The Weekly Run is The Salt Lake Tribune’s weekly newsletter on the Utah Jazz. Subscribe here.

Minneapolis • Is it good luck? Or is it actually a bad thing that the Jazz have missed several of the opposing team’s top players on this road trip?

No Chris Paul in Houston. No Anthony Davis in New Orleans. No Dirk Nowitzki in Dallas. And now, the word came out Wednesday morning, no Jimmy Butler and Jeff Teague in Minnesota.

It certainly hasn’t hurt Utah in the win-loss column, as they’re 3-0 on this trip so far, and their chances seem to have improved now tonight against the Wolves.

But it’s also deprived them of the opportunity to see how they fare against some of the best players in the league.

Quin Snyder said he can’t afford to worry about who’s not on the court, though.

Quin Snyder from Jazz shootaround at the Target Center, on opponents on this trip missing some top players: pic.twitter.com/HsEsFQsOBp

— Eric Walden (@tribjazz) October 31, 2018

“I think we can overanalyze all those things. Teams are gonna miss players during the year. Really, for everybody, you hope you get guys that are healthy, your team’s healthy. We’ve had plenty of those situations on our end where we’ve played without Rudy or Ricky or whomever,” he said from Wednesday’s shootaround at the Target Center. “The focus is on Karl-Anthony Towns like the focus was on James Harden; the focus is on [Andrew] Wiggns the way the focus was on Jrue Holiday. On any given night … we’ve played Minnesota when Karl was out and Jimmy was out, and Wiggins took the game over in the third quarter last year. So I don’t think our team is thinking about anything other than — what we should be thinking about is us. That’s the way to approach this.”

Ricky Rubio, meanwhile, added that teams are simple too good to give much thought to how games might have gone had so-and-so been available.

Ricky Rubio, on Jimmy Butler being the latest superstar to miss a game vs. the Jazz on this trip: pic.twitter.com/QF60kpPCYg

— Eric Walden (@tribjazz) October 31, 2018

“This league has a lot of good guys. Of course there’s special guys, like Chris Paul, Anthony Davis, but at the end of the day, there’s a lot of talent in the NBA,” Rubio said. “And sometimes when your main star doesn’t play, sometimes other players step up and play bigger roles. So we gotta be ready for whatever comes. But a win is a win, and we’ll take it. We have to worry about what were doing and improving us as a team, and don’t worry about who we’re facing.”

Week in review

Ricky Rubio played well against the Warriors and dominated against the Pelicans. But he’s struggled offensively in the rest of his games this year. I wrote about his continuing search for consistency. [TRIB]

If it seems like Rudy Gobert is on pace for a million dunks this season, well, you’re only off a little bit. Andy Larsen wrote about the center’s record-breaking pace of slams. [TRIB]

Thabo Sefolosha was eligible to return vs. Dallas but didn’t play. Niang had simply been too good in his role to give up his minutes. [TRIB]

Andy wrote a column about how, with the exception of Golden State, of course, all of the Western Conferences top teams have struggled to some degree. [TRIB]

Andy also did a cool feature about Quin Snyder’s “DAV Program,” which takes the duties of a traditional video intern and instead gives the people involved a potential pathway to NBA coaching opportunities. [TRIB]

During last week’s game against the Rockets in Houston, Donovan Mitchell wore sneakers that paid tribute to slain University of Utah student-athlete Lauren McCluskey. [TRIB]

Other voices

Eric Woodyard of the Deseret News checked in with Jae Crowder, who’s been checking in with former Marquette teammate Butler. [DesNews]

Andrew Sharp of Sports Illustrated writes about how the Jazz’s status as legit contenders mostly depends on just how good Mitchell can become. [SI.com]

Meanwhile, former @tribjazz writer Aaron Falk, who now writes feature stories for UtahJazz.com, asked players about the dietary sacrifices they’ve made to be NBA players. [UtahJazz.com]

And finally, Jazz president Steve Starks was in attendance for the record-setting 18-inning, 7.5-hour World Series Game 3, from which he issued some epic tweets. [Twitter]

The concession stands shut down hours ago so those of us who remain are sharing bags of peanuts. There are no more Dodger and Red Sox fans, only survivors clinging to whatever battery life they have left.

— Steve Starks (@StevenStarks) October 27, 2018

Up next

After the Jazz wrap up the road trip tonight in downtown Minneapolis, they return home for a one-off on Friday vs. Memphis at Vivint Smart Home Arena. That is actually the front end of a back-to-back, as they’ll be in Denver on Saturday to take on the Nuggets. Then, they actually have a three-game homestand: Next Monday vs. the Raptors, Wednesday, Nov. 7 against the Mavericks, and Friday, Nov. 9 against Gordon Hayward and the Boston Celtics.

Provo • Riggs Powell has been cut from BYU’s football team so many times he’s almost lost count.

“Three or four times, at least,” said the 6-foot-2, 220-pound senior from Aptos, Calif.

But when the Cougars face Boise State on Saturday at Albertsons Stadium, the married non-scholarship player, who works 5-15 hours a week as a commercial data analyst at the Utah County Assessors Office to make ends meet, will make his third start of the season at outside linebacker.

He has also been a valuable special teams contributor the past two seasons. And yes, he has a beard card — a doctor’s permission to grow facial hair for medical reasons.

“I love playing football way too much to give it up,” he said. “It is so much fun. You can only play it for so long. You can play basketball and golf forever. You can’t do that with football. You gotta play it when you can.”

Even if it means sacrificing your own money and every bit of free time you have to keep playing, which is what the finance major who will graduate in December has done. His paid internship at the UCAO is just the latest job he’s had since arriving at BYU in 2015 as a preferred walk-on from Cabrillo (Calif.) College, where he played quarterback and safety on a 2012 conference championship team before a church mission to Lyon, France.

He’s also sold DirecTV in Houston, marketed solar energy systems in Orem, and been a financial analyst for Nu Skin Enterprises in Provo, among other jobs.

“To be honest, I’ve been lucky. I’ve been extremely blessed,” he said. “I’m playing college football at BYU, the school I always dreamed of playing for. It’s been worth it.”

Linebackers coach Ed Lamb said Powell, who has appeared in all eight games and made 13 tackles, is a great example of a player who persevered, believed in himself, and kept at it when others told him it was impossible.

“He always shows up with a great attitude, whether he’s a starter or a backup,” Lamb said.

Former BYU coach Bronco Mendenhall and his staff recruited Powell in 2015 as a preferred walk-on, then asked him to skip preseason camp and try out the first day of classes. He got cut, but was told to try again the following spring.

Coach Kalani Sitake and his staff arrived in 2016, and kept Powell on the spring roster, only to cut him again because he had shoulder surgery and didn’t pass a physical. But that worked out for the better because Powell went to Houston that summer to work and met his future wife, Houston Baptist indoor and beach volleyball player Melissa Fuchs, who prepped at Pleasant Grove High in Utah.

Melissa, who began her college career at Central Michigan, married Powell in 2017. She finished her college career playing beach volleyball for the University of Utah last spring and is now playing in Olympian Kerri Walsh Jennings’ new professional league in California.

Powell was the top salesman that summer in Houston and made enough money to keep his college football dreams afloat.

“Best choice I ever made, working in Houston. It has paid for the majority of my school and I met my wife there,” he said. “Last winter semester and this semester are the only times I have had to work during school. So that’s been nice.”

Powell tried out again in the fall of 2016, and made the team as a safety because he had dropped a few pounds working in the Houston heat and humidity. He was on the scout team but got to play in one game, a 51-9 win over UMass.

He was moved to outside linebacker in the spring of 2017, but didn’t get many reps in spring practices and was cut again. He worked for Nu Skin that summer and was invited to try out again before the 2017 season. He appeared in six games on special teams and earned Lamb’s respect for his persistence.

“I once took him off one of our special teams, in order to get more guys rotating through our system, and he was really respectfully upset about that, and said how important it was for him to contribute any way he could,” Lamb said. “So, great example to his teammates.”

Melissa Powell flies back to Utah for BYU home games and lives with a cousin in Los Angeles, where she trains with her pro team and coaches a seventh-grade girls volleyball team. With four games remaining in his college career, Riggs Powell says he has never thought about giving up his dream.

“I thought about transferring a few times, just because I felt like I might not get a shot here,” he said. “The dream was always to come to BYU, like a lot of guys. I did everything I could to make that happen. I got cut three or four times. But I felt like my chance was eventually going to come. That’s why I stayed. And now I am living the dream.”

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

This week’s podcast: It’s curtains for Cumorah

The church surprised many when it announced that large pageants are now “discouraged.”

That same day, leaders of the mother of all Latter-day Saint pageants, the Hill Cumorah Pageant, said that it would end its 81-year run after the 2020 season.

On this week’s podcast, Gerald Argetsinger, who served in the pageant presidency for 12 years and worked as its artistic director for most of the 1990s, laments the loss of this iconic piece of Latter-day Saint dramatic history, discusses the show’s storied past and highlights the impact it had through the decades on member testimonies, missionary efforts and the wider community.

Listen here.

KUER RadioWest also posted a short film about the Palmyra pageant that followed an insurance agent cast as Book of Mormon prophet-editor Mormon.

Meanwhile, in Manti ...

As for central Utah’s Mormon Miracle Pageant, the show will go on as usual next June outside Manti’s majestic temple, but its prospects in 2020 and beyond are in question.

Pageant President Milton Olsen says community players are in talks about continuing the show after 2019, perhaps at a new location. He told The Tribune on Wednesday that the church’s temple department would like it off the temple grounds, but he added that a final decision has yet to be made.

Another change may come next year to the pageant: namely, its name: the Mormon Miracle Pageant.

The word “Mormon” is out, under the faith’s new style guidelines, so Olsen says the “likelihood is yes” — the show will have a new title when it is performed June 13-15 and 18-22.

Several names have been floated, he says, including simply the Manti Pageant, the most common moniker for the summertime event.

A new Church News

The Church News is no longer LDS.

OK, by that we mean that the faith’s weekly newspaper — which is also a tabloid insert in the church-owned Deseret News — no longer includes “LDS” in its website address and social media profiles.

It now can be found online at thechurchnews.com.

This move honors the counsel of President Russell M. Nelson to stop using “Mormon” and “LDS” as shorthand for the church or its members.

“As an official publication of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we are committed to following the First Presidency and using the inspired and official name of the church in the Church News,” Editor Sarah Jane Weaver explained.

Prophet ‘unleashed’

Russell M. Nelson certainly isn’t afraid to shake things up. The whirlwind of change since he took the faith’s helm proves that.

In fact, says the person closest to him, he thrives on it.

“He thinks outside the box,” his wife, Wendy Nelson, says in a video interview on the church’s Newsroom website. “If it’s not outside the box, he’s not that interested in it.”

Change the priesthood quorums? You bet. Shorten Sunday services? Sure. End home and visiting teaching? Yeah, here’s another approach.

“He's not afraid to do something different,” Wendy Nelson says. “If we're really preparing the church and the world for the Second Coming of the savior, he is sincere about that. He doesn't want us spending money, time, energy on anything that isn't really focused on that.”

She’s even witnessed a transformation within her husband.

“I have seen him changing in the last 10 months,” she says. “It is as though he's been unleashed. He's free to finally do what he came to earth to do. … He's free to follow through with things he's been concerned about but could never do. Now that he's president of [the church], he can do those things.”

Wendy Nelson says her 94-year-old spouse, who just returned with her from a South American tour, is defying his age and discovering new contentment.

“I see the Lord pouring strength into him,” she says. “ … I've seen him become younger. I've seen him become happier because he's doing what he came to earth to do.”

Oaks again addresses the law and love

During his first news conference as first counselor in the governing First Presidency, when asked about LGBT issues within the faith, Dallin H. Oaks said church leaders must “teach love and also the commandments of God … It’s the love of the Lord [balanced with] the law of the Lord.”

He returned to that topic this week in a speech at Brigham Young University-Idaho — echoing a similar sermon he gave in the October 2009 General Conference.

According to a transcript, here is what Oaks, a former Utah Supreme Court justice, told some 15,000 BYU-Idaho students Tuesday:

• “How do we draw the line in showing love without seeming to abandon our commitment to the truths we understand about God’s law and the covenants we have made? Surely, we do not follow the extreme of severing family relationships or avoiding all contacts with those whose behavior we disapprove. And just as surely, we should seek to avoid seeming to support or condone behavior that violates the laws of God.”

• “I know from letters that some faithful parents struggle where to draw the line in family gatherings where a son or daughter wants to include their cohabitating partner. One parent wrote that they included the couple but declined to host them overnight. I cite that as an illustration of individual balancing, not as a proposed rule.”

In the latest General Conference, Oaks drew criticism from some quarters for decrying same-sex marriage, abortion and euthanasia.

“Our knowledge of God’s revealed plan of salvation requires us to oppose many of the current social and legal pressures to retreat from traditional marriage,” he said, “or to make changes that confuse or alter gender or homogenize the differences between men and women.”

Oaks noted then and this week that such stances often come under fire. “As we attempt to apply this balance [of love and law],” he said Tuesday, “we can expect opposition, but the Lord has taught us not to fear it.”

Red Cross to the rescue

The church certainly isn’t a driving force behind the American Red Cross, but it does help keep the humanitarian organization’s relief efforts rolling.

To that point, the faith donated $1.5 million last week so the Red Cross could buy 10 new emergency response vehicles.

That contribution, together with earlier assistance, earned the church the elite distinction of “mission leader,” reserved for partners that donate at least $3 million a year to the Red Cross.

“The partnership among the American Red Cross and the church spans nearly a century since working together on humanitarian relief efforts during World War I,” Bishop Dean M. Davies of the church’s Presiding Bishopric said in a news release. “We recognize and appreciate the skill and expertise the Red Cross organization and their people bring to bear when people need it most and are pleased to join hands with them in reaching out to those in need.”

The alliance proved especially effective in the wake of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria last year and Florence and Michael this year.

“While Red Cross volunteers [were] operating shelters, serving meals and distributing relief supplies,” Davies said, “church volunteers were cutting up trees, clearing debris and cleaning out flooded homes.”

Adios, South America

President Russell M. Nelson capped his nine-day, five-nation South American tour by dedicating the Concepción Chile Temple, that nation’s second Latter-day Saint temple.

“At lunch [Saturday] I told one of our distinguished guests that the safest place to be in Chile in an earthquake is in the temple in Concepcion,” Nelson told more than 1,450 youths the night before Sunday’s dedication. “It's the safest place physically and spiritually. The temple is a holy place. It's like heaven on earth.”

Nelson and his entourage, including apostle Gary E. Stevenson, also visited Uruguay, where, according to a news release, the 94-year-old prophet urged Latter-day Saint parents to teach their children to be missionaries, learn another language, get a good education and be good citizens.

“In my position, it’s often my opportunity to meet with government leaders,” he said. “Rather routinely they say that ‘your members are our very best citizens.’ That pleases me very much.”

The delegation previously made stops in Paraguay, Bolivia and Peru.

In other South American news, the church announced open house plans from Nov. 3 to 24 for the Barranquilla Temple, the second in Colombia. The dedication is set for Dec. 9.

“We have millions [of members] in this South American continent,” Nelson said in a news release. “And it's not just numbers; it's strength, it's power, it's faith. It's almost palpable.”

New help, hope for abuse victims

In conjunction with National Domestic Violence Awareness Month in October, the church unveiled a new website — abuse.lds.org — to provide help, hope, healing and protection for abuse victims.

For those in crisis, the website lists emergency phone numbers to help lines and links to additional online resources. It also includes personal accounts to help abuse survivors recover, tips for assisting abuse victims, ideas for preventing abuse, along with resources for church leaders to help protect members and report abuse.

Priority one, the site states, is ensuring the safety of victims and then comforting and reassuring them that they are not to blame for the abuse.

“Survivors need to hear they aren’t at fault and that Heavenly Father still loves them and has never stopped. They need to hear it over and over again,” child-protection advocate Deondra Brown, an abuse survivor and part of the The 5 Browns piano quintet, said in a news release. “The fact that the church is willing to say ‘we hear you’ and offer resources and practical tools is a powerful statement. I hope survivors of abuse will feel they are not alone and that they don’t need to suffer in silence.”

Post-Pittsburgh mourning

The church expressed its “deepest grief and solidarity with our Jewish friends” everywhere after the deadly shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue.

“Houses of worship should be safe, inviolate places for people of all faiths to join in sacred fellowship and seek communion with God,” the church stated in a news release. “We condemn the environment of hate-filled rhetoric that has become so prevalent. Anti-Semitism has no place in our society. It is the responsibility of good people everywhere to speak out and stand up for each other’s rights to worship and live peacefully.”

Days before the killings, a Deseret News story noted that Nelson had condemned mass shootings as a “great offense to God.”

Earlier this year, after gunfire killed 17 at a high school Parkland, Fla., the Latter-day Saint leader criticized U.S. laws “that allow guns to go to people who shouldn’t have them.”

Imagine Dragons? Imagine awards.

Hollywood is a believer in “Believer.”

The documentary about Imagine Dragons frontman (and Latter-day Saint) Dan Reynolds and the strained relations between his church and its LGBTQ members will receive the Hollywood Documentary Award on Nov. 4 at the 22nd annual Hollywood Film Awards, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Quote of the week

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

Occasionally, The Salt Lake Tribune’s political reporters and columnists chat about the hottest topics of the week. The following is a lightly edited transcript of their conversation.

Benjamin Wood (reporter): Welcome to the Trib Caucus Slack chat, which convenes weekly during the legislative session but also meets in special caucus during times of fiscal crisis, war, natural disasters or emergencies in the affairs of state.

In this case, I have issued a call of the caucus for a special Halloween slack chat to discuss next week’s midterm elections.

Let’s start with the big topic — the 4th Congressional District — which polling suggests is a neck-and-neck race between Nancy Pelosi and a bag of campaign donations wearing glasses and a fake mustache.

Does anyone have a prediction, hot take or burning question for the Love/McAdams matchup?

Lee Davidson (reporter): I think the Mia Love-Ben McAdams race is too close to call, really — but momentum in the polls seems to be on McAdams' side.

I do predict this is maybe just the first election between the two, with at least one more to come. If Love loses, I see her easily running to regain her seat in two years. If McAdams wins, ditto — unless Democrats draft him as their best shot to run for governor in 2020. In short, my crystal ball does see two more years of ongoing political attacks between the pair.

Wood:

Robert Gehrke (columnist): Yeah. I’m with Lee. I think Ben McAdams wins the 4th District .... in 2020. This year is gonna be sooo close. I’d guess somewhere between 1,000 and 1,500 votes either way. Which I guess considering this race was decided by about 750 votes in 2012, that’s a blowout.

Davidson: This has been Love’s race to lose, and she has suffered some self-inflicted wounds. She raised $1 million for a primary race that was never held. When the FEC questioned it, she fought back instead of simply reallocating and refunding money (which she eventually did anyway).

When she said the FEC had finally ruled in her favor and cleared her, she urged reporters to call the FEC to verify it. The FEC then had no comment, leading to an embarrassing story for her. After pressure from her, the FEC did send an email but it wasn’t quite the full clearance she claimed — but she insisted it was, and even called for “unethical” McAdams to withdraw from the race for saying otherwise.

She then said an outside group had been forced to withdraw ads about its claims about the $1 million, which proved to be false. Lately, her campaign has tried to make the race about whether a McAdams win will make Nancy Pelosi the new House speaker, instead of focusing on local issues — which smacks of a desperation move. Etc. Etc. The unforced errors have hurt her as McAdams has gained in the polls.

Bethany Rodgers (reporter): Do you think the campaign finance question itself has hurt Love as much as her reaction to it?

Gehrke: Her campaign is convinced all the attention paid to the FEC matter has really hurt her. Kept her from getting back on message as we saw that lead whittled away from 9 points to a tie.

Wood: We should note that “all the attention” was largely driven by her side, as Lee illustrated above.

The battle between the FEC and Rep. Mia Love continues with yet another email about her fundraising practiceshttps://t.co/tSQpmm0azp

— The Salt Lake Tribune (@sltrib) October 31, 2018

Taylor Stevens (reporter): We did see Nathan Evershed, the Republican candidate for district attorney, face some trouble for this back in September. He exceeded campaign spending caps and returned $18,000 in campaign funds. But he basically said, “Sorry, my bad” and returned it, and that hasn’t been a major thrust of that campaign ever since.

Wood: He said “sorry, my bad” after first telling me the story was a “nothing-burger.”

Stevens: A new poll from KUTV is showing McAdams up 6 points over Love. It will be interesting to see if that really marks a change in the tide of this election or if that’s an aberration, as some have argued.

Wood: But that’s just one of those dirty robo-polls that don’t count, per Love’s campaign.

Gehrke: With respect to the good folks at KUTV, I don’t believe that 6.5-point McAdams lead at all.

Wood: HOT TAKE!

Gehrke: The same poll had Romney up 52-37 in the 4th District. Do we really think Mitt will only win the 4th by 15? He won it 67-30 when he ran for president.

Wood: Yeah that portion of the poll was a red flag. But the favorability numbers largely tracked.

Gehrke: The recent Trib poll had Romney 59-23. So the KUTV poll has some real problems somewhere, or those races have changed a lot ... and there’s nothing to make me believe that the dynamics of the race have actually changed.

Wood: Well the Trib’s polls are always off by 5 points, again per Love’s team.

Davidson: Remember, the Tribune poll and a New York Times poll both have the 4th District as tied.

Wood: New York Times? Never heard of 'em.

Gehrke: The KUTV poll also had McAdams winning 23 percent of Republicans (ours had him winning 15 percent). And they had him dominating among unaffiliateds, winning 87 percent of them (compared to 61 percent in our poll).

Wood: That unaffiliated number is, objectively, shocking

Gehrke: I think based on the direction this race has been moving, McAdams probably pulls it out. But it’ll be in that 1,000 to 1,500 vote margin.

Davidson: We had some fun with early voting numbers yesterday. They may not mean much. But we multiplied the number of votes by party so far by the percentage of support that our poll says candidates have in each party. In short, it suggested that McAdams may be winning 47k to 44k.

The Love folk didn’t dispute that, interestingly. But they said Democrats tend to vote early, and Republicans take their time — but in the past have come in strong for Love.

Eighty-five percent of voters in the district are in Salt Lake County, 11 percent in Utah County. It will be interesting to see how big of a margin that Love must win by in Utah County to win the election. It may be a lot.

Wood: OK, who has a non-CD4 Hot Take and/or burning question?

[Insert medical marijuana joke there^]

Gehrke: I think this DA race between Sim Gill and Nathan Evershed could be closer than some people think. Gill has been taking some hard shots over turnover in the office (See Taylor’s story) , from disgruntled cops and regarding how he’s handled sexual assault cases. He probably wins, but this is usually a pretty competitive race and could be closer than people think.

“In the last two years, we lost over 30 percent of the district attorney employees,” @nathanevershed says. “They are leaving because of politics within the office. We are losing experienced attorneys and staff, and that costs taxpayers as well as victims.”https://t.co/wz654UI6od

— The Salt Lake Tribune (@sltrib) October 30, 2018

Wood: The county council has at-large Republican members, so the county is not the blue lock some tend to think it is. I see the DA’s race as likely more competitive than the sheriff’s race, but who really knows?

Rodgers: Has there been any polling in that race?

Gehrke: I could make up some numbers, if you’d like, since polling lower profile races is hard. Let’s say Gill 32, Evershed 27, 40 percent undecided.

#FakePolls

Wood: HOT TAKE!

Davidson: Of course, the Tribune endorsed Sim Gill. That could put Evershed over the top.

Just kidding.

Rodgers: Or are you ...

The @sltrib released a series of endorsements in recent weeks that inspired many readers to reach out with questions and concerns.

On the latest episode of @TribTalk, The Trib's owner explains who the paper endorsed and why.https://t.co/pQoFbUGpO5

— The Salt Lake Tribune (@sltrib) October 31, 2018

Stevens: Interestingly, the sheriff’s race has some similar characteristics to the district attorney’s race. In both, a Republican insider in the office is challenging his Democrat boss. And both are using office politics as a major platform.

Davidson: Same is in the county clerk race.

Wood: 10 points to anyone who can name the GOP clerk candidate without looking it up.

Gehrke: Rozan Mitchell.

Stevens: Rozan Mitchell

Wood: BOOM!

Stevens: Gehrke beat me to it!

Gehrke: That has been an interesting dynamic hasn’t it? I don’t know that it resonates all that much with voters who don’t really care as much who sits in which desk, as long as the job gets done. But what do I know?

Rodgers: I wonder whether centering a campaign on internal office politics is a good strategy, though.

Wood: Good point. That’s a literal inside-politics fight

Stevens: It certainly might make the office dynamics more uncomfortable come January, no matter who wins.

Rodgers: Yeah, awkward!

Gehrke: Rozan has been an elections officer under Sherrie Swensen for years. She’s very sharp and competent. I was a little surprised when she ran against her boss though.

Stevens: Speaking of office politics and the county clerk’s race, that one already has had an impact on the office. Mitchell is taking an extended leave of absence because she says the environment became too toxic.

Wood: What does Sim Gill do next if he loses?

Gehrke: I think if he loses, Sim finishes writing his philosophy book. If he wins by a big margin, he’ll have people pushing him to run for AG.

I’m curious where ya’ll think the propositions are going to end up. I have a feeling that Prop. 4 may be the only one that gets across the finish line.

Wood: HOT TAKE!

Gehrke: The hottest of hot takes.

Wood: Q1 started in a losing position, but they’ve blitzed the ads in the final weeks. I expect narrow margins either way for Prop 2 and 3

Davidson: I think Prop 2 will be close, and I still think it passes. Watch that prediction go up in smoke (joke intended).

Wood: Zing!

Davidson: I do think that Prop 4, to create an independent commission to recommend political district boundaries, will likely coast to victory. As supporters say, it’s hard to support gerrymandering. The one potential problem is where the funding has come for the Better Boundaries effort: 69 percent is from out-of-state, and most big donors are Democrats or left-leaning groups. More than half of the group’s money came from just one donor: the Action Now Initiative, an advocacy group founded by billionaires John and Laura Arnold of Texas.

Such funding allowed Senate President Wayne Niederhauser to claim that the proposition is not really about better boundaries, “just better boundaries for Democrats.” He says its real aim is to create a safe congressional district for Democrats in Utah. Supporters say Republicans have gerrymandered districts for decades to hurt Democrats unfairly here.

Advertisements in favor of creating an independent commission to draw Utah’s political boundaries compare gerrymandering to how children left to cut their own cake come up with unfair slices that serve themselveshttps://t.co/684SMkuT7I

— The Salt Lake Tribune (@sltrib) October 31, 2018

Rodgers: Utah Patients Coalition just sent out their election night party invitation. But I think, with the promise of a special session on medical marijuana, they’re feeling celebratory either way the Prop 2 vote goes. (edited)

Wood: And there’s literally no organized opposition to Prop 4. Everything else has someone or something fighting it (however belatedly).

Gehrke: Bethany, is it your sense that the margin on Prop 2 (pass or fail) does anything in terms of the leverage the advocates has as they keep tinkering with the compromise language (as you reported last week)?

Rodgers: I definitely think that the Prop 2 vote will make a difference during the session. Christine Stenquist with TRUCE Utah says medical marijuana advocates will essentially be at the mercy of lawmakers if the proposition goes down. The folks with the Utah Patients Coalition seem to feel more confident that they’ll maintain some bargaining power, but I’m sure they’ll be in better position if the voters speak loudly in favor of medical cannabis.

Wood: Considering that the whole reason this is on the ballot is because lawmakers couldn’t get an otherwise-popular proposal across the finish line... I think the margin matters.

Gehrke: I think Prop. 3, to expand Medicaid, is in some real trouble. The polling on that one was tepid, even before they got any opposition. And I think Question 1, the gas tax increase for education (to simplify it) will probably fail. I think voters hate to raise their own taxes and aren’t willing to put their money where their mouth is.

Davidson: They also wonder why gas taxes would go up to pay for schools. When confused, vote no — that’s the usual rule of thumb.

Stevens: Our own polling shows 59 percent of Utah voters are in favor of Proposition 3, though, which is up slightly from a similar poll in June.

Wood: Q1 did not connect with voters they way Our Schools Now hopes. Whatever goodwill the public has for education funding, it’s pretty clear the gas tax replacement scheme wasn’t what the state at large was looking for.

The best thing that could happen for Q1 supporters is if it passes by the narrowest of narrow margins, like 50.1 to 49.9

Stevens: HOT TAKE

Wood: HOT TAKE!

Gehrke: Yeah. The education advocates cut this deal with the Legislature and it ends up being a real problem because the concept they came up with was way too complicated. I tried to explain it but I have heard from a lot of people who A. Don’t get why gas money going to roads helps schools. B. Don’t trust the Legislature to keep its promise to get money to schools. C. Think schools are run by fat cat bureaucrats who get quarter-million-dollar salaries.

Wood: This is leading nicely into my burning question. It’s an open secret Speaker Hughes is looking at a run for governor in 2020. Does it hurt him at all that we had an unprecedented number of initiatives under his watch? And what if all or some pass?

Rodgers: He’s definitely trying to draw attention to his work brokering a compromise in the medical cannabis debate — maybe getting ahead of the criticism there.

Gehrke: Good point, Bethany. He’ll run as the guy who brokered the medical marijuana compromise and got Operation Rio Grande off the ground. I’m not sure the other two will hurt him, especially if they fail

Wood: That’s a weird horn to toot, though: “I brokered a last-minute compromise!... after failing to broker compromises in general sessions.”

Davidson: It doesn’t help. But people have short memories, so it doesn’t hurt much either. They will probably remember work on Rio Grande and the homeless more.

Gehrke: One other potential gubernatorial candidate who has got a little bump this election has been Spencer Cox. I suspect a lot of us have seen his get-out-the-vote ads.

Wood: Stellar ad work

Utah was ranked 39th in the national for voter turnout in the 2016 election. While we may be the home of funeral potatoes, let's not have a funeral for democracy. Register to vote today. pic.twitter.com/8PENwTsiM9

— Vote Utah (@ElectionsUtah) October 9, 2018

Gehrke: It’s the kind of name-ID boosting he needs to be doing now to expand his base beyond his Twitter followers.

Wood: It also, shrewdly, never says his name

Utah's pioneers would be ashamed. Make them proud - register to vote. pic.twitter.com/9sdsuZ4iHj

— Vote Utah (@ElectionsUtah) October 24, 2018

Stevens: I’ve got to say those campaign videos have the most “Utah” essence of anything I’ve seen since the Legislature rapped ‘Fresh Prints of Bills Here’.

Wood: I’m triggered.

Gehrke: I’m going to throw out one last Hot Take: Dems will flip two House seats and a Senate seat in the state Legislature. But Republicans might take another House seat back.

Wood: So Dems+1 in each chamber?

Gehrke: If I had to guess, I think the Dems hold onto theirs. So +2 House, +1 Senate.

Wood: Interesting. Still not enough to break the veto-proof (or special session-proof?) GOP majority

Gehrke: Suzanne Harrison’s running strong for a seat she lost by 5 votes two years ago. Former Rep. LuWanna Shurtliff potentially flipping Dixon Pitcher’s seat. Brian Zehdner who took over Brian Shiazowa’s Cottonwood Heights Senate seat is in a little trouble.

Wood: Zehnder in a little trouble from Utah Board of Education member Kathleen Riebe, for the #uted fans out there.

Gehrke: On the Dems side, Rep. Karen Kwan won a swing district and is fighting to hold onto that one. And longtime Rep. Sue Duckworth, who narrowly won two years ago, is in a battle with Barbara Stallone, who is campaigning hard.

(Pitcher, by the way, retired. So it's an open seat).

Does that qualify as BLUE WAVE?

Davidson: In Utah, yes

Wood: Only if McAdams also wins

Gehrke: One more Hot Take. Mitt Romney will win the U.S. Senate race.

Wood: HOT TAAAAAAAAAKE!

Gehrke:

Wood: Well guys, we can’t get any hotter than that without melting. Keep your calendars free because if Amendment C passes we may need to caucus every single day.

Readers, do you have any hot takes for the 2018 election? Are there other emergencies in the affairs of state that require a special chat of the Trib Caucus? Let us know in the comments and remember to check sltrib.com and follow @TribCaucus on Twitter for updates.

Drug Safe Utah, the group focused on defeating Proposition 2, had the biggest spending day of its existence on Oct. 3, the eve of the announcement that both sides of the medical marijuana debate were burying the hatchet.

That day, the political issues committee shelled out $5,000 for field work, another $5,000 on consulting services and more than $240,000 for marketing and advertising, according to financial disclosures posted this week.

On Oct. 4, prominent figures on both sides of the medical cannabis discussion appeared with Utah leaders to declare that they’d reached a “shared vision” for medical marijuana in the state. Gov. Gary Herbert promised to call a special session where lawmakers could review drafted legislation that would act as an alternative to Prop 2.

As part of the agreement, parties in the negotiation said they’d be de-escalating their respective campaigns for and against the ballot initiative. House Speaker Greg Hughes has credited the accord with staving off a rancorous advertising war.

But the financial disclosure covering the period from Sept. 27 to Oct. 25 show Drug Safe Utah invested heavily in ads right before the accord was announced and has continued putting money into its campaign since then. The group spent nearly $412,000 over the reporting timeframe, about $148,700 of that since the so-called compromise was announced.

The anti-initiative coalition heavily funded by Utah developers Walter J. Plumb III and Kem Gardner wasn’t part of the negotiations or bound to the de-escalation pact. However, several of the group’s heavyweights — The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Utah Medical Association, for instance — did participate in the talks.

Connor Boyack, part of the pro-initiative camp, said he's not losing sleep over the campaign waged by Drug Safe Utah. His group, Utah Patients Coalition, was part of the agreement and thus backed off a significant ad buy it had planned to make.

But Boyack said his group is able to disseminate its message without spending on television or radio spots.

“They [Drug Safe Utah] don’t have the built-in social network of very active people interested in spreading the message like we do,” Boyack said. “And so, they have to pay for media to put their propaganda on the airwaves.”

The Utah Medical Association did contribute more than $21,000 to Drug Safe Utah in the weeks after the compromise. Boyack said he wouldn’t necessarily view that as a violation of the de-escalation agreement, unless the money were used for television or radio ads.

Other PICs created to promote or undermine Prop 2 were considerably less active during the most recent reporting period. The Utah Patients Coalition raised about $13,900 and spent about $34,000, largely on campaign consultants and yard signs. A $2,000 speaking fee went to former state Sen. Mark Madsen, who traveled from Peru to speak at the press conference announcing the consensus legislation.

Boyack said that Madsen, an early proponent of bringing medical marijuana to Utah, also participated in a few private meetings with the Utah Patients Coalition. The stipend was meant to cover Madsen’s work with the coalition while he was in town, he added.

Truth About Proposition 2, another group supported by Plumb, has drawn some attention by driving a “mobile pot shop” (it doesn’t actually contain any cannabis) around the state to warn people about the ballot initiative. But the group only disclosed about $1,000 in spending over the most recent reporting period.

The group Patients and Families for Prop 2 hasn’t yet filed any financial disclosures, according to the state’s website.

Representatives of Drug Safe Utah did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Washington - Tuesday morning brought a textbook illustration of Trumponomics.

Under this economic theory — defined roughly as "when it's sunny, credit me; when it rains, blame them" — President Trump has been claiming sole responsibility for a bull market that began nearly eight years before his presidency.

But this month, wild swings in the market threaten to erase the year's gains, and on Tuesday, Trump offered an explanation: The Democrats did it! The market "is now taking a little pause — people want to see what happens with the Midterms," he tweeted. "If you want your Stocks to go down, I strongly suggest voting Democrat."

Most attribute the swoon to higher tariffs set off by Trump's trade war and higher interest rates aggravated by Trump's tax cut. But Trumponomics holds otherwise.

Previous lessons from Trumponomics 101:

During the campaign, Trump said that official unemployment figures were "phony" and a "hoax" and that the rate was really as high as 42 percent. Now he highlights the official figures as evidence of his success.

During the campaign, the rising stock market was "a big, fat, ugly bubble." After his election, it became a reflection of Trumpian genius — at least until Democrats caused it to tank.

Less than three hours after his stock-market tweet Tuesday, Trump issued a new boast: "Consumer Confidence hits highest level since 2000." To summarize: Blame Democrats for stocks going down but give Trump credit for confidence simultaneously going up.

In fairness, the theory of Trumponomics is more complex than merely blaming Democrats (or the Federal Reserve) for bad things. It also rests on the presumption that Democrats are evil and their ideas ruinous. This can be seen in a report released by the White House last week, by the president's Council of Economic Advisers.

Titled "The Opportunity Costs of Socialism," the report finds that Democrats who wish to expand the popular Medicare program into Medicare-for-all are in league with Vladimir Lenin, Mao Zedong and other leaders whose policies have resulted in "deaths in purges, massacres, concentration camps, forced migration, and both escape attempts and famines."

The White House economists' evidence tying today's Democrats to murderous figures from the 20th century? They used a similar word.

Mao "described 'the ruthless economic exploitation and political oppression of the peasants by the landlord class,'" the White House writes. "Expressing similar concerns, current American senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have stated that 'large corporations … exploit human misery and insecurity.'"

Further, the council argues, "The socialist narrative names the oppressors of the vulnerable, such as the bourgeoisie (Marx), kulaks (Lenin), landlords (Mao), and giant corporations (Sanders and Warren)."

From there, the White House officials argue that certain Democrats' health-care proposals "are similar in spirit to Lenin and Mao" and on par with communist dictators' disastrous attempts at forced collectivization of agriculture. With an intellectual rigor closer to Groucho than Karl, the White House lists socialists alternately as "Marx, Stalin, Senator Sanders, Senator Warren, and Fidel Castro," and as "Karl Marx to Vladimir Lenin to Mao Zedong to current American socialists."

There may be sound reasons to oppose single-payer health care, but basing 21st-century health-care policy on an analysis of Soviet agriculture is like basing the Nuclear Posture Review on experiences in the Boer War. Unsurprisingly, this treatise has some problems.

First, if it's true that any whiff of socialism puts us on the slippery slope to the Killing Fields, then we'll also have to do away with Social Security and Medicare — which Trump claims to love. The White House economists also have trouble dismissing modern-day socialism in the Nordic countries, which enjoy the world's highest quality of life; they attempt to debunk Nordic success by pointing to the high price of pickup trucks there, a curious metric.

If the same academic rigor were applied to Trump, we could use superficial similarities to come up with other compelling theories:

Because Trump shoved the prime minister of Montenegro, he is virtually indistinguishable from Attila the Hun, who terrorized and destroyed Eastern Europe.

Because Trump describes peaceful protesters as a "mob" that has to be defeated, he's the same as Pol Pot, who said "he who protests is an enemy" — and killed one-fifth of his population.

Trump is undiplomatic — just like Genghis Khan. Trump can be erratic — just like Ivan the Terrible. Trump can be cruel — just like Vlad the Impaler.

(And let's not create a Fuhrer by making Hitler comparisons.)

When you start from a place of intellectual dishonesty, there is no telling where you'll end up. That is the very foundation of Trumponomics.

Follow Dana Milbank on Twitter, @Milbank.

If you’ve been online today, you may have seen a photo making the rounds of a Utah DMV employee dressed as a sloth.

The costume is a nod to the Disney movie Zootopia, where a scene shows a DMV operated by painfully slow-moving sloths.

While the viral photo is real — and really funny — it wasn’t taken in Utah.

A reverse Google image search shows it was taken at a Southern California DMV last year. The photo of the DMV worker went viral in 2017 after someone posted it on Reddit.

This year, it appears people began sharing the photo again after a Provo man posted the image on Facebook this Tuesday with this caption: “Someone at the Utah DMV dressed as a sloth”.

The photo spread on Twitter with the incorrect caption. Even Utah Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox retweeted it complete with the hashtag #winning.

So if anyone at the DMV is looking for a costume next year, here’s a suggestion that will likely get a big reaction.

#Winning https://t.co/yxB1Q4N6ar

— Spencer Cox (@SpencerJCox) October 31, 2018

Utah's basketball exhibition opponent is good enough offensively to test the Utes' defense, and coach Larry Krystkowiak is looking for a better initial effort than his team showed in last weekend's closed scrimmage at Saint Mary's.

The Utes will stage their only public exhibition game of the preseason, meeting NAIA member College of Idaho on Thursday at the Huntsman Center.

Utah played three 20-minute periods Saturday at Saint Mary’s. By Krystkowiak’s account, the Utes lost the first segment by 15 points and won the second part by 15, then the last period was about even. He was disappointed about how the Utes let offensive frustration become “baggage” that affected their defense in the first 20 minutes. “That’s not in Utah’s DNA,” he said after Wednesday’s practice.

As with all contests against outside opponents, Krystkowiak liked being able to show film of Utah's mistakes and endorsed the players' response this week. The Utes will open the regular season Nov. 8 at home vs. Maine.

Utah’s projected starting lineup Thursday includes guards Sedrick Barefield and Charles Jones Jr., forwards Donnie Tillman and Timmy Allen and center Novak Topalovic, although senior guard Parker Van Dyke may start, Krystkowiak said. Vante Hendrix and Both Gach are among the players solidly in the rotation.

Forward/center Jayce Johnson, who broke a bone in his foot in early October, received a favorable update Monday, Krystkowiak said, but has not been cleared to play.

The Utes have hosted College of Idaho in regular-season games twice, winning 72-38 in 2012 and 115-74 in 2015. The Yotes are coached by Colby Blaine, who has succeeded former Utah assistant Scott Garson this season after assisting him for four years. Blaine is a nephew of the late Tim Blaine, one of Krystkowiak's high school coaches in Montana.

College of Idaho has played two games this month, beating New Hope Christian 88-74 and defeating Salish Kootenai 128-94 in an Oct. 12-13 tournament.

After taking the Yotes to the national semifinals, Garson left in April to become a Santa Clara assistant and Blaine was promoted.

Utah women 118, Westminster 80

Megan Huff and Dre’Una Edwards each scored 20 points and redshirt freshman Dru Gylten posted 16 assists as the Ute women’s team defeated Westminster College in an exhibition game Wednesday morning in front of 5,009 fans — mostly elementary school children in Halloween costumes. Gylten’s assist total would have been a school record, in a regular-season game.

Denise Gonzalez scored 26 points for the Griffins, who trailed 54-45 at halftime. Utah will open the regular season next Wednesday at Nevada.

Great 118-80 exhibition win over Westminster to kick off the 2018-2019 season! Thanks to all 3,300+ elementary school students from the Greater Salt Lake for attending our 3rd annual Future Scholars Field Trip Day! #GoUtes #Elevate pic.twitter.com/igabeG02D4

— Utah WBasketball (@UTAHWBB) October 31, 2018

Minneapolis • With no Jimmy Butler and no Jeff Teague on Wednesday night, the Timberwolves appeared to be short-handed going up against the Jazz.

Apparently nobody told Derrick Rose.

The former MVP and onetime brief Jazz acquisition erupted for a career-high 50 points Wednesday at the Target Center, as Minnesota ended Utah’s three-game wininng streak with a 128-125 victory.

Adding injury to insult, Donovan Mitchell left the game in the key final minutes with right hamstring tightness. He will be re-evaluated Thursday.

While Rose was clutch late, scoring 34 of his points after halftime, the Jazz said the game may have actually been determined early, when their lack of perimeter containment allowed the Wolves to get rolling from the outset.

“We gotta start better. We can look at the last quarter, the last minute, but we gave them confidence in the first quarter and then we were trailing the whole game,” said center Rudy Gobert. “It’s hard to win a basketball game against a team that has a lot of confidence. We gave them confidence. That’s the big takeaway.”

Indeed, Minnesota shot 59.1 percent in the first quarter to lead 32-25. The Wolves were hitting 56.5 percent from the field, and 57.1 percent from deep to take a 65-56 halftime advantage. (They finished the game making 58.1 percent of their shots and 48 percent of their 3s.)

Rose, who was technically a member of Utah’s roster as part of last year’s Jae Crowder trade, though he never suited up before being waived days later, turned in a vintage performance.

Despite years of serious injury issues, he looked deft and elusive, snaking to the rim for lay-ins; beating his man off the dribble and stopping on a dime for midrange pull-ups; nailing his open looks from beyond the arc.

He had 16 points at the break, and hadn’t done anything yet.

Jae Crowder, postgame pic.twitter.com/li35OjzblN

— Eric Walden (@tribjazz) November 1, 2018

“He had it going, he was confident. He was hitting pull-up jumpers, he was confident getting into the paint,” Crowder noted. “We just gotta find a way — good teams always find a way to win games like this. We’re building, we’re trying, and we got a lot more games to go. … We have to find a way somehow.”

While Rose continued his one-man show in the third quarter — hitting 9 of 11 shots and scoring 19 points — the Jazz started clawing back.

Mitchell himself began to heat up, scoring 16 points on 7-of-10 shooting in the quarter. More importantly, the Jazz started turning the other Wolves into bystanders.

The defensive intensity picked up, guys were able to better stick with their man, rotations improved.

The Jazz’s offense followed suit, with the ball going high and inside for lobs to Gobert (who finished with 22 points and 13 rebounds), and moving crisply around the perimeter for open 3s (the Jazz went 13 of 30 from deep).

When Dante Exum and Crowder hit back-to-back 3s to open the final quarter, the Jazz took a 102-101 lead.

“We got stops. We didn’t get stops the whole game. Whenever we started to get stops, we got some life,” Gobert said. “You could feel it — the ball started moving, we stopped turning it over, and we scored pretty easily. The offense was pretty good tonight — we just gotta be able to get stops.”

Once again, though, Rose rendered them unable to do so. After failing to score for the first 41/2 minutes of the fourth, he finally broke through with six straight, tying the game.

The teams kept trading body blows down the stretch — there were eight ties and eight lead changes in the fourth quarter alone.

Rose ultimately made the difference. Exum stuck with him well on a drive, but a stop and reverse pivot got him a clean look and the Wolves a 125-123 lead with 30 seconds left. His two free throws with 13.8 seconds to go were points 49 and 50, and made it 128-125.

Rudy Gobert, postgame pic.twitter.com/jVgjRSjIsr

— Eric Walden (@tribjazz) November 1, 2018

“We gave him the opportunity to have that kind of night, and then he was feeling great. He was feeling great,” Gobert said. “And when you start feeling great, you get some extra extra energy, some extra adrenaline, you make amazing plays, and that’s what he did the whole game.”

Still, the Jazz had three final chances. Crowder took the inbound pass out of the timeout and got a good look at a 3. An offensive rebound gave Joe Ingles a shot. After yet another offensive rebound, Crowder had the ball, passed up an open look, and swung it to Exum in the corner, whose last-gasp attempt was deflected just enough — by Rose, naturally — to fall short as time expired.

It was a brutal ending for the Jazz. But again, it was their rough beginning and subpar defense that paved the way, according to coach Quin Snyder.

“The first part of the game, we weren’t very efficient, we gave them open shots, we turned the ball over, and they took advantage of it,” he said. “… We have to compete collectively. We can’t compete as individuals — that’s when you see breakdowns. We talked about how we want to make our mark with our defense, and tonight we weren’t able to do that. We weren’t able to get stops. That’s what cost us the game.”

This Pat Bagley cartoon appears in The Salt Lake Tribune on Thursday, Nov. 1, 2018. You can check out the past 10 Bagley editorial cartoons below:

• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2018/10/31/bagley-cartoon-scary/"><u>Scary Times</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2018/10/29/bagley-cartoon-best/"><u>Best Health Care System in the World!</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2018/10/26/bagley-cartoon-whats/"><u>What’s Driving the Violence?</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2018/10/25/bagley-cartoon-its-mans/"><u>It’s A Man’s World</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2018/10/25/bagley-cartoon-critiquing/"><u>Critiquing the Saudis</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2018/10/23/bagley-cartoon-we-dont/"><u>We Don’t Not Need Education</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2018/10/22/bagley-cartoon-friends/"><u>Friends with Emoluments</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2018/10/20/bagley-cartoon/"><u>Proposition 2</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2018/10/18/bagley-cartoon-campaign/"><u>Campaign Cash Carpet Bombing</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2018/10/18/bagley-cartoon-married/"><u>Married Mob</u></a>

Want more Bagley? Become a fan on Facebook.

Maryland parted ways with football Coach DJ Durkin on Wednesday evening, one day after he was reinstated. Durkin had been on administrative leave since Aug. 11, following media reports that outlined a culture of abuse, fear and intimidation that allegedly took place under his watch.

Maryland's football program and athletic department have been the focus of scrutiny for months, following the death Jordan McNair, a 19-year-old football player who suffered exertional heatstroke at a team workout in late May and died several days later. An exhaustive probe into the culture of the football program also highlighted dysfunction within the athletic department.

The decision to part ways with Durkin came following pushback from lawmakers and some players who voiced their displeasure with his reinstatement on social media. Student leaders criticized the decision, as have faculty members in College Park, Maryland.

Before Wednesday's news broke, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, R, called on the state university system's governing board to reconsider its decisions, and said he was "deeply troubled by the lack of transparency."

James Brady, chair of the board of regents, said Tuesday that Durkin’s “passion for the university, the football team and the players was absolutely impressive and very believable.” The regents presented Loh with an ultimatum of sorts: If he wanted to finish the school year and reach the end of his contract, he had to keep Durkin.

Provo • Salt Lake City’s Westminster College is the team that has been placed in front of BYU as it wraps up its two-game exhibition schedule, so it is Westminster which will have the Cougars' undivided attention when the teams meet Thursday night at the Marriott Center.

The season opener against No. 7 Nevada next Tuesday can wait.

Put to the test with a question about how the Griffins — an NCAA Division II school — play, BYU guard TJ Haws showed he wasn’t just blowing smoke.

“They run that triple post action a little bit. But they have a lot of new guys this year. It is going to be a good challenge for us," Haws said. “They have a Utah transfer [Jake Connor]. They have a lot of good guys that can shoot the ball really well and can take you off the dribble. So we gotta be ready to go.”

BYU defeated Westminster 76-62 in an exhibition game last year as Yoeli Childs led the way with 25 points and 14 rebounds. Childs had 20 points and eight rebounds in BYU’s 92-71 win over Saint Martin’s last week in its exhibition opener.

The Griffins went 17-5 in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference last season, 21-5 overall, and are picked to finish sixth in coach Norm Parrish’s fourth season.

“We have had good practices,” BYU coach Dave Rose said. “This group is dialed in pretty good. It is interesting — I am sure every team that you talk to is anxious this time of year to start playing. And our guys are that way. We are still getting a lot done. The guys are improving as a group.”

Freshman center Kolby Lee has practiced this week after missing the Saint Martin’s game with a foot injury and is expected to play some against the Griffins, Rose said.

“It is really good for our group to add another piece and see how it fits,” Rose said. “We are excited to play tomorrow. To a man, the guys are ready to get going on the season.”

Rose said he would like to see the Cougars shoot better from the free-throw line — they were 21 of 31 from there — and sustain their quality of play for longer stretches.

“I hope we can execute better for longer stretches. I thought we were good in stretches, but I thought coming out of the half we were not very good,” he said. “So hopefully we can improve upon those things. I think that you can’t ever take anything for granted. I just want to see more consistency in our ability to sustain these really intense, urgent stretches for a longer period of time.”

The Halloween hangover has barely begun and Hollywood is thinking about Christmas — with Disney leading the way with the new adventure “The Nutcracker and the Four Realms,” a colorful and frenetic adaptation of the perennial classic.

The movie starts with the basics of E.T.A. Hoffmann’s short story and Marius Petipa’s ballet: A girl named Clara (Mackenzie Foy) arrives at a Christmas party thrown by the eccentric inventor Drosselmeyer (Morgan Freeman), whose gift transports Clara to a magical world of snow and fairies and the menacing Mouse King.

The challenge with turning the classic “Nutcracker” into a movie, though, is that there’s no actual story. Rookie screenwriter Ashleigh Powell provides one, starting with giving the teen Clara a backstory — her mother, Drosselmeyer’s star pupil, has recently died, leaving her and her siblings, and particularly her father (Matthew Macfadyen), grieving and morose. Powell’s script also gives Clara a challenge, to unlock her mother’s final gift, and her pursuit of a key leads her into the fantasyland of the Nutcracker.

Clara — guided by the loyal Nutcracker soldier, Capt. Philip Hoffmann (Jayden Fowora-Knight) — learns her mother was queen here, making Clara a princess. But the kingdom is torn, with the leaders of three of the kingdom’s four realms — Hawthorne (Eugenio Derbez) from the land of flowers, Shiver (Richard E. Grant) from the land of snowflakes, and Sugar Plum (Keira Knightley) from the land of sweets — fearing an invasion from the fourth, Mother Ginger (Helen Mirren) from the land of amusements.

Clara and Capt. Hoffmann lead a squadron of soldiers into Mother Ginger’s territory, which is guarded by the Mouse King — actually a mouse-shaped monster made up of hundreds of actual mice, a singularly creepy image for a kid’s movie. Upon meeting Mother Ginger, though, Clara realizes all is not as it seems in this kingdom.

The movie is frequently disjointed — possibly the result of being helmed by two directors, Lasse Hallström (“The Cider House Rules,” “The Hundred-Foot Journey”), who oversaw the shoot and post-production, and Joe Johnston (“Captain America: The First Avenger”), who led a month of reshoots.

The filmmakers are constantly referring to classic versions of “The Nutcracker,” capitalizing on the audience’s familiarity with the source material. James Newton Howard’s score makes abundant use of Tchaikovsky’s themes, particularly in the dance scenes led by American Ballet Theatre star Misty Copeland. There are visual shout-outs to the “Nutcracker” segments of Disney’s “Fantasia,” with conductor Gustavo Dudamel filling the great Leopold Stokowski’s silhouette. (Thankfully, this time the toadstools don’t transform into racist Chinese stereotypes.)

Amid the chaotic eye candy, and a whiplash-inducing plot twist, Foy — best known for playing the vampire child Renesmee in the “Twilight” saga — anchors the story admirably. Ultimately, Clara’s story is about a girl putting aside toys and taking on adulthood, and Foy (who turns 18 in November) gracefully embodies Clara as both a headstrong girl and a maturing young woman.

“The Nutcracker and the Four Realms,” for all its trippy elements, is meant for life beyond the multiplex. Like the theatrical production that inspired it, this movie is destined to become a viewing option for families for many Christmases to come.

———

★★★

‘The Nutcracker and the Four Realms’

• Where • Theaters everywhere.
• When • Opens Friday, Nov. 2.
• Rating • PG for some mild peril.
• Running time • 99 minutes.

Minneapolis • Asked at pregame shootaround on Wednesday afternoon if he still had a home in Minnesota, Ricky Rubio responded that he did, but he was looking to sell.

“You wanna buy it?” he joked.

The Jazz point guard, who spent the first six seasons of his NBA career with the Timberwolves before being traded to the Jazz in the summer of 2017, said that while he had fond memories of his former team, his connection to it was waning after more than a year in Utah.

“It’s always special. The first time [back] was a little different, but still I got a lot of friends, a lot of good memories here. I love it,” he said. “Last year, I followed more closely, I had more friends; I still have friends now, but it’s not the same as time goes. It’s tough times right now. But they still got a good team.”

Those last two sentences were a reference, of course to the turbulence currently taking place within the Timberwolves’ organization after star Jimmy Butler demanded a trade during the offseason, while the team has claimed that no offer has been worth dealing him away yet. And so an awkward situation lingers.

On Wednesday morning, it was announced that Butler would sit out the Jazz game due to “general soreness and precautionary rest.”

Rubio said he could empathize with the difficulty of maintaining focus in such a scenario.

“Every day is different news. … I got ‘traded’ like 10 times when I was here, and until that [actually] happens, you can’t think about that every day,” he said. “When it happens, it will happen. The players who are here gotta play to win every time.”

That, at least, makes him all the happier in his present situation.

He has zero doubts, after all, about his Jazz teammates playing to win every game. The Jazz players’ familiarity with one another, he added, has convinced them all they’ve got a really good thing going.

“We can be really good. … We’ve got great confidence in what we can do and what we can achieve,” Rubio said. “Our goal — of course we want a championship — but at the end of the day, it’s get better every day like we did last year, and the outcome will come.”

The other side

Tom Thibodeau, the Wolves’ coach and chief basketball decision-maker, went into some detail about what led him to trade Rubio to the Jazz for a 2018 first-round draft pick, which became Georgia Tech wing Josh Okogie at No. 20 overall.

“Like with all trades and things like that, free agency, it’s in totality — one thing leads to another. There was also cap space involved in that for us. And so it led to adding more depth and starting-caliber players to our team, which we felt we needed. So there was a lot that went into that,” Thibodeau said. “And Ricky’s done well, Ricky’s a good player — he’s been a good player in this league for a long time.”

Okogie came into the game averaging 9.8 ppg and 5.6 rpg, but shooting just 34.5 percent overall and 21.7 percent on 3-pointers.

A man wearing a Spider-Man costume stole hundreds of dollars from a Herriman candy store on Halloween night after threatening the store clerks with a gun and Taser.

An employee at the Salt City Sweet Shop, 5136 W 13400 South, called police about 5 p.m. to report the robbery, Herriman police Lt. Cody Stromberg said.

The clerk told police the man came in wearing a “full body” suit and brandished a gun and stun gun. He forced the employees to give him cash from the till and from the locked safe in the back of the store. The man then made the employees lie down on the floor as he escaped. Neither employee saw how the man fled or in what direction.

Stromberg said the man took about $400 to $500. Neither of the employees were injured.

Since the man was wearing a mask, police don’t have much identifying information. The employees described him as white, between 5 feet, 6 inches tall and 6 feet tall, and between 18 and 30 years old. A slit in the back of the suit revealed he was wearing a black T-shirt with white writing, Stromberg said.

“It’s one of those weird Halloween deals,” Stromberg said, “because on any other day of the year, a man dressed in a Spider-Man costume draws a lot of attention and looks out of place, but on Halloween he just blends in — so people don’t think twice.”

Anyone with information about the robbery can call Herriman police at 801-840-4000.

Washington • President Donald Trump said Wednesday that the number of military troops deployed to the U.S.-Mexican border could reach 15,000 — roughly double the number the Pentagon said it currently plans for a mission whose dimensions are shifting daily.

The Pentagon said "more than 7,000" troops were being sent to the Southwest border to support the Customs and Border Protection agents. Officials said that number could reach a maximum of about 8,000 under present plans.

The troop numbers have been changing at a dizzying pace, with Trump drawing a hard line on immigration in the lead-up to the midterm elections.

Just last week officials were indicating that about 800 to 1,000 might be sent. On Monday, officials announced that about 5,200 were being deployed. The next day, the Air Force general running the operation said more than the initially announced total were going, and he pointedly rejected a news report that it could reach 14,000, saying that was “not consistent with what’s actually being planned.”

Gen. Terrence O'Shaughnessy, the commander of U.S. Northern Command, told reporters the number would exceed the initial contingent of 5,200, but he offered no estimate of the eventual total.

Just 24 hours later, Trump thrust new uncertainty into the picture, catching the Pentagon by surprise.

With his eyes squarely on next Tuesday's contests, Trump has rushed a series of immigration declarations, promises and actions as he tries to mobilize supporters to retain Republican control of Congress. His own Republican campaign in 2016 concentrated on border fears, and that's his focus in the final week of the midterm fight.

"As far as the caravan is concerned, our military is out," Trump said. "We have about 5,800. We'll go up to anywhere between 10,000 and 15,000 military personnel on top of Border Patrol, ICE and everybody else at the border."

Later Wednesday, Trump told ABC News, "We have to have a wall of people."

His comments were the latest twist in a story that has pushed the Pentagon unhappily into the political space, prompting questions about whether Defense Secretary Jim Mattis was allowing the military to be leveraged as a political stunt.

"We don't do stunts," Mattis said Wednesday.

Trump rejected the idea he was "fearmongering" or using the issue for political purposes, but his escalating rhetoric in the waning days of the campaign season calls that denial into question. Trump has railed against illegal immigration, including several caravans of migrants from Central America slowly moving toward the U.S. border. The caravan of an estimated 4,000 people is still nearly 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) from the border. Several smaller groups, estimated at a combined 1,200 people, are farther away.

Trump insisted the media is underestimating the caravans. "You have caravans coming up that look a lot larger than it's reported actually. I'm pretty good at estimating crowd size. And I'll tell you they look a lot bigger than people would think," he told ABC.

He has also promised to end so-called catch-and-release policies by erecting tent cities to hold those crossing illegally. And this week he is asserting he could act by executive order to unilaterally end birthright citizenship for the children of non-U.S. citizens.

Trump's comments Wednesday left some in the Pentagon scratching their heads. Officials said they had no plans to deploy as many as 15,000 troops. The number conceivably could reach 10,000, counting the 2,100 National Guard soldiers who have been operating along the border for months as part of a separate but related mission. The number of active-duty troops tapped for deployment stood at 7,000 as of Wednesday but could reach 8,000.

A deployment of 15,000 would bring the military commitment on the border to roughly the same level as in war-torn Afghanistan. And it would more than double the number of people thought to be in the caravans.

Trump did not back down Wednesday from his controversial proposal to upend the very concept of American citizenship. In a morning tweet, he said the right to citizenship for babies born to non-citizens on American soil “will be ended one way or the other.”

He also claimed that what he terms "so-called Birthright Citizenship" is "not covered by the 14th Amendment."

However, the text of the amendment's opening Citizenship Clause is this: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." The citizenship proposal would inevitably spark a long-shot legal battle over whether the president can alter the long-accepted understanding that the 14th Amendment grants citizenship to any child born on U.S. soil, regardless of his parents' immigration status.

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan asserted Tuesday that "obviously" Trump could not upend that policy by executive order, drawing a tweeted rebuke from Trump. He said Wednesday that Ryan "should be focusing on holding the Majority rather than giving his opinions on Birthright Citizenship, something he knows nothing about!"

Speaking to reporters before leaving the White House for a campaign rally in Florida, Trump compared his plan to act by executive order to President Barack Obama's much-maligned decision to use executive action to provide protections from prosecution and a path to work status for some people brought to the U.S. illegally as children.

"If he can do DACA, we can do this by executive order," Trump said, using the acronym for the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Trump and his Justice Department have argued that Obama action was unlawful.

Trump and many top aides have long seen the immigration issue as the most effective rallying cry for his base of supporters. The president had been expected to announce new actions at the border on Tuesday, but that was scrapped so he could travel instead to Pittsburgh, where 11 people were massacred Saturday in a synagogue during Sabbath services.

The role of the District Attorney is no longer defined by merely going to court. The challenges are far more complex, the impact far more profound, and the expectations far more demanding from our community; and rightfully so.

Mass incarceration, drug addiction, the use of force, the intersection of homelessness and poverty within criminal justice, mental illness, untested rape kits, bail reform, the neurobiology of trauma are just some of the issues that confront and challenge a prosecutor’s office today.

Public trust, integrity, fairness, equality, and proportionality in punishment are just some of the expectations and promises we must embrace as our duty, not only in words but in actions that our citizens rightfully demand. As leaders, we must advocate for our communities’ sense of fairness and accountability.

We must balance budgets and scarce resources. During my tenure we returned $5.8 million back to the county coffers. We will save $13.1 million over the next 25 years because we own the District Attorney’s building, as opposed to renting space. We have created an additional $18 million revenue stream over the same time period.

I have done this, my opponent has not.

We must be authors of innovations and creative solutions to historical challenges and systemic failures. I helped create the first mental health court in the state of Utah, the first Family Justice Center serving victims of domestic violence with the YWCA, and most recently the Veterans Court. I have advocated for therapeutic justice my entire professional life. I have envisioned, built, and implemented programs.

I have done this, my opponent has not.

We must engage our community, inform them, give them access to their institutions, from which they feel disconnected, even when it is difficult and uncomfortable. We were one of the first District Attorney offices in the country to fully publish our reports regarding officer involved critical incidents. We created an independent task force to investigate use of force, making the process more transparent. In such incidents, I have personally met with community organizations and family members, no matter how difficult the conversations.

I have done this, my opponent has not.

We must pursue our independence to be the checks and balances against other institutions and interests that would victimize our citizens and communities. For example, with the support of our council and mayor, we initiated a lawsuit against Big Pharma to address our opioid crisis, as well as litigation against the state for unfair tax policies that would pass the burden onto our taxpayers.

I have done this, my opponent has not.

We must be personally accountable, not hiding behind the cover of our institutions but embracing the controversial for our community and making decisions in an open, transparent, and accountable way, even if it is not personally advantageous. Because it is the right thing to do.

I get it. Nathan and his friends don’t like me. The irony of “Justice not Politics,” the slogan of my opponent, is not lost on me. He has taken illegal campaign contributions, which he had to return. He continues to peddle a false narrative (now debunked) about turnover, and he divides the office he wishes to lead for personal gain, and complains about a toxic work environment of his own making. He is bought and paid for by special interests that want to avoid the scrutiny of citizens. My opponent forgets that the only endorsement that matters is the endorsement of our community.

I ran for this office to do the difficult work that our community demands and deserves. The privilege of leadership is far more than a title. It is an opportunity to put our best effort forward, in the service of our community, guided by our ideals of justice, fairness, equality and truth. It is about solving problems, righting wrongs, giving voice to the hopeless, and advocating for the unheard and forgotten.

In short, it’s about serving you.

Go out and vote.

Sim Gill, a Democrat, is seeking his third term as Salt Lake County District Attorney.

You should be horrified but not surprised that the 14 potential bombs mailed to prominent Democrats and the slaughter of 11 Jews in Pittsburgh — by an alleged assailant seemingly convinced by right-wing conspiracies that Jews are behind the migrant caravan — have taught President Trump Donald nothing. In fact, he is back to his old tricks before the Squirrel Hill bodies are even all buried.

The Washington Post reports:

"President Trump lashed out anew Monday at the news media, calling it "the true Enemy of the People," and he again blamed what he called "fraudulent" reporting for anger that has led to a spate of recent violence in the country.

"The president's latest invective on Twitter comes as he faces calls to tone down his public statements amid criticism that his attacks on political rivals and the media bear some culpability for the current climate."

It doesn’t matter how many bombs his acolytes send to CNN or other news outlets, nor how many people are killed, because twisted minds take his and Fox News’s fear-mongering about immigrants seriously. He is incapable of self-reflection, and no one around him has the will or inclination to get him to stop. He cheerily reports on a phone call with the right-wing nationalist president-elect of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, who attacks minorities, gays and women. He even revives the caravan harangue, which allegedly at least partly motivated Saturday’s mass murder, tweeting:

"Many Gang Members and some very bad people are mixed into the Caravan heading to our Southern Border. Please go back, you will not be admitted into the United States unless you go through the legal process. This is an invasion of our Country and our Military is waiting for you!"

Trump's conduct is detestable, yet no prominent Republicans denounce him. They cannot escape responsibility for enabling him. No tax cut or Supreme Court appointment can make up for any of this.

I'm gratified to see the rabbi from Tree of Life synagogue speak out. "It starts with speech," Rabbi Jeffrey Myers said at an interfaith vigil Sunday night. "It has to start with you as our leaders. My words are not intended as political fodder. I address all equally. Stop the words of hate." Right now, the one spewing hate is the president; no prominent Democrat is demonizing the media or immigrants. No Democrat is hugging a neo-fascist foreign leader.

It pains me to see that more than 30,000 people have signed a petition telling Trump not to come to Pittsburgh - not because I don’t share their revulsion, but because I do. They don’t want Trump coming not because of his views on health care or Israel or taxes. All they are asking for is a modicum of decency. He makes their pain worse; his presence would suggest the country asks nothing more of him than reading from a teleprompter.

The Post reports:

"More than 30,000 people have signed an open letter to President Trump from the leaders of a Pittsburgh-based Jewish group who say the president will not be welcome in the city unless he denounces white nationalism and stops "targeting" minorities after a mass shooting Saturday at a local synagogue left 11 dead.

"The letter, which was published and shared on Sunday, was written by 11 members of the Pittsburgh affiliate of Bend the Arc, a national organization for progressive Jews focused on social justice, following what is being called the deadliest attack on Jews in U.S. history. The shooting at Tree of Life synagogue also left several people injured, including law enforcement."

Trump cannot comply with the request to stop spreading hate. It’s like breathing oxygen for him. He cannot show empathy, for he lacks any. Trump has not merely split us by race, ideology, party, religion or origin of birth; to be with him is to endorse or condone or willfully ignore monstrous conduct and rhetoric. To be against him - and to speak out the bile he spews - is to give us hope for America’s moral and political recovery.

Jennifer Rubin writes reported opinion from a center-right perspective for The Washington Post. @JRubinBlogger

The White House says it’s unfair to blame President Trump for our poisonous, increasingly violent political atmosphere. And you know what? It is.

Trump isn’t to blame. His entire party is. Because it never had the reckoning it needed after the 2016 election.

Last week saw three reprehensible attacks motivated by far-right animus: pipe bombs sent to people on Trump’s ever-expanding enemies list; the murder of two African-Americans at a Kentucky supermarket; and, at a Pittsburgh synagogue, the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in U.S. history.

But Trump didn’t pull the trigger or make those bombs, Trump’s defenders point out. What’s more, the president has denounced bigotry and political violence.

Well, he has sometimes.

He has also sometimes dog-whistled conspiracy theories about a black president or a supposedly treasonous rich International Jew — both of whom were intended recipients of bombs last week.

Sometimes he’s explicitly praised those who engage in political, ethnic or anti-media assaults.

And sometimes he’s even appeared to blame their victims for provoking their own attacks by saying not-nice things about Dear Leader.

So yeah, it’s not unreasonable to believe that the man with the world’s biggest bullhorn could be at least contributing to a climate in which hate crimes and anti-Semitic incidents are increasing. In fact, most Americans believe Trump’s actions as president have encouraged white supremacist groups, according to a new PRRI poll.

But in focusing our anger and debate on Trump, we let so many other Republicans off the hook.

The president is hardly the only elected official who has played footsie with neo-Nazis, far-right thugs and xenophobic conspiracy theorists.

Why, earlier this year, Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., invited to the State of the Union a Holocaust denier who had also been banned from Twitter after appearing to threaten the life of a black civil rights activist. At the time, Gaetz said he didn’t know his guest’s ugly background.

Somehow, though, this same far-right hatemonger ended up at a Gaetz fundraiser last month.

More recently, Gaetz suggested that Jewish financier George Soros was funding a supposedly dangerous caravan of asylum-seeking refugees who plan to “storm” the U.S. border at “election time.”

Other Republican lawmakers — such as Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Tex., Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif. — have dabbled in this or other dog-whistling conspiracy theories about Soros’ alleged efforts to subvert the United States.

And then we come to Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, whose good standing in the Republican Party should infuriate anyone who pretends to care about civility (looking at you, Paul Ryan and Jeff Flake).

Some things King has done just since this summer:

He endorsed a white supremacist running for mayor of Toronto, a woman who claims Canada is undergoing a “white genocide.”

He retweeted a self-described British neo-Nazi.

And while on a European trip arranged by a Holocaust memorial group, King met with members of a far-right Austrian party founded by a former Nazi SS officer. He told the party’s affiliated publication that he, too, feared a coming “Great Replacement” of white European culture by “somebody else’s babies,” enabled by Latino and Muslim migration, in a plot orchestrated by (guess who?) Soros.

When asked why he was palling around with European ethnonationalists, King defended himself thus: “If they were in America pushing the platform that they push, they would be Republicans.”

Yes. And that’s the problem.

Maybe Republicans will never turn on the standard-bearer of their party, no matter how vile his words. The question is why they also refuse to police their less-powerful colleagues.

Why haven’t the Kings and Gaetzes of Congress been ejected from the caucus, or at least censured in some way, for encouraging ethnic hatred?

The answer, at least in part, is that the GOP learned all the wrong lessons from the 2016 election.

A Trump loss, as the polls predicted, might have taught Republicans that they could no longer exclusively cater to old, white, racially anxious men (as the 2012 GOP “autopsy” report warned). It might have forced Republicans to stop indulging the crazy things that many in their base believed; it might have learned that all that Fox News fearmongering was counterproductive to actually being a governing party.

Instead, by the narrowest of margins, Trump managed to claim the White House. And the cost-benefit analysis for a Republican demagogue considering saying something racist or incendiary — or for a partisan colleague contemplating criticizing such — never changed.

In short, the GOP never cleaned house, and the mess just keeps getting worse.

Catherine Rampell is an opinion columnist at The Washington Post. She frequently covers economics, public policy, politics and culture, with a special emphasis on data-driven journalism. Before joining The Post, she wrote about economics and theater for the New York Times. @crampell

Anyone wondering how strongly the president feels about putting an end to anti-Semitism need only look at his statement to the Future Farmers of America after gun violence claimed 11 lives at the Tree of Life synagogue. He called it “frankly, something that is unimaginable.”

What could be a more ringing denunciation than that? This strident condemnation is even clearer than the administration’s Holocaust Remembrance Day statement last year, which was already a shining masterpiece of perfection and whose only possible tweak would have been to mention the Jewish people.

Why, the president said "anti-Semitism" four times, including in one whole sentence where he did not quickly mention that other forms of evil are just as bad!

How can anyone say that the president indulges ugly undercurrents with his rhetoric when he comes blazing out after a brutal act of violence such as this and haltingly reads from a teleprompter that "today, with one unified voice, we condemn the historic evil of anti-Semitism, and every other form of evil. And unfortunately, evil comes in many forms"?

His words of comfort rank among those of history's other great statesmen. As Pericles said, "This plague is bad, but, then again, so many things are bad, Athenians."

Or as Abraham Lincoln in his second inaugural observed, "If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? But unfortunately slavery is just one of many things that are bad, as you know."

After all, this is really a story about broad, general anti-religiosity against people of all faiths, as Kellyanne Conway was so quick to point out. Not the Jewish congregation that was specifically targeted.

What America needed in this trying time was a president to point out that we should not let the horror of anti-Semitism make us forget lots of other forms of evil. It is important to keep it in its place. We would not want to give it its own special day.

Now is no time for singling out certain things as more relevantly bad than other things, especially when those certain things are off-message. At a time like this, we require a strong statement in which the word "sabbath" is pronounced "sabooth," read with difficulty and strange pauses (for effect, certainly!), like a schoolboy begrudgingly apologizing to the class.

This should put to rest any doubts as to where the president's heart lies in this trying time. This is just as good if not better than refraining from casting aspersions on "globalists," which is, after all, hardly a speech and more just choosing not to whistle.

What could send a clearer signal than this? The deepest truth is what is printed on the teleprompter after something bad has already happened.

"Anti-Semitism and the widespread persecution of Jews represents one of the ugliest and darkest features of human history," Trump read. "The vile, hate-filled poison of anti-Semitism must be condemned and confronted everywhere and anywhere it appears. There must be no tolerance for anti-Semitism in America or for any form of religious or racial hatred or prejudice. You know that. You know that very well. You know that very well."

It almost goes without saying.

Follow Alexandra Petri on Twitter, @petridishes.