The No. 1 overall high school basketball prospect in America is going to call Utah home for a season. Specifically, Hurricane.

On Friday, it was announced that AJ Dybantsa — the consensus top recruit in the 2025 class — is transferring high schools, moving from Prolific Prep in California to Utah Prep Academy.

Listed at either 6-foot-8 or 6-foot-9, depending on the outlet, and 200 pounds, Dybantsa is one of the most sought after prospects in the country, holding scholarship offers from over 20 notable Division 1 programs, the most recent offer coming from the University of Utah.

Duke, Kansas and Kentucky have all offered Dybantsa, as have the two-time defending champion UConn Huskies, plus North Carolina, Texas, Washington and more.

The Brockton, Massachusetts, native averaged averaged 21.2 points, 9.4 rebounds and 3.5 assists per game as a junior at Prolific Prep this past season and as a freshman two years ago at St. Sebastian’s School in Needham, Massachusetts, Dybantsa was named the Gatorade Player of the Year.

Through 10 games played with the Oakland Soldiers (9-1) this season on Nike’s EYBL circuit, Dybantsa is averaging 23 points, 5.5 rebounds and 1.9 assists per contest while shooting 54.8% from the field, 39.3% from 3-point range and 81.6% from the free-throw line.

Dybantsa reclassified up to the Class of 2025 in October and is now considered the consensus top prospect for the 2026 NBA draft as a small forward.

Utah Prep, formerly known as RSL Academy, is relocating to Hurricane from Herriman for the 2024-25 season. The Academy is just one of a couple notable prep basketball powerhouses now located in the state, along with Wasatch Academy in Mt. Pleasant.

Another top 10 prospect in the 2025 class — Isiah Harwell — plays for the Tigers, meaning Utah will be the temporary home of two of the most talented prep basketball players in the country. A Pocatello, Idaho, native, Harwell holds scholarship offers from nearly a dozen Division 1 programs currently, including Gonzaga, Houston, North Carolina and UCLA.

A group of legal advocacy organizations filed a lawsuit against the state of Washington Thursday to prevent a hotly debated voter initiative from taking effect next month.

The organizations claim that the measure, Initiative 2081, conflicts with youth privacy laws and could “result in harm to LGBTQ+ students, youth of color, and students from other marginalized backgrounds,” according to a press release. A court hearing on the lawsuit could happen next week.

I-2081 was one of three Republican-backed voter initiatives that the Legislature approved in March. It’s known as the so-called “Parents Bill of Rights” and outlines more than a dozen rights for parents to oversee their kids’ education and school medical records.

At the time, Democratic lawmakers who decided to vote for the measure said they support parents being involved in their children’s schooling but were concerned about the possibility that the measure didn’t mesh well with existing education policy. A legislative staff analysis showed much of the langauge in I-2081 is duplicative, or in some cases less precise, than state and federal regulations around parental access to school materials and student records — and some lawmakers interpreted this to mean than the measure wouldn’t drastically change current practices.

Several legislators have vowed to keep a close watch on the implementation of I-2081, and said they’d be quick to make changes to the law if it caused harm to young people, particularly LGBTQ youth, or confusion among school administrators.

On Thursday, the American Civil Liberties of Washington, Qlaw, and Legal Voice jointly filed a lawsuit on behalf of 10 plaintiffs to prevent the measure from taking effect on June 6.

The lawsuit alleges that the measure violates the state constitution.

“Our state constitution requires that new laws properly identify how they impact existing laws, and 2081 fails to do that,” said Adrien Leavitt, ACLU staff attorney. “The way that the initiative was written is confusing, and it’s vague and it’s misleading — and it doesn’t explain what important rights that it actually impacts for the youth that attend our state’s public schools.”

The plaintiffs in the case include several nonprofits, like Lavender Rights Project, Sexual Violence Law Center and MomsRising. Two individuals, as well as South Whidbey School District, are also named as plaintiffs in the case.

“Black and Indigenous students rely upon sexual health resources, information, and care within public schools and school-based clinics, and to erode confidentiality in those spaces will acutely impact those students,” Leavitt added.

The lawsuit is the latest development in an ongoing saga of recent voter initiative action in Washington.

A group called Let’s Go Washington started working in 2023 to qualify a handful of voter initiatives for consideration in this year’s legislative session, including I-2081.

Let’s Go Washington founder Brian Heywood said in a statement that the ACLU’s lawsuit is antidemocratic.

“The ACLU has made their disdain for the democratic process abundantly clear,” Heywood said. “We expect [Attorney General] Bob Ferguson to uphold his duty within the law to protect the will of the people and shut down this frivolous attempt by the ACLU to deprive parents of their civil liberties.”

Rep. Jim Walsh (R-Aberdeen) chairs the Washington State Republican party and filed the paperwork for I-2081. He called the lawsuit an attack on rights for families.

“ACLU Washington is damaging its credibility by aligning with several radical left organizations to file an eccentric lawsuit,” he wrote in a text message.

Once I-2081 received enough support from registered voters to be considered in Olympia, Republicans were eager to hold hearings and pass the measure into law. Democrats, who have majority control in the Legislature, expressed concerns about the initiative, but enough of them voted with Republicans to approve it.

Legislative leaders said in March their decision to approve I-2081 and two other voter initiatives was multifaceted. One major point of consideration: Enacting these initiatives in the Legislature – as opposed to letting voters decide on them – preserved lawmakers’ ability to make prompt adjustments to those measures once they became law.

Three additional initiatives are going to the ballot in November. If voters pass any of these initiatives, changing them would require a two-thirds majority in the Legislature for the first two years the voter-approved policies are in effect — a relatively high bar to meet. Legislature-approved initiatives, meanwhile, can be adjusted just like any other part of state law.

Copyright 2024 NWNews

A globally recognized Danish white supremacist is doing business in Wyoming, or at least through the Cowboy State as a registered LLC here.

Emil Kirkegaard has been accused by many of using scientific racism as a base for his open-access research journal website where he’s published numerous articles supporting a basis for biological differences between races, ethnicities and immigrant groups on measures such as crime and IQ.

Kirkegaard filed his Mankind Publishing House LLC with the state of Wyoming on Feb. 4, using Sheridan-based Northwest Registered Agent Service Inc. as the registered agent for the filing. Kirkegaard was at one time the internet domain owner of Mankind Quarterly, a racist pseudo journal rejected by most of the scientific community.

The contact information associated with the filing includes a California phone number that is now disconnected.

Kirkegaard legally changed his name to William Engman in 2021. The Wyoming business filing lists Engman as the organizer for the limited liability company, which is registered to a Denmark address. This address matches the address used on his scientific journal website.

He also owes more than $63,000 in legal fees stemming from a lawsuit he dropped in 2020, according to public records.

Child Porn OK Too

In a 2012 blog post, Kirkegaard wrote that it would be a “good idea to legalize child porn” because he thinks viewing this content would reduce the number of rapes committed by pedophiles. He’s also stated that he would support lowering the age of consent to 13 or lower if puberty begins earlier.

Despite his own views on child porn and age of consent, Kirkegaard has tried to link homosexuality to pedophilia and categorized all left-wing people as pedophiles on his blog.

Kirkegaard filed a defamation lawsuit against English writer Oliver Smith in 2018 after Smith called Kirkegaard a “pedophile” upon reading his blog posts. He subsequently dropped the lawsuit in 2020, but was ordered to pay Smith’s legal fees as a result, which is the source of the debt.

Smith wrote on his blog he believes Kirkegaard changed his name as part of an effort to avoid paying the debt.

The writer also told Cowboy State Daily he believes Kirkegaard filed his business in Wyoming as a way to exploit the state’s loose LLC registration laws in a further attempt to avoid paying the $63,768 legal debt he owes to Smith.

The original debt was much smaller but has grown by accruing interest since 2020.

Cowboy Cocktail

Wyoming has some of the most private business filing laws in the country and the cheapest rates to file, which allows people to easily cloak their identities when filing with the state.

These laws have drawn significant scrutiny in recent years as some nefarious actors have been found doing business in the state.

Earlier this spring, a Fremont County investigation revealed an influx of out-of-state businesses filing to addresses in that county, often unbeknownst to the actual property owners.

In another instance, there were 551 different businesses registered to a single address.

Secretary of State Chuck Gray announced earlier this week the dissolvement of three businesses connected by the FBI to North Korean actors.

Gray said his office has proposed several interim topics to the Wyoming Legislature to take further administrative action against entities on the basis of their being owned or controlled by foreign adversaries.

Leo Wolfson can be reached at leo@cowboystatedaily.com.