, rather than pie-in-the-sky.

Finally, Ocasio-Cortez wants to restore the Glass-Steagall rule that separated investment banking from commercial banking during the Great Depression. Though this wouldn’t be a bad policy, it’s also not likely to make the financial system much safer, since the investment-commercial banking nexus is not likely to cause a financial crisis. Financial regulation should prioritize other things, like strengthening the Volcker Rule preventing banks from trading on their own accounts, and reducing leverage in the banking system.

On most economic issues, therefore, the new socialist movement doesn’t look that different from a standard progressive Democratic agenda. The big new ideas are single-payer health care and a federal job guarantee. These are expensive programs that will be difficult to implement correctly, but both could lead to higher economic output as well as greater quality of life for the poor and working class.

In other words, the new socialist movement may turn out to be more about evolution than revolution.

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

Police in Utah last year took more than $2.1 million in cash under a state law that allows officers to seize someone’s property — even if they have never been charged or convicted of a crime.

It’s called civil asset forfeiture, and it is a process that allows law enforcement to take personal property if police believe the items are connected to criminal activity. Under state law, cash and belongings not returned to individuals can be kept by the government and are often handed out to law enforcement groups to support confidential informants or purchase new police equipment.

The state’s annual report, released last week by the Commission of Criminal and Juvenile Justice, shows nearly all seizures in 2017 — 96 percent — were related to drug investigations.

And nearly all of the property that was seized was cash, though police agencies also reported that they took cars, gambling machines and other items. The value of those items were estimated at just over $400,000.

The amount of cash taken by Utah police agencies is on the rise. In 2016, police seized more than $1.4 million.

Police agencies say civil asset forfeiture laws help to keep criminals from profiting from their illegal activities. But critics have expressed concern that the practices may be sweeping up innocent people who don’t have the money to fight the government in civil court to get their property back.

Of the 334 cases reported last year, more than 60 percent ended in default rulings — meaning the owner never made an attempt in court to get their property back.

Libertas Institute, a libertarian-leaning Utah think tank, has pushed for changes in Utah’s civil asset forfeiture laws in recent years. President Connor Boyack said Monday that they are concerned about those low-dollar cases, where a property owner may not want to contest the case because it’s not worth the money to hire an attorney.

“In the past few years, the public has become increasingly aware of these laws that allow their government to permanently take ownership of a person’s property without even charging that person with a crime, let alone convicting them,” he said. “I think it really rubs people the wrong way to find out the government can take things from innocent people.”

Boyack said his organization takes no issue with police seizing property from actual criminals — but says the process should be changed so that only those who have been convicted in court lose their property.

The 2017 report from the commission says only 58 percent of those cases where property was seized ended in a conviction. The majority of the remaining cases were still pending when the report was compiled.

The report lists general statistics about seized assets, but does not include details on an individual case level.

Brent Jex, the president of the Utah Fraternal Order of Police, said his organization also believes it would be best for these sorts of cases to be connected to criminal charges, not filed separately in civil court. While he doesn’t believe innocent people are having their property taken from them, he said police want to provide safeguards.

“There’s always a concern of that,” he said. “Honestly, you have to be concerned about that to make sure you’re doing it right.”

Police agencies that seize property are required to deposit cash or profits into a state account that doles out grants to law enforcement agencies.

Last year, the Weber-Morgan Narcotic Strike Force received the biggest grant — more than $227,000 to be used for confidential informant funds, overtime wages and surveillance. The Davis Metro Drug and Major Crimes task force received more than $122,000 for similar items. Other agencies in Utah got money for everything from weapons to white boards to body cameras. Salt Lake City police used the $39,000 they were awarded to buy Naloxone rescue kits, used to treat people as they overdose on opioids, and further training for their officers.

In March, as The Washington Post was publishing a series of editorials criticizing the Trump administration for separating a Congolese asylum seeker from her 7-year-old daughter, administration officials contacted me to complain.

They couldn’t talk about specific cases, they said, but I should know that Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen would never act against the interest of a child. I should read the government’s policy, and especially what it said about protecting children from human traffickers. How did I know the woman really was the mother of the 7-year-old?

I didn’t, of course, and I certainly didn’t want The Washington Post defending a child trafficker. But when I discussed this with my colleague Lee Hockstader, who was reporting and writing the editorials, he pointed out that the woman and child had presented themselves legally at a border crossing four months earlier — giving the government ample time to conduct a DNA test if it had suspicions. A DNA test that, for four months — four months when both mother and child were locked up, thousands of miles apart, and during which both were, by all accounts, absolutely miserable — it had not bothered to conduct.

Fortunately, this was one of those rare cases where the asylum seeker had a qualified advocate, the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed suit on her behalf. As U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw recounted last week, “The Court ordered the Government to take a DNA saliva sample (or swab), which confirmed that Ms. L. was the mother of S.S.,” as the mother and daughter were referred to in the lawsuit. “Four days later, Ms. L. and S.S. were reunited after being separated for nearly five months.”

Last week, I thought back to the extraordinary cruelty and cynicism of that case — the cruelty of separating Ms. L. from her little girl, the cynicism of trying to throw us off the story by implying that Ms. L. was a human trafficker — because Sabraw was in the news for another reason.

Faced with not one little girl torn screaming from her mother; not scores, as had been documented when he heard Ms. L.’s case in March; but thousands — Sabraw, an appointee of President George W. Bush, said: No more.

“The facts set forth before the Court portray reactive governance — responses to address a chaotic circumstance of the Government’s own making,” he wrote. “They belie measured and ordered governance, which is central to the concept of due process in our Constitution. ...Extraordinary relief is requested, and is warranted under the circumstances.”

The judge issued a preliminary and nationwide injunction, a fairly rare and drastic measure, telling the government to stop taking migrant children away from their parents “unless there is a determination that the parent is unfit or presents a danger to the child.”

He also ordered the government to return within 30 days all children who had been taken away, and within 14 days if they were under the age of 5.

All this happened, it’s true, when many Americans, their attention far from a district court in San Diego, found cause for alarm about the rule of law. The Supreme Court upheld a restrictive visa policy that unquestionably had emanated from President Donald Trump’s anti-Islamic animus. It ruled by a 5-to-4 majority that existed only because the Senate had refused to consider President Barack Obama’s highly qualified Supreme Court nominee, Judge Merrick Garland, in 2016.

Then came the announced resignation of the Supreme Court justice who had come to symbolize the embattled effort to keep the court from devolving into permanent, partisan camps. And the week ended with the horrible murder of five employees of the Capital Gazette in Annapolis in apparent revenge for their newspaper doing its job.

All very real.

And yet not the whole story.

Sabraw’s order pushing back against the administration’s inhumane actions on the border — a single, Republican-appointed judge telling the government it has to change its ways — is part of the story, too.

“We are a country of laws, and of compassion,” he wrote.

His order was not the last word. Trump will continue to speak dishonestly about immigrants, to stoke fears, to do them harm and slander those who are coming here as our forebears have been coming for generations.

His officials will continue to portray mothers as human traffickers, when they can get away with it.

But there will be people pushing back.

“We are a country of laws, and of compassion,” they will say. Many Americans, as always, will be working to keep that true.

Fred Hiatt is the editorial page editor of The Post. He writes editorials for the newspaper and a biweekly column that appears on Mondays. Previously he was a local reporter in Virginia, a national reporter covering national security and a foreign correspondent based in Tokyo and Moscow.

You can tell by the panic in my dogs: It’s fireworks season again.

Still, freaked-out pets are one of the less-obnoxious parts about the annual bombardment that, despite the Legislature shortening the window to legally ignite fireworks, still feels like it lasts straight through the month.

Last year, 100 Midvale residents were forced to flee their homes after an errant firework landed in a bush and set an apartment building ablaze.

It was one of 70 fireworks-related calls that firefighters responded to last July 4th. You can probably count on 70 more this year, as flaming projectiles don’t just light up the skies, but dry fields and, unfortunately, people’s homes.

Salt Lake City resident Alan Woodbury was probably fortunate two years ago when a stray rocket landed on the front of his house. He didn’t see the damage until the next morning, but he thinks the flames must have been at least four feet high. He had to replace a section of the siding.

He assumes someone put out the fire. If they hadn’t, or if the rocket had shot over his house and landed in the dry weeds, it could have been a lot worse.

“Holy cow, I could have lost my home,” he said. “People get out there, they get drunk, they’re partying. It’s not a good environment for responsible behavior and I just don’t think fireworks are worth [the risk].”

My colleague Connor Richards recently told the story of Dave Schoeneck, who was visiting family in New York when he got a call from a neighbor in the middle of the night that his Cottonwood Heights home was burning.

He lost two huge pine trees, all of his patio furniture and much of the home’s exterior, plus he had to live in a hotel for nearly two months while the windows and carpet were replaced.

So don’t try to convince Schoeneck that fireworks are worth it.

That’s especially true this year.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the entire state of Utah is experiencing abnormally dry conditions. And more than 60 percent of the state has severe to extreme drought conditions.

On Monday, fire crews were evacuating people in the path of the Dollar Ridge Fire, one of more than a half dozen wildfires burning around the state.

Gov. Gary Herbert, as well as numerous counties and municipalities, have all enacted fireworks restrictions that could draw fines for residents who set them off in restricted areas.

It’s a nice idea, but it won’t work, because the only thing more stupid than launching unpredictable balls of fire into the air in the middle of bone dry conditions is the people who are absolutely guaranteed to ignore the restrictions and do it anyway.

After all: America!

We fought a war against this kind of tyranny, so let’s celebrate Independence Day, right? And if a neighbor loses a home here and there, well, patriots sacrifice a lot.

It’s not just property that is damaged by this bizarre obsession with fireworks. Nationally, 10,000 people a year end up in emergency rooms because of fireworks-related injuries, according to the Moran Eye Center at the University of Utah. Most of them involve children and thousands are eye injuries.

And then there’s the smoke. Last year, after the Fourth, the air pollution in Weber County was 20 times above the accepted standards. The air pollution in Davis, Utah and Cache counties also spiked.

If that is not enough, consider the veterans, those who wore this country’s uniform in combat and are still dealing with the scars. I have a friend who served in an artillery unit overseas and the concussions and explosions of the fireworks can transport him back to those war zones. It can be terrifying.

Bottom line: If you have to watch fireworks this week (for whatever reason) find a professional production somewhere. Better yet, have another hot dog and a root beer and donate the money you save by not buying fireworks to a veterans organization advocating for the people who defended our nation — like the Wounded Warrior Project.

Alan Woodbury and Dave Schoeneck would thank you. I would thank you. And my dogs, if they could, would thank you, too.

As frustration over President Donald Trump’s ongoing trade war mounts within the Republican party, some senators are weighing confrontation. “I’d like to kill ’em,” said Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, referring to the administration’s expanding list of tariffs. He is pushing legislation in his Finance Committee to reign Trump in — an effort that seems to have more support from GOP leaders than some that would place new checks on the president’s power to impose tariffs. Hatch “is pretty fired up,” one top Senate Republican said. [Politico]

Happy Tuesday!

Topping the news: A medical marijuana initiative appears headed for the November ballot after Drug Safe Utah, an opponent of the measure, dropped its federal lawsuit aimed at blocking voters from weighing in on the proposal. [Trib] [Fox13] [KUTV] [KUER]

--> A quarter of Republican and independent voters would be most likely to support former Rep. Jason Chaffetz if he ran for Utah governor in 2020, according to a new Salt Lake Tribune-Hinckley Institute of Politics poll. [Trib]

--> The Daily Caller, a conservative news outlet, reports that Utah Sen. Mike Lee is no longer one of Trump’s top choices to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. [Trib]

Tweets of the day: From @cabot_phillips: “Trump should honestly just pick a random Chick Fil A employee as the next Supreme Court Justice. They’d be fair, hard working and efficient. And after every case they’d end it with ‘my pleasure.’”

-> From @lauriecrosswell: "Trump says he met with 4 candidates for the Supreme Court seat. My guesses as to their identities: 1) Judge Jeanine 2) Roseanne Barr 3) Siri 4) A MAGA hat”

-> From @thesidetrack: “How do you do Millennial looking for housing let me show you our newest development 35 minutes south of Price-- Wait, where are you going? IT HAS A POOL!”

Happy birthday: To former state Rep. David Clark and Jordan Giles, former district office manager for Rep. Chris Stewart.

Programming note: Political Cornflakes will be off Wednesday for the Fourth of July but back in your inboxes and on your computer screens bright and early Thursday morning.

In other news: Ending a six-year legal battle, a federal judge declined to reopen a voting rights case filed by Navajo residents that accused San Juan County’s Republican leaders of political domination over American Indians. [Trib] [Fox13]

-> Brigham Young University officially recognizes 257 student clubs and lists 97 “not recognized” clubs on its student association website — but the LGBTQ club Understanding Same Sex Attraction, which formed in 2010, is not included on either list. [Trib]

-> Joshua Holt, a Utahn who was recently released from a Venezuelan jail after being held for two years there as a political prisoner, was honored at the Provo Freedom Awards Gala with his wife, Thamara Caleno. [APviaTrib] [DailyHerald]

-> Robert Gehrke gives his take on a plan to revive Salt Lake City’s Wingpointe golf course, which closed in 2015. [Trib]

-> In honor of Independence Day, Pat Bagley depicts a dog’s response to fireworks. [Trib]

Nationally: President Donald Trump reportedly reviewed four candidates on Monday to replace Justice Kennedy: Amy Coney Barrett of the Seventh Circuit; Brett M. Kavanaugh of the DC Circuit; and Raymond M. Kethledge and Amul R. Thapar of the Sixth Circuit. [NYTimes]

-> Democrats are using Trump’s highly publicized list of potential Supreme Court nominees, which helped him win over doubtful conservatives during the 2016 presidential election, as a running start in their race against the pick. [Politico]

-> Ahead of a NATO summit next week in Brussels, Trump wrote to several of the treaty’s allies and warned that they are spending too little on defense and are failing to meet the security obligations shared by the alliance. [NYTimes]

-> An analysis of State Department data shows a drop — on pace to reach 12 percent by the end of Trump’s first two years in office — in the number of people receiving visas to move permanently to the United States. [WaPost]

Got a tip? A birthday, wedding or anniversary to announce? Send us a note to cornflakes@sltrib.com.

-- Taylor Stevens and Connor Richards

Twitter.com/tstevensmedia and Twitter.com/crichards1995

This time of year, newspapers like to print a lot of stuff about the American founding documents. The Constitution, The Bill of Rights and, this week particularly, The Declaration of Independence.

Some of us are closer to those events than others.

The Capital Gazette — then known as the Maryland Gazette — started publishing in 1727. That was 64 years before newspapers were protected by the First Amendment. And it was 49 years before the Declaration that won the newspaper, and the whole nation, freedom from the interference of the British Crown.

The Declaration of 1776 was a big enough deal that the Gazette, like many papers of its day, published the whole document for all to see. Though, as a writer for The Baltimore Sun pointed out the other day, Thomas Jefferson’s submission went on Page Two that day. Page One, as always, focused on local news.

Not everything that goes on a newspaper’s pages — or, these days, its website — seems as momentous at the time they are published. For example, an account of a court case involving a young woman and a man who won’t leave her alone.

Such an account appeared in the Capital Gazette of Annapolis in 2011. It outlined how the woman had been subject to a relatively new form of harassment, the online, social-media kind. And how she had been forced to go to court to get some relief from the man’s constant attacks.

After the Gazette carried its report, the perpetrator turned his ire on the newspaper. At least he was no longer picking on someone smaller than himself. And the libel suit he filed against the newspaper was, of course, a loser. Because, however much the man might find it unpleasant, the story was true. And, because it was played out in open court and public documents, belonged in the public’s view.

At the time, it might not have seemed to anyone involved that this was a major press freedom case. It wasn’t the Pentagon Papers. It wasn’t The Times vs Sullivan, the case in which the U.S. Supreme Court said public officials fighting to maintain the status quo in the segregated south could not use libel suits to silence truthful publications.

But Thursday it became clear that it was a extreme case of a person who was willing to go to extreme lengths to stop the free press from just telling the truth, just because he didn’t like other people knowing it.

Five people were killed when that sad man opened fire in the Gazette offices. They died just for doing their job. Just telling the truth. Not pushing an agenda or taking a side. Certainly not being “the enemy of the people,” as an outpouring of sympathy from the community, the Annapolis mayor and the governor of Maryland, among others, attests.

It is a job that the United States, and Annapolis, and Salt Lake City and everyplace, big and small, has to have done if it is to continue to have and hold the freedoms those other pieces of paper, like the Declaration of Independence, demand.

Utah is still waiting for federal approval or denial of its Medicaid expansion plan, which would impose work requirements on patients and rely on increased federal funding to provide health care to roughly 70,000 people.

But on Friday, a federal judge ruled against Kentucky’s Medicaid program, the first in the nation requiring beneficiaries to work, volunteer, or go to school as a condition of health-care coverage.

Despite the similarities, state Rep. Robert Spendlove, R-Sandy, said he expects the Utah expansion plan he sponsored earlier this year to be approved and ultimately implemented.

The distinction between the two states, he said, is that Utah is relying on work requirements to increase the numbers of patients covered, while Kentucky sought to shrink services through its community engagement restrictions.

“I don’t know whether it will have a direct impact on what Utah is doing,” Spendlove said of the Kentucky decision, issued Friday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. “I think [Utah’s] policy is still sound.”

Courtney Bullard, education and collaborations director for the Utah Health Policy Project, said the court’s ruling is the latest indication of trouble for state plans that fall short of full, unrestricted Medicaid coverage under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

If Utah’s plan is approved by federal health care officials, Bullard said, it will likely face its own court challenge.

“The purpose of Medicaid is to give access to care,” she said. “It has nothing to do with work.”

Under Obamacare, states have the option of expanding Medicaid to fill what has become known as the “coverage gap,” or the patients and able-bodied adults who have incomes too high to qualify under previous Medicaid requirements but who make too little to receive insurance subsidies.

Federal law anticipates 90 percent of Medicaid costs being paid for with federal funding, with 10 percent coming from state budgets, in order to provide coverage to individuals and families who earn up to 138 percent of the federal poverty line.

Utah currently has a 70-30 split with the federal government, and the new plan anticipates moving to the 90-10 structure while accepting beneficiaries who earn up to 100 percent of the poverty line. That amount is $12,140 for a single person or $25,100 for a family of four.

“The goal of our proposal all along has been to expand coverage and to cover more people,” Spendlove said. “[The Trump Administration’s] response was positive, but they do have to go through an official, legal process. They’re going through that process now.”

But Utahns are facing a competing, more ambitious expansion plan in the form of a ballot initiative, which has qualified for a public vote in November. If approved, the initiative would result in a full expansion of Medicaid (covering those up to 138 percent of poverty level) in the state, combined with a 0.15 percent sales tax increase, to close Utah’s coverage gap.

“We have 150,000 Utahns right now in the coverage gap,” Bullard said, “and they need care.”

A recent Salt Lake Tribune-Hinckley Institute of Politics poll showed a majority of Utah voters supported the initiative.

The federal Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS, has shown skepticism toward some states’ partial expansion plans. Bullard said the failure of Kentucky, Massachusetts and Arkansas to implement their policy proposals suggests Utah’s plan will either be denied, be overturned in court, or be superseded by voters in November.

“We’re waiting for a [waiver] approval and it’s looking, with every other decision that we see, less and less likely,” she said.

After Friday’s court decision, Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin announced that dental and vision coverage would be cut for roughly 500,000 Medicaid patients in an effort to trim costs, according to the Associated Press.

Tom Hudachko, a spokesman for the Utah Department of Health, said the department will monitor CMS’ response to the court ruling, and is prepared to modify Utah’s waiver request if the federal government issues new guidance.

“We remain committed to the concept of providing a path to self-sufficiency through the work requirements,” Hudachko said.

The proposed work requirements apply only to able-bodied adults within the expansion group, Hudachko said, most of whom do not have dependent children. Those rules are closely aligned with other federal programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.

“Utah will waive loss-of-eligibility penalties if individuals can demonstrate good cause for failure to participate,” he said.

Spendlove said the state needs to provide health care for the needy without offering benefits that are so abundant that they discourage people from working.

He said he has studied the ballot initiative and plans to vote against it, because it would place an unsustainable burden on the state’s resources.

“Even with the tax increase, our costs are going to outrun our revenues,” he said.

Fruitland • Brent and Joann Yorga resignedly watched a huge plume of smoke and flames crest a ridge south of Highway 40 Tuesday afternoon, believing they were watching the blaze consume the second home they had been building.

“See those flames coming over the ridge? That’s 500 yards from our cabin,” Brent Yorga said. “Serenity Ridge is toast.”

“What can you do?” he asked. “At least no lives were lost. You can rebuild a cabin.”

The Dollar Ridge Fire had destroyed 20 to 30 homes by midday Tuesday, Gov. Gary Herbert said at news conference. The fire was estimated to have burned 30,000 acres by that point, and firefighters had not been able to contain the blaze. They were continuing to battle the fire Tuesday afternoon amid strong winds.

“Our main focus is here on the north side,” said Jason Curry, a spokesman for the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands, at a news conference broadcast on FOX 13. “Fire is primarily growing to the north and the east.”

Herbert visited the firefighters’ command center and an evacuation shelter Tuesday. He said he was frustrated with the number of wildfires arising from human carelessness. The Dollar Ridge Fire, as well as the other three largest wildfires burning in the state — the Trail Mountain, Black Mountain and the West Valley fires — are all said to have been caused by people.

“We call on everybody to be wise in what you do in the outdoors,” Herbert said. “With your ATVs, don’t park a hot engine over a patch of weeds. Only do a campfire in a designated campground. Be careful with fireworks. A lot of this is just common sense.”

Curry said more firefighters are arriving Tuesday and plan to dig and cut lines around the fire in order to contain it.

Herbert said four Blackhawk helicopters from the Utah National Guard will be used to combat the fire, but strong winds continued to sideline aircraft. Flying remained not only unsafe, but also pointless, because the winds disperse water and retardant before it hits the ground, Curry said.

The Dollar Ridge Fire is centered about 4.5 miles southeast of Strawberry Reservoir. The blaze ignited Sunday afternoon on private land. Two hundred to 300 homes have already been evacuated.

There have been no reports of injuries.

Herbert encouraged people to respect evacuation orders.

“There is always a reluctance to leave,” he said. “You feel like if you are there you can protect my home, but it’s not worth it.”

He invited those who want to help evacuees to contact the Red Cross at www.redcross.org, or call a local LDS stake president, Jason Young, at 435-823-1281.

The Duchesne County Sheriff tweeted on Tuesday morning that new mapping had determined the fire is 19,000 acres. However, Curry said firefighters still believe the fire to be closer to 30,000 acres.

Meanwhile, near Pine Valley in southwest Utah, 584 personnel are working to contain the West Valley Fire. That fire has burnt 10,836 acres, according to a news release.

Hand crews, bulldozers and aircraft are continuing to build containment lines around the West Valley Fire. Only 5 percent of the blaze has been contained, the news release said.

Local, state and federal agencies and officials on Tuesday urged the public to be careful not to ignite more fires over Independence Day. Multiple counties in Utah have banned fireworks on unincorporated lands and a slew of cities have instituted similar restrictions.

Salt Lake City Fire Chief Karl Lieb tweeted photos of firefighters delivering signs announcing fireworks bans in the restricted parts of the city. Fireworks are prohibited east of 900 East, west of Redwood Road, north of South Temple and in city parks.

Thanks to our concerned community councils, we got Station 5, and a few Batallion Chiefs we have been working with community volunteers today to hand deliver fireworks restriction information. Have a safe and enjoyable 4th of July! pic.twitter.com/9READbBVPr

— Chief Karl Lieb, SLC Fire (@ChiefLieb) July 3, 2018

Even an outdoor rite, campfires, are under scrutiny. Rangers at Zion National Park on Twitter announced a campfire ban throughout the park. They are prohibited even in campgrounds.

Extreme fire danger conditions! Fire restrictions are in effect until further notice: NO campfires anywhere in the park, including campgrounds. NO smoking except in an enclosed vehicle. NO fireworks on federal land ever. Gas stoves OK. Be safe and responsible on your public lands

— Zion National Park (@ZionNPS) July 3, 2018

London • Police on Tuesday arrested a “healthcare professional” on suspicion of murdering eight babies and attempting to kill six other infants as part of “Operation Hummingbird,” an inquiry into the sudden and unexplained deaths of 17 babies at a top-tier public hospital in Britain.

The female suspect worked at the neonatal unit of the Countess of Chester Hospital south of Liverpool.

Detectives were brought into the case following the mysterious deaths of 17 babies at the hospital between March 2015 and July 2016, alongside 15 “non-fatal collapses.”

“Asking the police to look into this was not something we did lightly, but we need to do everything we can to understand what has happened here and get the answers we and the families so desperately want,” said Ian Harvey, medical director at Countess of Chester Hospital.

“We are continuing to support Cheshire Police with their ongoing investigation,” he added in a statement, noting the hospital supports the equivalent to a “Level 1 Special Care Baby Unit.”

“We are confident the unit is safe to continue in its current form,” Harvey said.

Police released few details about the ongoing investigation, which began in May 2017 following a spike in baby deaths at the hospital but said they are working alongside doctors and medical experts to understand the causes of death.

“This is an extremely difficult time for all the families and it is important to remember that, at the heart of this, there are a number of bereaved families seeking answers as to what happened to their children,” said Cheshire Police Detective Inspector Paul Hughes, who is in charge of the investigation.

Hughes called the investigation “highly complex and very sensitive” and said his detective team was doing “everything we possibly can to try to establish in detail what has led to these baby deaths and collapses.”

He appealed to the public for any relevant information.

The terms for God, in the poetic language of the prayers written for centuries, have almost always been male: Father. King. Lord.

And in the Episcopal Church, the language of prayer matters. The Book of Common Prayer, the text used in every Episcopal congregation, is cherished as a core element of Episcopal identity.

This week, the church is debating whether to overhaul that prayer book — in large part to make clear that God doesn’t have a gender.

“As long as ‘men’ and ‘God’ are in the same category, our work toward equity will not just be incomplete. I honestly think it won’t matter in some ways,” said the Rev. Wil Gafney, a professor of the Hebrew Bible at Brite Divinity School in Texas who is on the committee recommending a change to the gendered language in the prayer book.

Gafney says that when she preaches, she sometimes changes the words of the Book of Common Prayer, even though Episcopal priests aren’t formally allowed to do so. Sometime she switches a word like “King” to a gender-neutral term like “Ruler” or “Creator.” Sometimes she uses “She” instead of “He.” Sometimes, she sticks with the masculine tradition. ” ‘Our Father,’ I won’t fiddle with that,” she said, invoking the beginning of the Lord’s Prayer that Jesus taught his disciples to say in the book of Matthew.

Gafney and many other Episcopal priests don’t want to skirt the rules when they make changes like that — they want the prayer book to conform to a theology of God as bigger than gender.

The leaders of the Episcopal Church, the American denomination that descended from the Church of England but has long been separate from its British mother church, will consider two dueling resolutions at their triennial convention, which begins Tuesday in Austin and runs through next week.

One resolution calls for a major overhaul of the Book of Common Prayer, which was last revised in 1979. A wholesale revision would take years, the church says, meaning a new prayer book wouldn’t be in use until 2030.

Switching to gender-neutral language is the most commonly mentioned reason to make the change, but many stakeholders in the church want other revisions. There are advocates for adding language about a Christian’s duty to conserve the Earth; for adding a liturgical ceremony to celebrate a transgender person’s adoption of a new name; for adding same-sex marriage ceremonies to the liturgy, since the church has been performing such weddings for years; for updating the calendar of saints to include important figures named as saints since 1979.

The competing resolution says that the church should not update the Book of Common Prayer now, and should instead spend the next three years intensively studying the existing book, which has its roots in the first Anglican prayer book, published under the same title in 1549.

That’s what Chicago Bishop Jeffrey Lee advocates. The Book of Common Prayer, he said, “really constitutes the Episcopal church in significant ways. Our theology is what we pray.” Lee is a member of the committee that will consider the two resolutions and will put forward one of them — or an alternate revised proposal — to the larger legislative bodies at the convention.

Although he thinks that the church should focus more on mining what is in the 1979 book instead of revising it now, he said current events have shown him the importance of listening to women’s demands for gender-neutral language. “In the culture, the whole #MeToo movement, I think, has really raised in sharp relief how much we do need to examine our assumptions about language and particularly the way we imagine God,” he said. “If a language for God is exclusively male and a certain kind of image of what power means, it’s certainly an incomplete picture of God. . . . We can’t define God. We can say something profoundly true about God, but the mystery we dare to call God is always bigger than anything we can imagine.”

That includes gender, he said - even if one of the three components of the Trinity is depicted as Jesus’ “Father” God, that God is bigger than male or female.

In the decades since the 1979 prayer book, the Episcopal church has published numerous authorized alternative texts, which bishops can choose to let priests in their dioceses use alongside the Book of Common Prayer. Lee and other advocates of keeping the current prayer book say that these alternate service materials are sufficient, for now, for priests who want the option of gender-neutral texts.

If the wholesale revision of the prayer book does not pass at the convention, some feminist priests said they would push to at least grant broader authorization for priests to use the alternate texts — for instance, letting any priest use the newer texts, even without a bishop’s approval.

“I have no doubt there are many, many, many other priests who are clutching pearls and collars in horror and would never change a word,” Gafney said. But she argued that not changing the words of the Book of Common Prayer is harmful. That’s the only book found in many Episcopal churches, and the book that a believer is likely to have at home for his or her personal spiritual resource. “As long as a masculine God remains at the top of the pyramid, nothing else we do matters. We construct a theological framework in which we talk about gender equality . . . then we say that which is most holy in the universe is only and exclusively male. That just undoes some of the key theology that says we are equal in God’s sight, we are fully created in God’s image.”

The Very Rev. Samuel Candler, who chairs the committee that will have the task of sending the prayer book resolution onto the larger legislative body or not, said he is personally in favor of revision, largely because of the need for non-gendered language. “It stands for something. It’s a symbol of our common faith,” he said. “The words in our prayer book do matter.”

Other mainline Protestant denominations, including the United Methodist Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, have similarly debated the use of gendered language for God; the Reform Jewish movement updated its God language to gender-neutral terms when it replaced its 1975 prayer book with a new edition in 2007.

Kelly Brown Douglas, the canon theologian at Washington National Cathedral in the District of Columbia and a member of the committee recommending a change to gender-neutral language, said that a revised Book of Common Prayer wouldn’t just replace all the “Lord” with “Sovereign.”

“God as Creator, Liberator, Sustainer. God as the one who loves. We use descriptive words for God, so that we can begin to imagine who God is in our world. That, to me, is the theological challenge, to get away from the static nouns that don’t tell us anything anyway,” she said. “The God that I can see in the least of these. The God that I can see in the face of a Renisha McBride or a Trayvon Martin - that tells me something about God.”

The Bible, she said, includes more varied descriptors of God than the current Book of Common Prayer uses. “What about the God who heard? I’m talking about the God who heard the cries of the Israelites as they found themselves in bondage, the God who heard the oppressed. . . . The God whose voice comes through the whirlwind. Wow! Who is that God? That frees God from these very limited, finite images of God in which we are creating God in our own image instead of trying to live and reach into the image that is God.”

Singapore • The rescue of 12 members of a boys’ soccer team and their coach in northern Thailand could take months, the Thai navy said Tuesday, as officials weigh the best extraction options after a dramatic nine-day rescue mission.

Thai authorities are committed to “100 percent safety” in extracting the boys and their coach from a partially flooded network of caves, Chiang Rai Governor Narongsak Osatanakorn said Tuesday morning, according to the Associated Press. Options include coaching the boys on how to use special breathing masks, or draining water from the cave. None of the boys can swim, or dive.

The boys, aged between 11 and 16, and their 25-year-old coach, went missing on June 23. They were exploring a cave complex in a forest park in northern Thailand, close to the border with Myanmar. Local and international rescuers, including a team of Thai navy divers and cave experts, had spent days trying to locate the team, but muddy waters complicated efforts and blocked access to the chambers of the cave complex. The search for the boys gripped the nation and the world, and ended Monday evening when two British divers found the team hiding on a dry patch in one of the flooded chambers.

In a video posted by the Thai navy on its Facebook page, the boys are seen huddled on a rock in mud-stained T-shirts and shorts surrounded by water.

“How many of you are there - 13? Brilliant,” a member of the rescue team, speaking in English, tells the boys. “You have been here 10 days. You are very strong.”

When one of the boys asks if they could leave the cave, the rescuers replied that they could not yet, but that many people were coming for them.

“NAVY SEAL will come tomorrow, with food and doctors and everything,” the rescuer said.

The Thai military has confirmed that they are preparing for long-term food supplies and diving training for the group. Waters in the cave must recede to safe levels before the boys can be safely extracted, experts say. Engineers have been pumping water out of the cave, but more precipitation is expected as the rainy season hits the area.

Officials say they have performed an informal medical evaluation, and determined that most of the boys are in stable condition. No one has any critical injuries, said Chiang Rai’s governor.

The British Cave Rescue Council, a voluntary underground rescue operation, has been in touch with the British divers who located the boys. In an interview with the BBC, the council’s vice chairman Bill Whitehouse said the divers described the dive as “gnarly.”

There were “complications and problems,” said Whitehouse, “They were having to swim against the currents and pull themselves along the walls. The visibility wouldn’t have been very good.”

The dive took about three hours, he added. The cave system is at least four miles long, and waters can reach depths of 16 feet during the monsoon season which lasts through October.

New York • Amazon’s Prime Day deals are coming to the aisles of Whole Foods as the online retailer seeks to lure more people to its Prime membership after a recent price hike.

This year’s sales event, which starts July 16, will be six hours longer than last year’s and will launch new products. Amazon hopes to keep Prime attractive for current and would-be subscribers after raising the annual membership fee by 20 percent to $119 and to $12.99 for the month-to-month option. Outside of Prime Day, Amazon has added special discounts for Prime members at its more than 460 Whole Foods U.S. stores and has been adding new TV shows and movies on its video streaming service.

“They want Prime to be a must-have membership,” says Suzanne Tager, who heads Bain & Co.’s retail and consumer products practices.

Prime Day, created by Amazon in 2015 to mark its 20th anniversary, has inspired other e-commerce companies to invent their own shopping holidays. Online furniture seller Wayfair introduced Way Day in April, becoming its biggest revenue day ever. While Prime Day brings in more revenue for Amazon, too, it also helps boost its Prime memberships. It had more sign-ups during 2017’s event than any other day in the company’s history, Amazon said at the time, without providing specific numbers.

Here’s a look at what’s new for this year’s Prime Day:

Whole Foods in the mix

Expect discounts on groceries as well as in-store events, such as cooking demonstrations, says Jamil Ghani, the global vice president of Amazon Prime. And at its more than a dozen Amazon Books stores, discounts will expand beyond devices.

It’s longer

After extending the daylong event to 30 hours in 2017, this year’s Prime Day will be 36 hours long, starting the afternoon of July 16 and running through July 17.

New product launches

Several companies have agreed to launch new products on Prime Day, Amazon says. Among them, a Fingerlings unicorn doll whose horn lights up and a Delta kitchen faucet that can be turned on through Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant.

Private label push

Amazon has been increasing its line of store brands, and it’ll be offering deals such as 25 percent off its Rivet furniture brand, which didn’t exist a year ago. Other deals include 30 percent off its Mama Bear diapers and baby products.

More countries

Amazon has been expanding its Prime membership around the world, and four new countries will be a part of Prime Day this year: Australia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Singapore. Amazon disclosed for the first time this year that it had more than 100 million paid Prime members worldwide.

Portland, Ore. • A Navy veteran who was fatally shot by Portland State University campus police during a fight outside a bar had a permit to carry a concealed handgun, a news organization reported Monday.

Sgt. Brent Laizure, a spokesman for the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office, told Oregon Public Broadcasting that Jason Erik Washington had a valid concealed carry permit.

Washington, 45, who is black, was shot to death by campus police outside a bar in downtown Portland late Friday. The Portland Police Bureau is investigating the shooting.

Witness Keyaira Smith told several news outlets that Washington was trying to break up a fight and a gun holstered on his hip fell out. He went to pick it up and was shot after someone yelled, “Gun!” Smith said. She had not responded to a request for an interview from The Associated Press.

A video clip shot by a bystander and obtained by KOIN-TV shows a black object in the pocket of a shorts-wearing man who is trying to break up a fight.

The man falls to the ground after pulling another man off his friend as they exchange blows.

The camera jerks away from the action shortly after the fall and doesn’t show the shooting.

Washington was a Navy veteran who had worked at the U.S. Postal Service since 1998, OPB reported. He was married and had three children and one grandchild.

“He loved those kids, he was crazy about them,” said David Norton, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, Branch 82. Norton knew Washington for seven years.

“He was a big personality. He always had a lot to say. He kind of had a larger-than-life personality. He was always very animated and exuberant. And if you ever worked with the guy or knew the guy, you would never forget him.”

Norton said Washington was with co-workers the day he was shot.

PSU students protested over the weekend over the university’s decision to arm its campus police. The university’s board of trustees voted in 2015 arm its police force over objections from students.

Washington • President Donald Trump has ordered U.S. flags on federal property be flown at half-staff through sunset Tuesday to honor five newspaper journalists slain in Maryland’s capital.

The order comes after Annapolis Mayor Gavin Buckley said Monday that Trump had declined his request to lower the flags.

The White House has reversed its decision and will permit Annapolis mayor Gavin Buckley to lower U.S. flags to half-staff in remembrance of the mass shooting at the Capital Gazette office last week. https://t.co/LCZEqzAq2i

— Capital Gazette (@capgaznews) July 3, 2018

Trump issued a proclamation Tuesday ordering the flags fly at half-staff through sundown.

Five Capital Gazette newspaper employees were killed Thursday when a gunman holding a grudge against the publication shot them in the newsroom.

Trump repeatedly has called journalists the “enemy of the people.” He said the day after the shooting that journalists shouldn’t fear being violently attacked while doing their job.

The White House says Trump ordered the flags lowered as soon as he learned of the Annapolis mayor’s request.

Herriman • Like all of you, Mike Petke went in search of answers, too.

And like all of you, the Real Salt Lake coach was waiting. And waiting. And waiting some more. Petke was hoping to see the club’s physically-imposing, in-fear-of-nothing 20-year-old left back resurface. Not literally. Because he knew where Danilo Acosta was: On the bench.

Some nights, Acosta didn’t make RSL’s bench. Other nights, he found himself in Tulsa, Okla. for the Real Monarchs in the USL. That was a few months ago when Petke was dialing up those in soccer who helped Acosta get to where he’s at. The reports came back the same:

“Stay on top of him,” one said. “You have to push him,” another told Petke.

It was Acosta, who along with the rest of RSL’s academy-to-first team contingent a year ago, spurred a run from last place to within a point of the playoffs. But that was last year. Acosta even says so. Which is one of the reasons why Acosta was on the bench for 10 of RSL’s first 17 matches this year. Since given another shot on May 26, Acosta has started the past six-consecutive matches. RSL is 3-2-1 in that stretch.

The million dollar question is: What changed?

“I’d say my overall mentality,” Acosta said. “At the beginning, it wasn’t the best, and now they’ve given me the opportunity.”

And perhaps more pertinent: What needed to change for Acosta to get another shot at proving he’s not only the best left back on the roster, but one of the top youngsters in Major League Soccer?

Petke said something, finally, clicked in Acosta.

RSL’s coach was waiting for Acosta to shape up, to become the good kind of predictable, knowing no matter what, Acosta was going to battle like he does with some of the leagues top attacking players.

That “click” is where Petke snaps his fingers, because an in-form Acosta was needed on the left side.

“I’m talking about growing up, professionalism, accountability,” Petke said, “not just showing up.”

This season so far has been a wake-up call, Acosta said. Every athlete believes they’re the ideal option, but the defender said he’s needed to hear it from multiple people this year that while he might have all the physical tools, that doesn’t make you any less accountable as an every day professional.

“I’m more mature this year and I say that this year it has taught me a lot of things,” Acosta said. “Now it’s up to me if I want to keep being a starter.”

RSL general manager Craig Waibel said all young talents go through the maturation process differently. Some never encounter bumps in the road, others take some time to adjust accordingly. Acosta, Waibel said, has grown immensely in recent months because he had to look in the mirror.

“We knew there was potential,” Waibel said. “For our club, it’s always the balance between the potential and performance.”

The performances have been there as of late. That capability on the left side of the RSL defense has helped spur the team into the thick of the Western Conference playoff mix. There’s still plenty of matches left, but Acosta’s return is an undeniable plus. In 23 career starts, RSL is 12-7-4 with him in the lineup.

It’s clear that when he’s on and locked in, he’s a cornerstone for the future.

“Danny knows where he stands with me always,” Petke said. “Right now, he’s our starting left back. That could change like that if his form drops or his attitude drops again or someone else comes up and takes the position.”

After a lengthy travel day back home, the starters went through a light practice at RSL’s complex in Herriman on Monday morning. They wrapped up the morning by playing keep-away which featured two people in the middle. Petke was participating, too, and eventually, it was he and Acosta in the middle — for no longer than five seconds before teaming up to disrupt the ball from moving around.

They briefly celebrated. After that, they went to opposite ends of the circle as the ball pinged around.

Sporting Kansas City at Real Salt Lake<br>At Rio Tinto Stadium, Sandy<br>Kickoff » 8 p.m.<br>TV » KMYU<br>Radio » 700 AM<br>Records » RSL 7-8-2, Sporting KC 9-3-5<br>Last meeting » Sporting KC 2-0 win at Rio Tinto Stadium in U.S. Open Cup (June 6)<br>About KC » Sitting on 32 points, Sporting KC is tied for the best record in the Western Conference. … KC is coming off its first home loss of 2018, a 2-0 loss, to the Montreal Impact over the weekend. … A trio of attackers are tied for goals this year in Daniel Salloi, Johnny Russell and Felipe Gutierrez. … KC is 3-2-3 on the road so far this season.<br>About RSL » RSL does enjoy a home-field advantage in 2018 as it sports a 6-1-1 home record through eight matches. … RSL is tied for the second-worst goal differential in MLS with a minus-11 differential. … Midfielder Albert Rusnák is tied for the club lead in goals this year with four. … Four out of RSL’s next six matches are at home.

Grayson Allen sat at the podium in the bowels of Vivint Smart Home Arena, his first professional game behind him. He’s went through pre-draft workouts with the Utah Jazz, and after being picked in the first round, endured a three-day minicamp.

But Monday night, following a summer league win over the San Antonio Spurs, is when it finally hit him.

“It feels real now,” Allen said.

Ahead of Tuesday’s game against the Memphis Grizzlies — a game in which Allen will sit out for rest — the 6-foot-5 guard out of Duke put up an impressive stat line against the Spurs in a 92-76 win with 11 points, eight rebounds and seven assists. He flashed a terrific first step at times. At others, he made high-level passes to shooters on the perimeter.

But Allen wasn’t about to give himself a passing grade, not when he went 4-for-16 shooting from the field. On one sequence in the second half against San Antonio, Allen corralled an offensive rebound but missed a point-blank layup, shook his head and began muttering to himself on his way up the floor.

This is who Allen is, and always has been: fans, coaches, friends and family say there’s nobody more critical of Allen than he is on himself. Yet objectively, the Jazz were pleased with his performance even with an inconsistent jumper.

“I thought he was aggressive and we were pleased to see that,” Utah coach Mike Wells said. “He had eight rebounds and seven assists. He only had two turnovers. He’s only had a few days of practice. We liked that he was able to consistently get into the paint and put pressure on the rim. And when he did get into the paint, he had his eyes open. He played the way we want him to play.”

The acclimation period for rookies is usually significant. In Allen’s case, he’s played precious little 5-on-5 basketball since his final days at Duke. And it wasn’t just Allen on Monday night for the summer league’s star rookies; Atlanta’s Trae Young was 4 of 20 shooting and Spurs guard Lonnie Walker IV was 3 of 16. Only Memphis’ Jaren Jackson Jr. fared well with eight 3-pointers in the Grizzlies’ win over the Hawks.

Allen was able to balance his poor shooting with his floor game — and many of Allen’s misses were on open looks that should start falling as summer progresses. Even with some of his struggles, Allen felt like he belonged. The moment didn’t overwhelm him, especially mentally. When he made a negative play, he kept playing and didn’t let mistakes snowball.

Most importantly, Allen displayed the ability to play both guard spots. He was equally adept to making plays and creating shots off the dribble, or curling into the lane off screens. That versatility is one of the traits that endeared him most to the Jazz during the draft process.

“I felt comfortable,” Allen said. “Obviously the nerves were there. There was anxiousness and excitement, and that led me to speeding up a bit. But, I was comfortable within the offense. I had open looks, some I should’ve knocked down, but I definitely felt comfortable.”

As summer rolls on, Allen would like to shoot better. But keeping his turnovers to a minimum and defending well are priorities as well. Wells said he and the Jazz will continue to do different things with Allen to see how he responds.

“I just want to slow down and let the game come to me,” Allen said. “I want to take the easy shots, take the easy floaters when I get into the lane, take what the defense gives me. I don’t want to play too fast.”

The Utah women’s gymnastics team will host defending national champion UCLA and compete against two Big Ten schools and three Southeastern Conference programs in 2019, when the NCAA will use a new format to determine the national champion.

The Utes will open the season in January against Penn State, according to the framework of the schedule announced Tuesday — with exact dates in many cases to be determined by the Pac-12 Networks’ television schedule. The meet vs. Penn State at the Huntsman Center is booked for Jan. 4 (Friday) or 5 (Saturday). Other meets could be held on Fridays, Saturdays or Sundays.

UCLA’s visit is scheduled the weekend of Feb. 22-24. Utah upset the Bruins last season in Los Angeles, before finishing fifth in the NCAA meet.

The Utes also will host Arizona, California and Michigan. They will visit BYU, Oregon State, Arizona State, Stanford and Georgia in dual meets and join LSU, Missouri and Stanford in the Mardi Gras Invitational on Feb. 15 at St. Charles, Mo.

The NCAA is moving away from the Super Six format at nationals after 25 years, staging a four-team final. That switch brings a change in the region system. Four three-day meets (at Michigan, Georgia, LSU and Oregon State) will determine the eight qualifiers for the NCAA meet, with the top 16 teams receiving first-round byes at regionals. The national meet is April 19-20 at Fort Worth, Texas.

UTAH GYMNASTICS SCHEDULE<br>Jan. 4 or 5 – Penn State.<br>Jan. 11 – at BYU.<br>Jan. 18, 19 or 20 – at Oregon State.<br>Jan. 25, 26 or 27 – at Arizona State.<br>Feb. 1, 2 or 3 – Arizona.<br>Feb. 8, 9 or 10 – California.<br>Feb. 15 – Mardi Gras Invitational at St. Charles, Mo.<br>Feb. 18 – at Stanford.<br>Feb. 22, 23 or 24 – UCLA.<br>March 1 or 2 – Michigan.<br>March 15 – at Georgia.<br>March 22 – Pac-12 Championship (TBA).<br>April 4-6 – NCAA Regionals.<br>April 19-20 – NCAA Finals.

The Utah Jazz this offseason aren’t blowing the doors off anything or anybody. Instead, they’re lulling people to sleep. They’re doing what they were expected to do: Bore you to death, re-signing their guys, keeping open their options for future possibilities, and finding improvement in other ways.

Those other ways are pretty much contained in a cardboard box that is, compared to what some other teams are doing, kind of beige and blah and … well, square.

Dennis Lindsey isn’t proclaiming he will quit if he doesn’t land big-name free agents this offseason or next, a la Magic Johnson. (Those kinds of statements are easy to make when deals are already in place.)

No. The Jazz will improve by … slap your face and pass the No-Doz … growing from within.

That sounds weak, like an excuse teams that can’t make any notable moves give when no ground is gained. But not in the Jazz’s case, aside from designs on staying financially flexible in coming years.

It’s a good bit of tactics competitively. Many teams, were they to keep the status quo, would be tapped out, would have been whatever it is they can or will be. The Jazz, though, are edging upward in the most basic of ways: By holding the line.

Lindsey said it this way: “The Rockets and Golden State Warriors are going to be targets for the rest of us in that next tier of teams. How you go about that is very simply: Thabo [Sefolosha] is going to have to get healthy and defend really well and bang some corner 3s, and Jae Crowder’s going to have to match up with the P.J. Tuckers of the world. And Joe Ingles can’t have any regression in his game. And Dante Exum’s going to have to improve and so is Donovan Mitchell and we’re going to have to get Grayson Allen integrated. If you add a few of those things up that went in our favor after last season, we’re very confident we can put a contending team on the court.”

Notice he didn’t say competitive. He said contending.

Let’s take it player by player.

A Ben Franklin says Mitchell will be better in 2018-19 than in his rookie season. He’ll recognize situations better, take better shots, make better passes, play better defense, be a better leader and be more comfortable in every aspect of his game.

The kid is driven to build on what he started last year and conscientious enough to work hard to make it happen. At Monday night’s Jazz Summer League opener, Mitchell was on the bench, urging players on, giving them advice, sticking his nose in the middle of everything.

Is that the sort of behavior you would expect out of a 21-year-old who is satisfied or sitting still? No, it is not.

Ricky Rubio, who also was in attendance, will continue to find himself in Quin Snyder’s attack. Typically it takes a season for a new addition to get acclimated, especially when he is the team’s quarterback, and Rubio’s progress in that first year was easy to track.

There’s every reason to believe he can be as good as he was in his more efficient moments last season. He may never become a great shooter, but he won’t have to double-clutch as he thinks through whatever it was that Snyder was telling him to do during the previous timeout. He’ll already know, so he’ll just do.

It’s hard to imagine Ingles being much better than what he was last time around. The Jazz can live with that.

Rudy Gobert is bound to be everything he was and more. What he has to do is avoid injury. He missed parts of the toughest stretch of the Jazz schedule in 2017-18, so there’s certainly no guarantee that the team’s great run after he returned would have commenced in any lopsided manner earlier had he been healthy throughout, but this is guaranteed: They would have been better than they were without him.

If Gobert ascends a notch offensively, there’s not a lot of need for his defense to improve in large measure, since he’s already the best, most impactful defender on the planet. It is Gobert’s pride and drive that will push him forward.

Derrick Favors is happy being on the Jazz, demonstrated by his return in unrestricted free agency, alongside the ample contract the team handed him, which by way of its structure will motivate him to earn a greater role via his improved play, or to at least maintain his level of play, or else be sent packing before his deal’s second year, freeing up money for the Jazz to seek outside help.

Exum may be re-signed, and if he is, there’s no best measure for how much better he can be, other than to say he’s certain to improve his showing off of 2017-18 because he spent most of it rehabbing a shoulder injury. When he did return, he showed the explosiveness to the basket, the tantalizing length that is unusual for a guard, the athleticism for which the Jazz drafted him back in 2014, the defense. Improvement is tethered to his good health. There’s no other way to say it.

Crowder only played with the Jazz for three months, not enough time to make any absolute conclusions about his limitations. The Jazz, on the whole, played terrific when he was on the floor with the other starters.

And then there’s Royce O’Neale, who fits the Jazz’s growth model, Sefolosha, whose loss to injury last season hurt the Jazz, and rookie-to-be Allen, who got his first taste of pro basketball against the Spurs on Monday night. He showed moments of savvy/aggression/awareness and signs of early jitters, scattering shots that were easier than he made them look.

He’ll be fine as he settles in, as long as none of the grown men he goes up against punches him in the face.

The Jazz’s strategy is sound, even as teams in the West continue to improve in more dramatic fashion, by signing the best player on God’s green earth, and such. Hello, LeBron to L.A. and Boogie Cousins to Golden State.

Jazz fans are buying in on the subtle path, condoning it, as witnessed by the impressive crowds that showed up, so far, for the summer league. It’s a good vibe, all around.

One that Lindsey is disinclined to disrupt heading through the early stages of the Mitchell-Gobert Era of Jazz basketball.

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

Washington • Sen. Mike Lee spoke Monday with President Donald Trump about a possible nomination to the Supreme Court, though Lee’s office would not elaborate.

The news comes amid a report that the White House is not seriously considering Lee for the vacancy created by the pending retirement of Supreme Court Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy. The nonprofit arm of the Daily Caller said Monday night that Lee is no longer on the short list Trump is weighing ahead of his expected July 9 announcement.

Trump had offered a list of 25 possible nominees for the high court during the 2016 presidential election as a way to assuage concerns by conservatives that he would appoint jurists to their liking. Lee and his brother, Utah Supreme Court Justice Thomas Lee, are still on that list.

But the White House has apparently narrowed that list to a handful the president is now considering.

Trump met Monday with four federal appeals court judges: Brett M. Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, Amul R. Thapar and Raymond Kethledge, The Washington Post reported.

Sen. Lee, who is in Utah for the Fourth of July holiday week, spoke by phone with Trump as well, Lee’s office said, but declined to discuss details of the conversation.

The White House confirmed the call Tuesday afternoon.

“Yesterday, the president spoke on the phone with Senator Mike Lee,” said Raj Shah, the White House’s principal deputy press secretary.

Shah later said that Trump spoke with three more possible candidates on Tuesday.

The Daily Caller News Foundation said in its report Monday that Lee’s past rhetoric about Roe v. Wade could make it hard to win majority support in the Senate. And with Sen. John McCain likely unable to vote while he battles brain cancer and a slim 51-49 GOP majority, Lee could have ended up needing to vote for himself, something that the White House worried about because of the optics, the news outlet said.

Justice Lee declined comment through a court spokesman on any dealings with the president or White House.

Indianapolis • An Indianapolis church has placed statues of Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus in a cage of fencing topped with barbed wired to protest the Trump administration’s zero tolerance immigration policy.

The statues were erected Tuesday morning outside Christ Church Cathedral on downtown Indianapolis’ Monument Circle and surrounded by the fencing.

The Episcopalian church’s dean and rector, the Rev. Stephen Carlsen, says the display that’s part of the church’s “Every Family is Holy Campaign” condemns the nation’s immigration policy that’s holding families in detention centers at the U.S.-Mexico border.

He says the Holy Family was “a homeless family with nowhere to stay” and that the Bible says “we’re supposed to love our neighbors as ourselves.”

President Donald Trump recently ended his administration’s practice of separating families detained at the border.