Fano, a 6-foot-5 1/2, 311-pound tackle from Spanish Fork, Utah, enjoyed a standout college career with the Utes. As a true freshman in 2023, he started all 13 games at left tackle, allowing just 2.0 sacks and earning first-team Freshman All-American honors.
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Fano followed with first-team All-Big 12 selections in 2024 and 2025, capping his senior season as the Outland Trophy winner, Polynesian College Football Player of the Year, and a unanimous All-American.
Scouts praise Fano’s high-level athleticism, quick feet, and loose hips, which allow him to mirror rushers effectively and excel in move-based blocking schemes. His NFL comparison is to Minnesota Vikings tackle Brian O’Neill.
While he possesses strong hand quickness and run-blocking experience, areas for development include adding core strength and improving pad level to sustain blocks against NFL power.
With three years of starting experience at both tackle spots, Fano projects as a potential early-round pick capable of becoming a solid NFL starter.
Utah put the final nail in the coffin after taking out their sole Jokic-stopper, that would be Elijah Harkless — a scrappy 6’3” guard that puts out his best Scrappy-Doo impression each night. Other …
The Jazz have been all business for Tanking and Co™ all of March. In fact, before tonight, they’d lost 10 of their last 11 games, which included a loss against Denver back in Colorado. The Nuggets, on the other hand, have subtly held an 8-2 record with the league’s second-longest winning streak.
Despite the annual tomfoolish custom of April 1st, there are n tricks tonight; Utah was flat-out defeated on their home floor with a good old-fashioned 130 -117 loss. There were highs. There were lows. There were Jokic no-look passes that dissociate with the external world. As Denver skipped across Salt Lake City before heading back next door, the Jazz decisively fell behind by falling out of a potentially gritty, high-intensity basketball game — they tend to love those.
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Utah put the final nail in the coffin after taking out their sole Jokic-stopper, that would be Elijah Harkless — a scrappy 6’3” guard that puts out his best Scrappy-Doo impression each night. Other than that, fans saw all the usuals on the injury report.
OUT – Isaiah Collier (hamstring) OUT – Keyonte George (hamstring) OUT – Blake Hinson (2-way) OUT – Jaren Jackson Jr. (knee) OUT – Walker Kessler (shoulder) OUT – Lauri Markkanen (hip) OUT – Jusuf Nurkic (nose)
The Nuggets were at near-full form, with the exception of Spencer Jones and Zeke Nnaji. This is probably going to be a regular occurrence the Jazz will have to deal with for any franchise that isn’t currently outside of the Playoff picture.
It seems apparently that the entire Jazz defensive strategy revolved around one Elijah Harkless, as they looked completely helpless while digging themselves into an early 3-17 hole, with Denver, or just Jamal Murray, raining triple after triple. Murray hit 3-3 from beyond the arc just over 90 seconds into the first quarter. I can’t believe this is a real thing I have to type, but 8 of their first 9 field-goal makes had come from beyond the arc. Not only that, they hit them at a 61.5% rate. What the actual heck is going on in the mountains? Nuggets closed the quarter outscoring Utah 39-28, pushing their lead to 11. Jamal Murray sealed the first 12 minutes off with a half-court heave that could only happen in an area outside of time and space, otherwise known as wherever the Jazz are playing.
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The Jazz supposedly held Jokic to 2 field-goals in the first half, but everyone else on the Nuggets did most of the damage. Flip (19 points, 7-11 field-goals) and Brice (18 points, 7-10 field-goals) accounted for 68% of the Jazz points in the first half. The next best scorer scored 7. Jamal Murray continued to beat a man already down, matching his career-best for three-pointers in a half with 5. Bruce Brown beat his personal best of 4 steals in a half. You get a career-high! You get a career-high! Everybody gets a career-high! Nuggets were high and mighty with their 68-54 lead on Utah’s home floor.
Nikola Jokic canned a triple-double with 14-17-10 before the final 12 minutes even rolled open. Nuggets had 49 rebounds, 35 of them being defensive, compared to Utah’s 36 total rebounds.
The Jazz had chipped away several times in this game, but none of them mattered in any significant way. They got as close as 4 points of the Nuggets’ lead with 9:41 in the fourth quarter, but Denver quickly put a stop to that and continued to steamroll as they had been doing. But I have to note, Denver really doesn’t do enough to prevent open shots on the defensive end; imagine if Lauri or Keyonte were hitting those shots.
Brice Sensabaugh led all scorers with 28 in this one, many of which came from a 10-point entourage in the first quarter. The former Buckeye has been an explosive 20-point-per-game scorer for the majority of March. Five Jazz players in total crossed over the 10+ point mark.An
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Another Jazz draftee to enjoy was Kyle Filipowski, who netted 25 points, 12 rebounds, 3 assists on 9-15 shooting in 31 minutes. Flip did his best and fiercely attacked premier rim-protector Nikola Jokic at the rim, which subsequently led to his benching when the Jazz got too close to the flame.
Jamal Murray enjoyed a strong night, as he usually does against Utah. He averaged 35 points per game, 7.8 assists per games and 4.8 rebounds in the Nuggets’ clean 4-0 sweep against the Jazz this season.
Up Next
Utah drops to 21-56 with this loss and lines up their next matchup in Houston on Friday night.
Camping season is kicking off in Utah, and with it comes a fresh set of guidelines for visitors heading into one of its 46 scenic state parks. Whether you’re planning a weekend getaway or a longer …
Camping season is kicking off in Utah, and with it comes a fresh set of guidelines for visitors heading into one of its 46 scenic state parks. Whether you’re planning a weekend getaway or a longer stay, understanding the rules and regulations will help ensure a more enjoyable experience in Utah’s outdoors.
The youngest son of a Venezuelan family that resettled in Utah after seeking asylum was tortured at a prison in El Salvador, attorneys say.
The man, who was 19 when he was detained by border officials, is the youngest son of a family that now lives in Utah.
FILE – Prison guards stand outside holding cells at the Terrorism Confinement Center, a “mega-prison” built especially for gang members, during a media tour in Tecoluca, El Salvador, Feb. 2, 2023. Utah attorneys say a Venezuelan man was detained in San Diego and transported to the Salvadoran prison, where they allege he was tortured. (AP Photo/Salvador Melendez, File)
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — President Donald Trump’s administration will move the U.S. Forest Service headquarters out of the nation’s capital to Salt Lake City as part of an organizational overhaul that …
By HANNAH SCHOENBAUM and SUSAN MONTOYA BRYAN
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — President Donald Trump’s administration will move the U.S. Forest Service headquarters out of the nation’s capital to Salt Lake City as part of an organizational overhaul that involves shuttering research facilities in 31 states and concentrating resources in the West, the agency announced Tuesday.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said the move, which is expected to be completed by summer 2027, will bring leaders closer to the landscapes they manage and the people who depend on them.
“Effective stewardship and active management are achieved on the ground, where forests and communities are found — not just behind a desk in the capital,” Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz said.
Nearly 90% of National Forest System land is in the West, though Utah is only the 11th-ranked state for national forest coverage, with about 14,300 square miles (37,000 square kilometers).
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has been moving thousands of employees out of Washington over the past year and eliminating layers of management as part of Trump’s push to slim down the federal workforce and make it more efficient.
With the move to Utah, about 260 Forest Service positions currently located in Washington are expected to relocate, and 130 workers will stay put, the agency said.
Deputy Agriculture Secretary Stephen Vaden said Salt Lake City stuck out for its reasonable cost of living, proximity to an international airport and the state’s “family-focused way of life.” It’s a Democratic-led capital city in a red state with values rooted in the locally headquartered Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, known widely as the Mormon church.
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, celebrated the move Tuesday as “a big win for Utah and the West,” while environmental groups viewed it as a precursor to the agency’s dismantling.
Taylor McKinnon at the Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity described the move as “a costly bureaucratic reshuffle” that will put more power in the hands of corporations and states to log, mine and drill public lands.
“National forests belong to all Americans,” said McKinnon, the environmental group’s Southwest director. “Our nation’s capital is where federal policy is made and where the Forest Service headquarters belongs.”
FILE – A person walks along a dirt road in Deschutes National Forest, May 1, 2025, near Bend, Ore. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane, File)
FILE – Snow dots the Sawtooth Mountains in the Sawtooth National Forest in central Idaho, June 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Rebecca Boone, File)
President Donald Trump listens to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins speak during an event with farmers on the South Lawn of the White House, Friday, March 27, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
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FILE – A person walks along a dirt road in Deschutes National Forest, May 1, 2025, near Bend, Ore. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane, File)
Josh Hicks, conservation campaigns director at The Wilderness Society, predicted that the move will lead to less access to public forests and threats to wildlife habitat, clean water and air.
“At a time when wildfires are getting worse, and access to public lands is already under strain, the last thing we need is an unnecessary reorganization that creates chaos and confusion for the land managers, researchers and wildland firefighters who help keep our forests healthy now and for future generations,” he said.
The Wilderness Society also pointed to Trump’s prior attempt with the BLM, saying that resulted in many staffers leaving who had valuable years of management experience. The group said this could end up hollowing out the Forest Service.
Many regional offices will close in the reorganization, and their services will shift to hubs in New Mexico, Georgia, Colorado, Wisconsin, Montana and California. Instead of maintaining multiple dispersed research stations with their own leadership, the agency will anchor its research at a single location in Fort Collins, Colorado.
The Forest Service said it did not yet know how many workers in regional offices will need to relocate. A spokesperson did not answer whether the transition would involve layoffs.
U.S. Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández, a New Mexico Democrat who sits on the House’s Natural Resources Committee, echoed the idea that it’s the wrong time for upheaval as the Mountain West is facing historically low snowpack, extreme heat and the prospect of a dangerous fire season.
But she expressed cautious optimism that the Forest Service reorganization could be positive if leadership and jobs are ultimately brought closer to New Mexico and other states.
A Republican on the committee, U.S. Rep. Celeste Maloy of Utah, welcomed the move to her state, saying it could improve responsiveness to wildfires and ensure decisions are informed by on-the-ground realities.
The Forest Service’s deputy chief of fire and aviation management, Sarah Fisher, said on a podcast Tuesday that there will be no changes to the agency’s operational firefighting workforce.
Montoya Bryan reported from Albuquerque, New Mexico.
The U.S. Forest Service is relocating its headquarters from Washington, DC, to Salt Lake City, Utah, by 2027, the Agriculture Dept. announced.
March 31, 2026, 8:48 p.m. ET
The U.S. Forest Service is moving its headquarters from Washington, DC, to Salt Lake City.
Officials state the move will place leadership closer to the Western lands the agency manages and improve its mission.
The restructuring will also relocate about 260 positions to Utah and establish 15 state directors.
The Sierra Club expressed skepticism about the move, questioning if it will lead to more effective land stewardship.
The U.S. Forest Service is relocating its headquarters to Salt Lake City, citing the move as a “sweeping restructuring” of the agency, the Agriculture Department said.
The agency’s move from its current location in Washington, DC, to Utah’s capital city is part of a broader strategy to place the forest service closer to the Western states that comprise the majority of the 193-million-acre forest system, the USDA announced March 31.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said in a statement that the relocation will improve the Forest Service’s mission of managing its forests, saving taxpayers’ money and boosting employee recruitment.
“Establishing a western headquarters in Salt Lake City and streamlining how the Forest Service is organized will position the Chief and operation leaders closer to the landscapes we manage and the people who depend on them,” Rollins said.
“This includes supporting our timber growers across the country, including those in the Southeast, by prioritizing a regional office and promoting policies that boost timber production, lowering costs for consumers,” Rollins added.
The Forest Service’s move come after the 2019 relocation of the Bureau of Land Management headquarters to Grand Junction, Colorado, during President Donald Trump‘s first term in office, which led to a vast majority of the staff leaving the agency, only for the BLM to return to Washington. The BLM manages public lands in several Western states, performing activities such as oil and gas and agricultural leases.
Forest Service jobs also face relocation
About 260 headquarters positions will relocate to Utah, while 130 will remain in Washington, the Forest Service said. Additional phases of the reorganization, including the formal elimination of regional and station office structures and the full transition to a state-based model, will be implemented over the coming year.
Utah Governor Spencer Cox praised the Forest Service move, thanking Trump, Rollins, USDA Deputy Secretary Stephen Vaden and Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz.
“This is a big win for Utah and the West. With nearly 90% of Forest Service lands west of the Mississippi, moving the U.S. Forest Service headquarters to Salt Lake City will put leadership closer to the lands, communities, and challenges they manage,” the Republican governor said in a March 31 post on X. “It also means hundreds of jobs coming to Utah and better, faster decisions on the ground for the people who rely on our public lands, from ranchers and timber producers to families who work and recreate there.”
As part of its restructure, the Forest Service said it would establish 15 state directors to oversee its operations, the USDA said. Each state office will include a small leadership support team responsible for functions such as legislative affairs, communications and intergovernmental coordination.
“This approach is intended to simplify the chain of command, strengthen local partnerships, and give field leaders greater ability to respond to conditions on the ground,” the USDA said.
The Forest Service will also begin transitioning to a “state-based organizational model” to shift authority closer to the field, a goal the administration has been emphasizing since the beginning of the second Trump administration, the USDA said.
Additionally, “operational service centers” will be formed in Albuquerque, New Mexico; Athens, Georgia; Fort Collins, Colorado; Madison, Wisconsin; Missoula, Montana; and Placerville, California. More service center locations may be added as the transition progresses, the USDA said.
The Forest Service said research operations will also be consolidated as the agency has previously mentioned. Research facilities now located in multiple regions will fall under a central research organization based in Fort Collins, the agency said.
The Forest Service said its relocation to Salt Lake City will be complete by summer 2027.
Sierra Club questions uprooting of Forest Service HQ
One major environmental group is questioning the Forest Service’s pending relocation.
The Sierra Club, the nation’s oldest conservation organization, said in a statement on March 31 that it is skeptical about the USDA’s move.
“The Forest Service should be structured in a way that allows them to steward our public lands effectively and with robust public engagement. This administration has routinely pursued the exact opposite by gutting protections and the public lands management workforce,” Alex Craven, the Sierra Club’s forest campaign manager. “Despite continued appeals of ‘common sense’ management, it’s far from clear this latest reorganization will get us any closer to that.”
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — President Donald Trump’s administration will move the U.S. Forest Service headquarters out of the nation’s capital to Salt Lake City as part of an organizational overhaul that …
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — President Donald Trump’s administration will move the U.S. Forest Service headquarters out of the nation’s capital to Salt Lake City as part of an organizational overhaul that involves shuttering research facilities in 31 states and concentrating resources in the West, the agency announced Tuesday.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said the move, which is expected to be completed by summer 2027, will bring leaders closer to the landscapes they manage and the people who depend on them.
“Effective stewardship and active management are achieved on the ground, where forests and communities are found — not just behind a desk in the capital,” Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz said.
Nearly 90% of National Forest System land is in the West, though Utah is only the 11th-ranked state for national forest coverage, with about 14,300 square miles (37,000 square kilometers).
During his first term, Trump moved the Bureau of Land Management to Colorado, citing many of the same reasons, including a desire to put top officials closer to the public lands they oversee. But it wasn’t long before the Biden administration reversed course, moving BLM headquarters back to Washington, D.C., after two years.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has been moving thousands of employees out of Washington over the past year and eliminating layers of management as part of Trump’s push to slim down the federal workforce and make it more efficient.
With the move to Utah, about 260 Forest Service positions currently located in Washington are expected to relocate, and 130 workers will stay put, the agency said.
Deschutes National Forest near Bend, Ore.Jenny Kane/Associated Press
Deputy Agriculture Secretary Stephen Vaden said Salt Lake City stuck out for its reasonable cost of living, proximity to an international airport and the state’s “family-focused way of life.” It’s a Democratic-led capital city in a red state with values rooted in the locally headquartered Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, known widely as the Mormon church.
The Sawtooth Mountains in the Sawtooth National Forest in central Idaho.Rebecca Boone/Associated Press
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, celebrated the move Tuesday as “a big win for Utah and the West,” while environmental groups viewed it as a precursor to the agency’s dismantling.
Taylor McKinnon at the Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity described the move as “a costly bureaucratic reshuffle” that will put more power in the hands of corporations and states to log, mine and drill public lands.
“National forests belong to all Americans,” said McKinnon, the environmental group’s Southwest director. “Our nation’s capital is where federal policy is made and where the Forest Service headquarters belongs.”
Josh Hicks, conservation campaigns director at The Wilderness Society, predicted that the move will lead to less access to public forests and threats to wildlife habitat, clean water and air.
“At a time when wildfires are getting worse, and access to public lands is already under strain, the last thing we need is an unnecessary reorganization that creates chaos and confusion for the land managers, researchers and wildland firefighters who help keep our forests healthy now and for future generations,” he said.
The Wilderness Society also pointed to Trump’s prior attempt with the BLM, saying that resulted in many staffers leaving who had valuable years of management experience. The group said this could end up hollowing out the Forest Service.
Many regional offices will close in the reorganization, and their services will shift to hubs in New Mexico, Georgia, Colorado, Wisconsin, Montana and California. Instead of maintaining multiple dispersed research stations with their own leadership, the agency will anchor its research at a single location in Fort Collins, Colorado.
The Forest Service said it did not yet know how many workers in regional offices will need to relocate. A spokesperson did not answer whether the transition would involve layoffs.
Tom Schultz, US Forest Service chief.VALERIE PLESCH/NYT
U.S. Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández, a New Mexico Democrat who sits on the House’s Natural Resources Committee, echoed the idea that it’s the wrong time for upheaval as the Mountain West is facing historically low snowpack, extreme heat and the prospect of a dangerous fire season.
But she expressed cautious optimism that the Forest Service reorganization could be positive if leadership and jobs are ultimately brought closer to New Mexico and other states.
A Republican on the committee, U.S. Rep. Celeste Maloy of Utah, welcomed the move to her state, saying it could improve responsiveness to wildfires and ensure decisions are informed by on-the-ground realities.
The Forest Service’s deputy chief of fire and aviation management, Sarah Fisher, said on a podcast Tuesday that there will be no changes to the agency’s operational firefighting workforce.
Montoya Bryan reported from Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Utah’s Great Salt Lake may be concealing a massive reservoir of fresh water, new research suggests. The finding seems counterintuitive: the Great Salt Lake is the Western Hemisphere’s largest saltwater lake. But as its water levels have hit a historic low in recent years, scientists have noticed mysterious, reed-covered mounds, dozens of meters wide, emerging from the lake bed. And now it turns out that these islands may be a sign of fresh water bubbling up from below.
The potential reservoir—likely fresh-water-saturated bedrock or sediment—may lie as deep as three or four kilometers, or around two miles, below the lake bed, according to the study, which was published last month in Scientific Reports.
“We were able to answer the question of how deep this potential reservoir is, and what its spatial extent is beneath the eastern lake margin,” said Michael Zhdanov, the paper’s lead author and a professor of geology and geophysics at the University of Utah, in a statement.
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“If you know how deep, you know how wide, you know the porous space, you can calculate the potential freshwater volume,” he added.
Zhdanov and his team calculated the depth of this possible reservoir by flying a helicopter that was kitted out with electromagnetic equipment over a section of the of the lake and combined these observations with magnetic measurements to study the structure of the reservoir. Underneath one of the sampled mounds, they revealed a plume of fresh water.
The results could one day help mitigate the problem of toxic dust spewing from the drying lake bed onto Salt Lake City—the Great Salt Lake’s bed is laced with arsenic, a toxic substance that, when people are exposed to it as dust, may cause cancers, respiratory problems and heart disease. As the lake’s waters continue to recede, experts are increasingly worried about the potential for major dust events in the area.
The new study’s results are preliminary, however. They only cover a small section of the lake, and more research is needed to confirm the full size and extent of any reservoir below the rest of the lake.
“This is why we need to survey the entire Great Salt Lake. Then we’ll know the top and the bottom,” Zhdanov said.
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