Utah News

June 7, 2026, 6:44 p.m. ET

As the NBA Finals continue pushing forward to close out the 2025-26 season, the Utah Jazz are only getting closer to taking on a pivotal offseason that marks a turning point in this ongoing rebuild to take the next step into being a playoff competitor in the West this coming season.

And through the Jazz’s upcoming offseason, there’s a lot of dates to unpack. Between the draft, free agency, and even a couple of summer league circuits on the horizon, this team is bound to be staying busy through the next couple of months.

We’re still a few weeks away before things really begin to ramp up at Jazz HQ this offseason; we still haven’t found out who the champions will be of this past season.

But as we’re stuck waiting for the Jazz’s offseason to heat up, let’s take a look at the important dates to know over the next two months:

June 23, 24: NBA Draft

Only a few weeks remain before the Utah Jazz will be on the clock in the 2026 NBA Draft with their first top-two pick since 1980.

No matter who they land on for that long-awaited selection, they’re bound to instantly fill in as a key cornerstone for this roster to build around, hopefully for years to come.

As of now, though, that number-two pick will be the Jazz’s only draft pick throughout the two days of action. No other first or second round picks are at their disposal.

Utah could decide to trade for a second-rounder in the time between now and when the second day of action arrives on June 24th, but it wouldn’t be too shocking for them to stand pat as well.

June 30: Free Agency Moratorium Begins

Just a week after the draft wraps up in Brooklyn, the Jazz will then enter the chaos that is free agency. Teams will have a week to negotiate deals with either their own free agents or those hitting the market around the league before being able to officially put pen to paper on an official signing.

The Jazz will have a few of their own key free agents to keep an eye on through this period. Walker Kessler is the biggest name of those as he hits the restricted market, but Jusuf Nurkic and Kevin Love will be worth watching as well.

If each of those three can come to terms on a fair price on their new contracts, it’s certainly not out of the question for all three to be back in Utah on a new deal in due time.

July 6: Teams Can Officially Sign Free Agents

It takes a week before teams are officially able to bring on their pending free agent signings to the roster. But when July 6th rolls around, the Jazz and every other team around the league can officially cement the deals they made over the past week on their books.

Most of the free agency action ends up taking place through that first week in moratorium anyways. There tends to always be a few lingering names who take a little while longer before coming to an agreement, but expect to see most of the free agency frenzy to take place in the first one to two weeks of July.

July 4, 6, 7: SLC Summer League

The Jazz will be hosting their annual Summer League in Salt Lake City for three days at the start of July. This year, it’ll be the OKC Thunder, Atlanta Hawks, and Memphis Grizzlies as the three teams traveling to participate.

It essentially acts as a preview for what the Jazz’s young squad will look like in the Las Vegas Summer League a few days following.

However, there’s also the off-chance that someone could put together an electric three-day stretch in SLC that holds them out of the action in Las Vegas later on. Brice Sensabaugh did exactly that in 2025.

July 9-19: Las Vegas Summer League

After a quick turnaround from SLC, the Jazz will then travel to Las Vegas to compete with the rest of the league throughout a 10-day span filled with incoming rookies, second- and third-year players, and even a few younger veterans looking to establish their footing in the league ahead of next season.

Last year, it was Kyle Filipowski who stole the show for the Jazz, and ultimately took home the Las Vegas Summer League MVP.

This year’s Summer League roster for Utah might be a little depleted of young talent compared to their past few years of the rebuild, but Ace Bailey and the incoming second-overall pick are pretty likely bets to be on the floor.

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Republican Senators Mike Lee and John Curtis of Utah are challenging a recent Department of Defense policy directive that omits The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) from its designated list of Christian faiths. Labeling the administrative decision “unacceptable,” both lawmakers are pressing the Pentagon for an immediate corrective update.

The dispute highlights a broader restructuring of how the military categorizes the religious affiliations of its personnel. Because these classifications affect administrative tracking and resource allocation, the policy has sparked debate regarding institutional oversight and organizational identity.

The Pentagon’s Defense: Why the Military Trimmed Its List

According to defense officials, the policy shift is part of an administrative effort to streamline what the Pentagon characterized as an “unmanageable” system. The restructuring reduced the number of officially recognized religious affiliation codes from more than 200 down to 31.

The Pentagon maintains that the consolidation is strictly logistical, designed to help chaplains efficiently assess unit demographics and deploy spiritual resources.

“With this move, we are returning to the original intent of collecting this data – to allow our chaplains and religious support personnel to provide the best spiritual care to our warfighters,” Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a statement.

He continued: “This decrease in religious affiliation codes is not designed to make any claims on the legitimacy of any faith or religious belief, nor is it intended to provide a list of ‘officially approved’ religions. Rather, it is designed to allow chaplains to quickly look at the religious composition of their units and determine how they structure resources to best provide for warfighters of all faith groups.”

Parnell emphasized that the department places a high value on First Amendment protections, noting that “chaplains play an instrumental role in providing spiritual care and facilitating the Warfighters’ ability to freely exercise their religion of choice, or no religion at all.”

The Scope of the Reclassification

The reduction in tracking codes has impacted numerous minority faith groups and belief systems. Beyond the reclassification issues facing LDS, dozens of distinct designations were eliminated or consolidated into broader umbrella categories.

Key Adjustments in Religious Tracking:

• Discontinued Individual Tracking for Specific Categories: Atheism, Humanism, Wicca, Paganism, and Unitarian Universalism.
• Consolidated Classifications: Affected service members are now directed to register under generalized designations such as “Agnostic,” “No Religion,” or “Other Religions,” while various traditional Christian denominations have been grouped under broader headers without specifying individual branches.

Critics argue this sweeping consolidation effectively erases the distinct identities of minority belief systems, potentially complicating accurate demographic representation within the military’s spiritual support infrastructure.

Senators Curtis and Lee React

The policy has drawn criticism in Utah, home to the global headquarters of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Curtis and Lee, both members of the faith, argue that the government’s classification fundamentally conflicts with the religion’s core tenets.

Curtis rebuked the directive on X on Saturday, writing: “Latter-day Saints are among the most patriotic, service-oriented individuals in our country. They are also unequivocally Christian—just look at who is in the name of the Church. It is unacceptable for a government entity to characterize a faith in a manner that contradicts the religion’s own foundational tenets. I am working now to ensure a correction is made.”

Lee echoed these concerns, questioning the logic of excluding the global church from Christian denominations given its foundational focus on the teachings of Jesus Christ.

“Can anyone tell me why The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was left out of the Christian churches?” he asked on X on Saturday.

In another post, the senator wrote: “If only we, as Latter-day Saints, belonged to a church that had ‘Jesus Christ’ in its name and His image in its logo … Oh wait.”

Is there any aspect of life where a 99.72% success rate would call for external intervention? A medical treatment that cures 99.72% of patients generally does not call for additional surgery. A school that teaches 99.72% of its students to read does not need additional reading intervention.

Similarly, Utah’s recent voter roll audit found that 99.72% of registered voters in the state are U.S. citizens legally registered to vote, and the Lt. Governor’s office immediately removed the ineligible people from the rolls. This clearly shows that Utah does not need the federal bureaucracy to intervene to keep its voter rolls clean.

Federal intervention in elections has, unfortunately, been a bipartisan affair in recent years. Earlier this year, President Donald Trump issued an executive order seeking federal intervention in voter registration, as did President Biden in 2021. The Democratic-controlled Congress in 2021 attempted to pass the For the People Act, while the Republican-controlled Congress is currently seeking to enact the SAVE America Act. Both bills would intervene in state voter registration in different ways.

But there is no need for federal bureaucracy involvement if the evidence shows that state and local election officials are doing their jobs. That is exactly the case for Utah, as evidenced by the recent voter roll audit, which found that of more than two million registered voters in the state, only 52 were flagged as noncitizens or likely noncitizens. Further, many of the 0.28% of voters whose citizenship could not be verified registered before voter ID was required.

Candidates and voters in Utah need confidence in election outcomes, whether the winning margin was narrow or a landslide. That’s why in addition to removing ineligible people, Utah’s election officials are currently verifying the citizenship of every unverified voter to make certain that only U.S. citizens are allowed to vote.

What about Utah’s election administration makes federal intervention unnecessary?

First, and most obvious, is the quality of Utah’s election officials. If our voter registration system is achieving a 99.72% success rate, it is reasonable to conclude that the people overseeing it are a major part of that outcome.

Second, beyond hardworking, civic-minded election officials, Utah has something going for it that applies to every state in the republic: federalism. Significant fraud in voter registration becomes impossibly difficult and prohibitively expensive when it requires the cooperation of dozens of state and local election officials.

This highlights the irony of attempts to federally intervene in voter registration: They make voter registration fraud simpler, and therefore more likely. Centralizing voter registration in the federal government means you can accomplish significant voter registration fraud by corrupting a handful of officials at a single federal agency, rather than having to get hundreds of election officials across dozens of states to go along. That would make voter registration fraud much more achievable. In a world where hostile foreign actors have proven they are willing to attempt to manipulate and undermine American elections, federal intervention that simplifies voter registration fraud is unwise.

Does this mean that the federal government has no role in ensuring secure elections? No. Again, Utah’s voter roll audit points the way.

A federal policy that incentivizes states to periodically verify voter citizenship through a voter roll audit, like the one Utah just completed, can boost election security while bolstering federalism. This principled approach will either identify states that may need additional intervention or reveal that further intervention is unnecessary nationwide.

Utah election officials should be commended for their successful efforts in maintaining secure voter registration. Utah voters can be confident that voter rolls are being systematically protected from fraud. Leaders in Washington, D.C. should follow Utah’s lead and incentivize citizenship audits of voter rolls. Then voters’ interests, rather than partisan interests, can be served by identifying and addressing potential problems based on the evidence.