While Mormon temples may be a common sight in many cities across the U.S., the average American may not realize just how much land is owned by the Mormon Church. Using a largely obscure real estate company, it has been quickly expanding its holdings in numerous states and isn’t showing any signs of slowing down. 

How is the church acquiring land?
It largely purchases land through its real estate management brand, Property Reserve. While it’s “relatively unknown to many,” the company plays a major role in the Mormon Church, said Bloomberg. Through a “web of subsidiaries,” Property Reserve has “accumulated billions of dollars of properties from farms and ranches to apartments and hotels, becoming one of the U.S.’s largest and least transparent landowners.”

One region in Florida being developed sits on a swath of land “almost as large as San Francisco,” said Bloomberg. The project is so massive that Florida created an “independent local government, usually first appointed by the landowners, designed to oversee funding of major infrastructure and development.” 

The deals have not been without controversy. The church has, for example, bought 3,000 acres of ranch land in Kyle, Texas, a “property that has been entangled in a lawsuit from an environmental group seeking to prevent the land from being developed,” said the San Antonio Express-News.

What’s the impact?
The church’s most consequential purchases are driving “development on a scale that can reshape entire regions,” said Bloomberg. It comes amid an effort to further Mormon culture in the U.S., from “influencers with millions of followers to TV shows such as ‘The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.’” But the church has also “faced criticism over its multibillion-dollar real estate portfolio.” 

The pushback has been compounded due to the Mormon requirement that members donate 10% of their income to the church as a tithe, according to the Mormon Church’s website. The church has been sued for allegedly using these tithings to fund real estate projects. There have also been allegations that the Mormon real estate portfolio is part of a larger shell company scheme, which the church denies. 

President Donald Trump is inarguably a man of deep passions. He has expressed these as issues of great, and occasionally even national, importance. This penchant for publicly invoking both his reliable bugbears and darlings offers valuable insight into his inner life. 

Florsheim shoes
After “searching for something that would feel better after a day on the job,” Trump “settled on Florsheim” leather oxford shoes this past spring, coming to like them so much that he “started dispensing them,” said The Wall Street Journal. 

He has “grown fond of guessing people’s shoe sizes in front of them” before tasking an aide to order them a pair, said The Daily Beast. “I have fun with it,” said Trump when asked in March by Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade about reports detailing the footwear focus. 

Steam-powered catapults
The president has “returned again and again to the concept of steam power,” said The Atlantic. In “nearly a decade of loudly complaining,” he has lamented that naval aircraft carriers use “electromagnetic systems to launch fighter jets instead of steam-powered catapults,” said The Guardian. 

He has even instructed the Pentagon to “redesign a new aircraft carrier to replace the modern system with the old-fashioned catapults he prefers,” said the outlet. One possible explanation for his fixation is the fact that he “just really loves ‘Top Gun’” and “doesn’t think fighter jets look anywhere near as cool when they take off from Ford-class carriers,” said New York magazine. 

William McKinley
Since Trump declared in a 2018 social media post that “I am a tariff man,” his “veneration” for President William McKinley, who also referred to himself as such, has “only grown,” said The New Yorker. But Trump’s “admiration” for McKinley “seems deeper than just tariffs,” said Asma Khalid on NPR’s “All Things Considered.” McKinley, too, “realigned and consolidated the power of the Republican Party for decades,” and Trump has also hailed McKinley’s work “expanding America’s footprint around the globe.” 

Trump additionally “honored” his predecessor by “undoing an Obama-era change” to rename Alaska’s Mount Denali back to Mount McKinley, said U.S. News & World Report. But for all of his enthusiasm, said The New Yorker, Trump’s “McKinleyism is not deeply informed.”

Aldabra tortoises are fed a platter of vegetables at Surabaya Zoo in East Java, Indonesia. Four of the giant herbivores, a male and three females, have been transferred to their new home from Japan’s iZoo as part of a breeding and conservation program.
Robertus Pudyanto / Getty

With kids back in school and movie theaters buzzing with their best audience numbers in years, September might be the perfect time to catch a matinee. And these upcoming features should be on your list of possibilities.

‘Bad Apples’
Featuring one of those film concepts whose poor taste is part of the pitch, “Bad Apples” stars Saoirse Ronan as Maria, a struggling young elementary school teacher who inadvertently imprisons the class bully in her basement. This “warped, needling and sometimes bitterly funny” film is an “odd, wicked little amorality tale,” said Guy Lodge at Variety. (in theaters Sept. 18)

‘If I Go Will They Miss Me’
Lil Ant is a cerebral 12-year-old with a Greek mythology obsession whose father returns from prison and sets about trying to toughen him up. Director Walter Thompson-Hernández’s film, full of metaphors and magical realism, unfolds like a cinematic poem. A “gorgeously composed” coming-of-age story, it is “defined by a bracing sense of wonder and an evocatively delivered humanism,” said Robert Daniels at Roger Ebert. (in theaters Sept. 18)

‘Primetime’
Moviegoers of a certain age surely remember the brief run of a show called “To Catch a Predator” hosted by Chris Hansen in which actors play underage kids who lure predatory men in conjunction with law enforcement, amounting to a nationally televised series of sting operations. “Primetime” tells this pretty insane story as a “dark-but-oddly-zany bio-thriller" starring Robert Pattinson (pictured above) as Hansen, said Iana Murray and Jack King at GQ. (in theaters Sept. 25)