Farmington, N.M. • A bill proposed for consideration by the Navajo National Council is aimed at making a tribal-owned energy company a for-profit corporation.

The Daily Times reports that the legislation would authorize the tribe to petition the U.S. Interior Department to allow the Navajo Transitional Energy Co. to become a for-profit corporation under the Indian Reorganization Act.

The NTEC is a tribal enterprise company created in 2013 to purchase the Navajo Mine near Fruitland.

Besides owning the mine, the company acquired a 7 percent interest in the Four Corners Power Plant this year and is exploring options for the tribe’s potential purchase of the Navajo Generating Station near Page, Arizona.

The council on Friday began a special session scheduled to conclude Monday.

Provo • Losing by 22 points in a game in which it trailed by as many as 36 is certainly not the way BYU’s basketball team wanted to finish the nonconference portion of its schedule and wrap up the 2018 calendar year.

The Cougars were competitive for only the first 10 minutes Saturday in an eventual 103-81 loss to Mississippi State in Starkville, Miss.

Now the question has to be asked: Will it get worse before it gets better?

Having lost three straight for the second time this season and having posted the worst nonconference record (8-7) since the year before coach Dave Rose replaced Steve Cleveland in 2005, the Cougars turn their attention to their West Coast Conference slate this week.

Rose told the BYU sports network after the blowout loss that his players “got discouraged” and “didn’t compete at the [appropriate] level” and lacked the “urgency and intensity” needed to contend with the No. 19 team in the country.

The bad news for BYU is that, unlike in previous seasons, the WCC probably won’t be the sight for sore eyes the Cougars have come to expect. They easily could have a sub-.500 record when they return to Provo for their first game at the Marriott Center in nearly a month next week.

BYU plays at much-improved Pacific (10-5) on Thursday, then travels to Saint Mary’s (9-6) on Saturday. The Tigers have won five of their last six, and defeated BYU 67-66 last year in Stockton; The Gaels have lost to BYU in Moraga just once, 60-57 in 2014, since the Cougars joined the WCC in 2011-12.

There’s no longer a “Big Three” in the league because Saint Mary’s is rebuilding, this BYU team with five or six players who were at least four-star recruits and/or top-200 prospects coming out of high school has underachieved and the WCC’s perennial mid-level teams such as San Francisco, San Diego, Loyola Marymount and Santa Clara have all improved immensely. Gonzaga, ranked No. 7, stands alone at the top, and nobody else is remotely close.

Judging by how the WCC teams performed in non-conference games, the Cougars are staring at the prospects of finishing in sixth place, or worse, in conference play. They’ve never finished below third.

The Cougars’ schedule hasn’t been all that difficult, either. Consider this sobering fact: Hours after BYU was drilled by Mississippi State, the San Diego State team that walloped BYU 90-81 on Dec. 22 lost 82-61 at home to Brown of the Ivy League.

“In 14 or so years that we’ve been doing this, going into league play, I think we have always felt like if we could have a really successful league season that we could have a chance to maybe get an invitation to the NCAA tournament,” Rose said Saturday. “That’s probably not the issue with this group here, you know, at 8-7.”

BYU’s shortcomings have been plentiful, but the most glaring weaknesses appear to be familiar ones: suspect perimeter defense, poor 3-point shooting, and turnovers. Often times, the turnovers have led to easy baskets for opponents, especially on the road.

The Cougars have given up an average of 97 points in their five true road games, all losses. The were minus-11 in points off turnovers at MSU, minus-9 in points off turnovers at SDSU.

“Very easily, we could probably be maybe 11-4, or 10-5, but the bottom line is that the challenges that every team has, you just have to respond to them,” Rose said. “The next challenge is trying to win a conference championship. Then you go into the next part where you are trying to win a conference tournament championship. That’s where we will go with our group, and hopefully get on the road on Thursday and get this thing turned around and get going in the right direction.”

Because right now, the program is going in the wrong direction, and the WCC can no longer be considered the cure for what ails the Cougars.

Thursday’s West Coast Conference Opener

BYU at Pacific, 9 p.m. MST

TV: ESPNU

Phoenix • Arizona and Utah are now in sync on what’s needed to fish on Lake Powell, the Colorado River lake that straddles the border between the two states.

The Arizona Game and Fish Department and the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources announced Friday that residents of Arizona and Utah as of Tuesday, Jan. 1, may buy just a resident license from their home state and fish all of the lake with only that one license.

The change is that Utah will no longer require an $8 Utah stamp to fish on Lake Powell.

The change primarily benefits Arizona anglers because Arizona in 2014 waived its requirement for a $3 Lake Powell stamp.

The change also allows nonresidents to buy only one of the fishing license options from Utah or Arizona.

New York • Activists urging more states to ban gay conversion therapy for minors are expecting major gains in 2019, thanks to midterm election results and the buzz generated by two well-reviewed films.

Fourteen states and the District of Columbia have already enacted laws prohibiting licensed therapists from trying to change a minor’s sexual orientation. Leaders of a national campaign to ban the practice are hopeful that at least four more states — Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts and New York — will join the ranks in the upcoming legislative sessions.

"We'd be disappointed if we don't get those this year — they're overdue," said Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights , one of the groups campaigning to impose bans in all 50 states.

The campaign has gained momentum in recent months thanks to the national release of two films dramatizing the experiences of youths who went through conversion therapy — "The Miseducation of Cameron Post" and the higher-profile "Boy Erased" starring Lucas Hedges, Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe.

Sam Brinton of the Trevor Project , another of groups leading the ban campaign, said thousands of people have signed up to assist the effort since "Boy Erased" was released on Nov. 2.

"They're recognizing this is still a problem and joining our campaigns in droves," said Brinton, a child of Baptist missionary parents who has written about agonizing conversion therapy sessions experienced as an adolescent in Florida.

Brinton recalls being bound to a table by the therapist for applications of ice, heat and electricity.

Just four days after the "Boy Erased" release came the midterm elections, which altered the partisan political dynamic at several statehouses and boosted prospects for conversion therapy bans.

In three of the states now being targeted, previous efforts to enact a ban gained some bipartisan support but were thwarted by powerful Republicans. In Maine, a bill was vetoed last year by GOP Gov. Paul LePage. In New York and Colorado, bills approved in the Democratic-led lower chambers of the legislature died in the Republican-controlled state senates.

In January, however, a Democrat will succeed LePage as Maine's governor, and Democrats will have control of both legislative chambers in New York and in Colorado, where gay Gov.-elect Jared Polis is believed eager to sign a ban.

A lead sponsor of the New York ban bill, Democratic Sen. Brad Hoylman, predicted passage would be "straightforward" now that his party controls the Senate.

"For a lot of my colleagues, they consider conversion therapy to be child abuse," he said.

In Massachusetts, both legislative chambers voted last year in support of a ban but were unable to reconcile different versions of the measure before adjournment. Chances of passage in 2019 are considered strong, and Republican Gov. Charlie Baker — who was re-elected — is viewed as likely to sign such a measure given his strong support for LGBT rights.

More Republican governors like Baker are getting behind the bans, reflecting activists' belief that opposition to conversion therapy is increasingly bipartisan.

Bills proposing bans are pending or anticipated in several GOP-controlled legislatures, including Florida, Ohio and Utah. LGBT activists are particularly intrigued by Utah because of the possibility that the powerful Mormon church, which in the past supported conversion therapy, might endorse a bill to ban the practice for minors.

In Florida, the proposed ban faces long odds in the legislature in 2019, but activists note that about 20 Florida cities and counties have passed local bans — more than any other state.

In Ohio, supporters of a bill that would ban conversion therapy for minors realize they have an uphill fight in a legislature with GOP supermajorities.

Still, Sen. Charleta Tavares, a Columbus Democrat, believes her proposal got "new legs" in November. That's when the state board overseeing counselors, social workers and marriage and family therapists warned the 40,000 professionals it regulates that anyone found practicing conversion therapy on LGBT patients could lose their license.

"I am glad to see that our state boards are carrying this movement, regardless of the inaction by our General Assembly," Tavares said.

For now, LGBT activists are not seeking to ban conversion therapy for adults. A gay California legislator, Evan Low, withdrew a bill he introduced earlier this year that would have declared conversion therapy a fraudulent practice and banned commercial use of it for adults and minors. Some opponents had threatened to sue to block the bill, saying it would jeopardize free speech and free exercise of religion.

Low says he may try again after revising his bill. If so, his arguments could be bolstered by input from John Smid, the real-life model for the "Boy Erased" character who ran a coercive conversion therapy program.

For years, Smid was director of Tennessee-based Love in Action, a ministry which operated such a program. Smid left the organization in 2008. He subsequently renounced the concept that sexual orientation could be changed and apologized for any harm he had caused. In 2014, he married his same-sex partner, with whom he lives in Texas.

Smid recently cooperated with a law firm as it compiled a report about Love in Action for the Washington-based Mattachine Society, which studies past instances of anti-LGBT persecution.

One of the report's co-authors, Lisa Linsky, said Smid depicted Love in Action as "a complete and utter failure," with none of its participants actually changing their sexual orientation.

Associated Press writer Julie Carr Smyth in Columbus, Ohio, contributed to this report.

The Jazz entered 2018 with a 16-21 record and with limited hope, struggling to play well in the shadow of a departed star. But just a few weeks after the calendar flipped, the team went on a season-changing run that pushed them through to the second round of the playoffs. Here’s The Salt Lake Tribune’s top Utah Jazz stories of 2018.

10. Jazz draft Grayson Allen

With the 21st pick in the NBA Draft, the Jazz used it on the most controversial collegiate player in recent memory. Grayson Allen certainly had his pluses: tremendous athleticism, shooting talent and a clear will to win. But numerous incidents on the court — and the fact that he played for Duke — turned him into a villain in many circles. The 23-year-old Allen has struggled to adapt to the NBA game, though, and hasn’t seen the floor much due to poor defense. He’s currently out with a sprained ankle.

9. Jazz get a Christmas Day game and win it

For the first time in 21 years, the NBA selected the Utah Jazz to play on Christmas Day, a reflection of the team’s success in the playoffs the previous season as well as a nod to the up-and-coming stars on the roster. In 1997, the Jazz beat the Houston Rockets by a score of 107-103, but 2018′s Christmas Day contest was a lopsided 117-96 blowout over the Portland Trail Blazers.

8. Jazz trade Alec Burks, get Kyle Korver back

After a poor start to the 2018-19 season, the Jazz stood at just 9-12 going into a December game against the Brooklyn Nets. That’s when Jazz General Manager Dennis Lindsey decided to pull the trigger, sending the second-longest tenured player on his team, Alec Burks, and two second-round draft picks to Cleveland in exchange for 37-year-old sharpshooter Kyle Korver. Korver’s shooting has helped the Jazz in an 18 minutes per game bench role. Meanwhile, in Cleveland, Burks is playing more — 26 minutes per game — but shooting just 36.8 percent.

7. Jon Absey, the man inside the Jazz Bear suit, is fired

After 24 years inside the Jazz Bear mascot costume, Jon Absey was fired by Jazz management before the 2018-19 season began. The organization has never made the reasons behind the firing public. The Jazz Bear lives on with a new performer and has continued many of the iconic skits in games in 2018-19, though.

6. Jazz opt for continuity in the summer of 2018

After a successful season, the Jazz’s front office chose to bring everyone back for another year rather than make big changes. That meant new rich deals for Derrick Favors and Dante Exum, while Raul Neto was also re-signed. Meanwhile, the Jazz decided not to waive Thabo Sefolosha and Ekpe Udoh, despite non-guaranteed years in 2018-19. The only change made was cutting Jonas Jerebko — now playing 20 minutes per game for the Golden State Warriors — loose, while bumping Georges Niang’s contract up to a full roster spot.

5. Jazz make the playoffs

Given everything that happened in May, it’s hard to remember that even making the playoffs was in question for the Jazz until late in the season. It wasn’t until April 8 that the Jazz even clinched a playoff berth, thanks to a crowded Western Conference picture that didn’t make life easy for the Jazz. The team won 11 games in a row in early February, and the Jazz still didn’t find themselves in the top eight until mid-March, after having to go on another nine-game winning streak. After everything that happened in the offseason in 2017, making the playoffs at all was a goal accomplished.

4. Rodney Hood traded for Jae Crowder

Rodney Hood came into the 2017-18 season hoping to earn a starring role with the Utah Jazz, the NBA’s Most Improved Player award, and a massive contract earning him more than $20 million per season. Instead, it all fell apart. With his starting role usurped by Donovan Mitchell, Hood eventually found himself “isolated” from the team and asked for a trade. He got his wish come trade deadline day, when he was sent to Cleveland in exchange for Jae Crowder. The Jazz also received Derrick Rose and sent Joe Johnson to the Kings in the three-team deal. Rose and Johnson were waived. Hood went on to disappoint in the playoffs for Cleveland — as did Johnson for the Rockets — while Crowder became the power forward in the Jazz’s most successful lineup. Rose didn’t play well after being picked up by Minnesota in 2017-18, but has had a resurgent 2018-19.

3. Rudy Gobert wins Defensive Player of the Year

The Jazz were busy on NBA awards night. Center Rudy Gobert made good on his ascendancy, becoming the Jazz’s first Defensive Player of the Year since Mark Eaton in 1989. Rookie Donovan Mitchell came second to Philadelphia’s Ben Simmons in the Rookie of the Year race, while head coach Quin Snyder was a runner-up to Toronto coach Dwane Casey — who was fired after his award-winning season. General manager Dennis Lindsey too came close to his own accolade, finishing second in the NBA’s Executive of the Year voting behind Houston’s Daryl Morey.

2. Jazz defeat Oklahoma City in playoffs

Coming into the first-round matchup between the fourth-seed Oklahoma City Thunder and fifth-seed Jazz, most observers expected it to be close, but for the Thunder’s star-laden roster of Russell Westbrook, Paul George, and Carmelo Anthony to pull through. But the Jazz turned the series around with a Game 2 comeback led by Donovan Mitchell, then took control with two consecutive wins at home. One featured a Ricky Rubio triple-double, the first by a Jazzman in a decade, and the other was a scrappy affair with another big Jazz victory. The Jazz held a 25-point lead in Game 5 before collapsing in a monumental turnaround by the Thunder, before holding serve at home in Game 6 thanks to Mitchell’s 38 points. Of course, the Jazz went on to lose to the Houston Rockets in the West semi-finals, but the first round win made the season for Utah.

1. Donovan Mitchell becomes a superstar

As big as a playoff series win is, in the NBA, the emergence of a long-term superstar matters more. Donovan Mitchell’s meteoric rise from being the rookie selected No. 14 in the draft to becoming a franchise-leading star drastically changed the franchise for years to come. Whether it was his dunk contest win, his combative Rookie of the Year race with Ben Simmons, getting into it on Twitter with Donald Trump, getting a signature shoe from Adidas, Mitchell changed what was possible for a star from Utah.

And Mitchell’s work to endear himself to the community, from paying for a stranger’s iPhone to going to a random Fourth of July pool party and barbecue. While his second season hasn’t come easy, the NBA’s contractual rules for young players mean that Mitchell has plenty of time — likely a half-decade more at least — in Utah to push the ceiling for himself and the Jazz higher.

The first day of Utah’s stricter new DUI law was not too different than the year before in terms of drunken driving arrests, according to the Utah Highway Patrol.

Eight drivers were arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol in the 24 hours of Dec. 30, Col. Michael Rapich of the UHP and deputy commissioner of Utah’s Department of Public Safety said Monday.

What’s more, Rapich said, all eight blood alcohol levels registered above 0.08 percent, the previous measure for impairment. A new law, enacted in early 2018 by the Utah Legislature, drops the BAC limit to 0.05 percent, the lowest in the nation.

On Dec. 30, 2017, 10 people were arrested for DUI in Utah, Rapich said.

“We didn’t see a lot of change [this Sunday] in what we normally see,” Rapich told reporters.

One of Sunday’s arrests occurred after a wrong-way driver hit a vehicle in Draper. FOX 13 reported that Sonya Wilson, 19, was in critical condition after the crash, which police said was caused by a woman driving east in the westbound lane of 11400 South on Sunday morning.

None of the other DUI arrests Sunday was associated with an accident, Rapich said.

The UHP will be out in force on New Year’s Eve, Rapich said, with 58 troopers on patrol — 25 of them on overtime — in what the department calls its “DUI Blitz,” looking out for drivers who appear to be impaired. UHP will not be setting up DUI checkpoints for the holiday evening, he said, though local law enforcement might.

Only after an arrest is blood alcohol content measured and the stricter 0.05 rule comes into play, Rapich said.

“We’re still arresting based on impairment,” Rapich said, adding that drivers suspected of driving under the influence are put through a battery of field sobriety tests — including a breath test. If a driver fails those tests, Rapich said, an arrest is made.

“If there’s no identifiable impairment," he said, “no arrest is made.”

People going out for New Year’s Eve should plan ahead, he said, either by arranging a designated driver or by catching a taxi or using a ride-hailing service, such as Uber or Lyft.

AAA is offering its “Tipsy Tow” service, giving a free tow and ride home within 10 miles, from 6 p.m. Monday to 6 a.m. Tuesday, for anyone who calls 1-800-AAA-HELP (1-800-222-4357).

Rapich stressed that the one sure way to avoid a DUI is, “if you’re going to drink, don’t drive.”

Editor’s note • The Salt Lake Tribune is a content partner with FOX 13.

Should old acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind?

Of course not.

As a year ticks into its final hours, old acquaintances are front of mind, sometimes painfully so. It lends a certain melancholy sweetness to the whole ritual. We mark a milestone reached, but we also remember all that we have lost along the way.

Meaning personal losses, yes: a dad, a friend, a child, a husband or a sister who once was here but has since turned to memory. But it's a moment for remembering our public losses, too.

Like Sen. John McCain and former President George H.W. Bush, two towering statesmen who died at a time when statesmanship is in short supply. We lost Dennis Edwards, whose raw, serrated vocals lifted the Temptations to "Cloud Nine." We lost the Queen, Aretha Franklin, whose voice was a kinetic fire, burning away everything but truth. And we lost Stan "The Man" Lee, the creative genius who made generations of us believe in spider powers, misunderstood mutants, a rainbow bridge and the sovereign nation of Wakanda. 'Nuff said.

But the signature loss of this year was neither personal nor public. No, 2018 will go down as the year we lost ourselves. Although, granted, we've been losing ourselves for a while now.

Americans cherish a self-image as a people who, while they may make a wrong turn here and there, are ultimately noble, ultimately compassionate, ultimately selfless and ultimately driven and defined by vision, values and verities that make us unique among nations. Or as Bruce Springsteen sang in a song called "Long Walk Home," "That flag flying over the courthouse means certain things are set in stone -- who we are, what we'll do, and what we won't."

He sang that back in 2007, using the walk home as a metaphor for bridging the gulf between what America is supposed to be and what it too often was back when the Iraq War and Hurricane Katrina were still fresh wounds. But his assertion of American identity seems critical now in ways that were unimaginable then.

Meaning, back before we were a nation where survivors of a mass shooting were derided as "crisis actors."

A nation whose president defends Russia and Saudi Arabia against the American intelligence community.

A nation where the government ignored a government report forecasting dire climate-change consequences.

A nation where Republicans commit voter suppression and other acts of political thuggery in plain sight.

A nation that used tear gas against children in diapers.

"This isn't us." That's what people keep saying. But it is. That's the entire point. The abiding anger, the situational morality, the disregard for fact, the cruelty, the political gangsterism, these things are what America, writ large, now stands for. And when Springsteen sings of "who we are, what we'll do and what we won't," well, who the hell knows anymore?

And yet . . .

This was the year women ran for office in blockbuster numbers, as Democrats won the House, picked up red-state gubernatorial wins and served notice. Because for all the talk of a blue wave, this was actually a wave of youth, femininity and color as Democratic voters sent to Congress its first Native American and Muslim women and the youngest congresswoman ever, a 29-year-old Latina activist named Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Yes, 2018 was also the year Stacey Abrams, Andrew Gillum and Beto O'Rourke lost their races in Georgia, Florida and Texas, respectively, but even in that, they electrified the electorate, fracturing the conventional wisdom that a progressive agenda cannot gain traction.

The aforementioned political thuggery suggests the GOP knows better. You don't try to stop people from voting (as happened in Georgia and elsewhere) if you don't think their candidates can win. You don't strip winners of power (as happened with Wisconsin's incoming Democratic governor and attorney general) if you don't fear what that victory means.

So yes, conservatives understand what happened here, and it has them scared. Liberals must understand it, too. It will lend them hope. And hope, one hopes, will breed new activism and involvement, will help people who may not have considered politics before to realize that they have the ability and the responsibility to create government that looks like all of us and reflects the majority's values. Maybe this, in turn, will breed more waves of youth, femininity and color, as more of us decide to take America at its word about forming that more perfect union.

Maybe this year means all of that. Or at least, so we are now empowered to hope.

There's an old Chi-Lites song that says, "Give more power to the people." But in a democracy, power is not a thing you wait to be given. Rather, it is a thing you take -- something the left once knew but somehow forgot until, perhaps, just now. In reclaiming that knowledge, we write a cautiously optimistic coda to a godawful year -- properly sobered by all that we have lost but also buoyed by what we have perhaps found.

Springsteen was right. It's going to be a long walk home. But at least now, for the first time in a very long time, we seem to remember the way.

Leonard Pitts is a columnist for The Miami Herald. lpitts@miamiherald.com

Ah, 2018! I can still almost remember what it was like to be alive in February 2018. Drake was on the radio, and there was an Olympics! Did you know that there was an Olympics in 2018? Someone reminded me recently that this happened, and I ceased speaking mid-conversation and just sat there with my mouth hanging open. I have lost all track of time. I entered 2018 a comparatively young, spry individual; I am emerging from it broken and in need of ointment, like Scott Pruitt (a man you may have forgotten, who a very long time ago was the head of the Environmental Protection Agency).

There was once such a thing as the environment. I think I remember some aspects of it -- trees; a pleasing duck; forests that were not on fire. But that was a long time ago. September, maybe?

Everything of 2018 has been with us forever. Everything that departed in 2018 has been gone for as long as we can recall. The "Queer Eye" reboot was this year! This year!

Meghan Markle married Prince Harry, a member of the hereditary monarchy of England, which was nice of her.

We responded to distressing news about the pace of climate change by deciding that it was probably too late to do anything about it, but, just to be sure, we should maybe burn a little more coal. We responded to distressing news of numerous mass shootings by deciding that it was probably too late to do anything about them, but, just to be sure, we should arm all teachers with deadly weapons.

President Trump continued to find new ways of getting people to leave his administration. At the rate he is going, soon no one will be working in his White House; everyone will be malfunctioning. Rex Tillerson (remember Rex Tillerson? I don't!) was fired and replaced by Mike Pompeo, and H.R. McMaster was replaced by a giant mustache.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., announced he would be leaving Congress after having achieved everything a person could possibly hope to achieve without compromising anything but his morals, and is presumably headed to the grassy, pleasant place where former speaker John Boehner frolics and posts pictures of himself with increasingly large glasses of wine.

The Parker Solar Probe, seeing how things were going on Earth, demanded to be shot into the sun, and we obliged. People kept threatening to bring back wide-legged jeans if we did not cooperate.

Bob Woodward wrote "Fear," a book about people who did not enjoy the time they spent with Trump. Stormy Daniels wrote "Full Disclosure," a book about the same thing.

Facebook is even creepier than we thought, it turns out. The good news about Facebook is that someone did in fact read and like everything you shared. The bad news is that this person worked for Cambridge Analytica.

In other good news, they rescued a soccer team from a cave! This just shows: If you really want your student to be safe, don’t send them to school in the United States, where all kinds of bad things may happen; trap them in a cave in northern Thailand.

The bad news is that Elon Musk (whose name, I have always thought, sounds like something the French would have thought made it impossible for them to lose World War I) had some thoughts about this rescue, and they were not worth sharing. Then again, these were only the second- or third-most-regrettable thoughts he shared on Twitter this year, and at least they did not get him into trouble with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Special counsel Robert Mueller continued to investigate. The Mueller investigation appears to be the equivalent of when you start off by looking for something straightforward on Wikipedia and suddenly it is 3 a.m. and you are on the Wikipedia page for rat kings, with 83 tabs open and no recollection of how you got here. But the family of at least one ostrich got the measure of justice they deserved since Paul Manafort came into their lives.

The president made a new friend: Kim Jong Un! It is important to make friends -- like those in Saudi Arabia -- so that, hypothetically, when your intelligence apparatus later suggests they are responsible for murdering a journalist, you can accept whatever they say happened. Also, the president seems to be losing friends, who are all busy testifying or writing anonymous op-eds for the New York Times.

There was a midterm election that could be described as a blue wave only in the narrow and limited sense that it was the biggest Democratic gain in the House since the post-Watergate election. Still, some people were discouraged from voting, and that must be counted in the nature of a red win.

And 2019 is on the horizon, when we must deal with the first half of 12 Democratic primary debates. Maybe by the time they are done, the Mueller investigation will be complete, but everyone who remembers why it was started in the first place will be too aged and feeble to speak.

Alexandra Petri is a Washington Post columnist offering a lighter take on the news and opinions of the day. She is the author of “A Field Guide to Awkward Silences.”

@petridishes

With fresh snow covering the roads and no personnel available to plow them, Arches and Canyonlands national parks shut their gates Monday as the federal government’s partial shutdown ground through its second week.

Utah has been funding some personnel costs at Arches and two other busy national parks since the shutdown started Dec. 22, but that money was being used to staff visitor centers and clean toilets, not clear roads.

“It is unknown when the road will open,” the National Park Service posted on its Arches website. “Access to the park will not occur until conditions improve or the National Park Service receives funding to maintain the roads.”

The state funding was to run out Monday for Bryce Canyon, Arches and Zion, but these parks will remain accessible during the remainder of the shutdown, weather permitting, as are all other park units in Utah. Private money will keep visitor centers open at Bryce Canyon and Zion beyond Monday.

While snow was forecast for Tuesday morning, the weather is expected to be clear through the end of the week at Arches and Bryce.

Garfield County has agreed to help keep Bryce Canyon’s road open should the need arise. The park’s Sunrise and Sunset points will remain accessible by vehicle, although attractions south of Inspiration Point will not be accessible.

“The roads are still icy so visitors better know the conditions and be careful,” Bryce Canyon Superintendent Linda Mazzu said Monday.

While private groups are rallying funds to maintain visitor services at Bryce and Zions, the Friends of Arches and Canyonlands Parks has not been asked to help fund services at parks the Moab-based nonprofit serves, according to Executive Director Joette Langianese.

“Our donors are here to support the parks, not something the government should be paying for," she said. Langianese believes the park service made the right call closing Arches and Canyonlands, both accessed by long, switchbacked approach roads.

"You can’t get up that hill even with four-wheel drive. The issue is more than just plowing,” Langianese said. “We got 6 inches [in Moab], and Arches is a higher elevation. Plowing would be a continuous process. There are general safety issues with snow on trails. It opens more and more doors where staffing is needed.”

The ever-popular Delicate Arch, for example, is reached by a trail across sandstone that is very slippery when icy. A slip can send a visitor sliding over a precipice.

In the wake of Monday’s storm, the park service has posted nothing about the status of roads at Zion and Capitol Reef national parks and Natural Bridges and Dinosaur national monuments.

The Zion Forever Project is putting up about $2,000 a day needed to partially staff Zion through Saturday, while the Bryce Canyon Natural History Association is funding basic visitor services at Bryce through at least Jan. 10. The visitor center is open 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

“If you’ve already made plans to visit the park, please know that we are working shoulder to shoulder with the National Park Service and local partners to provide a safe and memorable visit," said Gayle Pollock, the association’s executive director. "This is an exceptional time of year to experience the natural solitude and stunning snow-covered rock formations that make Bryce Canyon a world-renowned destination.”

On Tuesday, some of Bryce Canyon’s concessions, such as the General Store and Bryce Canyon Lodge, were to close for the season. Meanwhile, parking at nearby Sunrise and Sunset points fills up quickly, even though winter is Bryce Canyon’s “slow” season.

“It’s still busy," Bryce Canyon City Mayor Shiloh Syrett said. “People are still coming.”

He fears the negative publicity surrounding the government shutdown, if it drags on, could discourage people from visiting Bryce this winter.

“We worry when people plan a winter vacation after the holidays,” Syrett said, “maybe they are looking at places other than national parks.”

As part of the Department of Interior shutdown contingency plans, all national parks and monuments would remain open to visitors, but it wouldn’t provide visitor services, like restrooms, trash collection, and road and facility maintenance. The park service’s social media accounts and websites are not monitored or regularly updated and may not reflect current conditions at any of the 400 national parks, monuments and other sites.

However, the usual entrance fees will not be charged. At Utah parks, new permits for backcountry destinations are not being issued, but commercial guides and outfitters might be able to conduct trips as usual. All park programs have been canceled, including scheduled ranger talks and evening programs.

Forty years ago, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping and I normalized diplomatic relations between the People's Republic of China and the United States, putting an end to three decades of hostility. This led to an era distinguished by peace in East Asia and the Pacific region. China's spectacular economic growth, in conjunction with its continuing integration with the much larger U.S. economy, has enabled the two countries to become engines of global prosperity.

Scientific and cultural exchanges have blossomed, and the United States has since become the top foreign destination for Chinese scholars and tourists. The 40th anniversary of this relationship is a testament to the ability of countries with different histories, cultures and political systems to work together for the greater good. Yet, today, this critical relationship is in jeopardy.

I hear Chinese elites claiming that Americans are conducting an "evil conspiracy" to destabilize China. I hear prominent Americans, disappointed that China has not become a democracy, claiming that China poses a threat to the American way of life. U.S. government reports declare that China is dedicated to challenging U.S. supremacy, and that it is planning to drive the United States out of Asia and reduce its influence in other countries around the world.

If top government officials embrace these dangerous notions, a modern Cold War between our two nations is not inconceivable. At this sensitive moment, misperceptions, miscalculations and failure to follow carefully defined rules of engagement in areas such as the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea could escalate into military conflict, creating a worldwide catastrophe.

The U.S. imposition of tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods, and China's retaliatory tariffs, contribute to the deteriorating relationship, hurting both countries.

The 90-day pause in further escalation of tariffs, agreed to at the Group of 20 summit in Argentina, offers the possibility of reaching a permanent agreement on U.S.-China trade. What can we do to build on this progress, and to repair the U.S.-China relationship?

First, the United States' long-standing complaints — about trade imbalances, intellectual property theft, forced technology transfers, and unfair barriers to U.S. investments and business operations in China — must be addressed quickly and effectively. Neither country should use “national security” as an excuse to obstruct the other’s legitimate commercial activities. China needs competition for its economy to innovate and grow; pursuing a fair and reciprocal relationship is the only way for both countries to remain economically strong.

Second, Americans must acknowledge that, just as China has no right to interfere in U.S. affairs, we have no inherent right to dictate to China how to govern its people or choose its leaders. Though even countries with the closest of relationships may critique each other at times, such engagements should never become directives or edicts; they should rather serve as a two-way street of open dialogue. China’s achievements in sustaining economic growth, alleviating abject poverty and providing developmental assistance to other countries need to be celebrated. At the same time, we cannot ignore its deficiencies in Internet censorship, policies toward minorities and religious restrictions — which should be recorded and criticized.

This balanced approach is key to ensuring that the United States and China continue to work together toward solving some of the most intractable global problems. Despite current tensions on other issues, Chinese support has been essential in our ongoing efforts to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula. Beijing also could offer crucial help in post-conflict reconstruction in the Middle East and Africa, countering terrorism and extremism, and mediating other international disputes.

The United States should return to the Paris climate accord and work with China on environmental and climate-change issues, as the epic struggle against global warming requires active participation from both nations. But I believe the easiest route to bilateral cooperation lies in Africa. Both countries are already heavily involved there in fighting disease, building infrastructure and keeping peace - sometimes cooperatively. Yet each nation has accused the other of economic exploitation or political manipulation. Africans - like billions of other people around the world — do not want to be forced to choose a side. Instead, they welcome the synergy that comes from pooling resources, sharing expertise and designing complementary aid programs. By working together with Africans, the United States and China would also be helping themselves overcome distrust and rebuild this vital relationship.

In 1979, Deng Xiaoping and I knew we were advancing the cause of peace. While today's leaders face a different world, the cause of peace remains just as important. Leaders must bring new vision, courage and ingenuity to new challenges and opportunities, but I believe they also must accept our conviction that the United States and China need to build their futures together, for themselves and for humanity at large.

Jimmy Carter, the 39th president of the United States, is founder of the nonprofit Carter Center.

U.S. Rep. Mia Love, R-Utah, participated in only 14 of 85 votes during the lame-duck House session that followed her defeat by Democratic Rep.-elect Ben McAdams, the worst of any member of Utah’s federal delegation and near the bottom of the entire Congress.

According to the website GovTrack, Love missed 83.5 percent of House votes during November and December — well above her average 4.1 percent absent rate — putting her in the 98th percentile for nonparticipation during the lower chamber’s lame-duck session.

In a prepared statement, Love’s spokesman Richard Piatt said the congresswoman has had a 100 percent voting record in the current Congress. That claim is inaccurate and is contradicted by official House voting records.

Piatt said Love has sacrificed a lot of family time while serving in Washington.

“She has been honored to have dedicated four years diligently serving Utah,” Piatt said, “but has, unfortunately, been home with a sick child recently.”

Catherine Weller, co-president of the Utah League of Women Voters, declined to comment on Love’s voting record, or the record of any individual member of the state’s federal delegation. But she added that members of Congress are elected to represent their states.

“We want to see our elected officials in the people’s House doing the people’s business,” Weller said. “That means casting votes and trying to work legislation through the system.”

Other members of Utah’s federal delegation saw more modest spikes in their absentee rates since the election. Rep. Rob Bishop missed 3.5 percent of votes in November and December — his highest rate since the summer months — Rep. Chris Stewart missed 5.9 percent of votes — his worst period since June of 2015 — and Rep. John Curtis missed 1.2 percent of votes, up from a perfect participation rate from July to September.

In the Senate, retiring Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch missed 1.8 percent of votes between October and December, better than his personal average of 3.3 percent. And Sen. Mike Lee maintained a perfect participation rate during the most recent voting period.

“I like to vote!” Lee said in a statement to The Salt Lake Tribune. “Giving constituents as full a voting record as possible is essential for a functioning republic.”

Since the election, Love has made several media appearances, expressing criticism of President Donald Trump, the national Republican and Democratic parties and her successor, McAdams, whom she described as a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” during a fiery concession speech.

Her unsuccessful re-election bid was notably mocked by Trump the day after the election, during which the president singled out Love and other defeated Republicans and suggested their failure to enthusiastically “embrace” him and his administration cost them their seats in Congress.

“Mia Love gave me no love and she lost,” Trump said. “Too bad. Sorry about that, Mia.”

Love responded to the criticisms by describing Trump’s relationships as “transactional,” and suggesting the Republican Party needs to do more to appeal to women and people of color.

San Diego • For half of the Holiday Bowl, Utah did what the Utes usually do in December.

And then they crumbled, to a stunning degree.

Northwestern scored 28 points in the third quarter of a 31-20 victory in the rain Monday night at SDCCU Stadium.

“When we're in control at halftime, we win about 98 percent of the time,” coach Kyle Whittingham said.

In this case, a 20-3 lead evaporated during a shocking stretch of a game that somehow got away from the Utes.

“We showed what we were like in the first half,” said Ute linebacker Cody Barton. “In the second half, we just s--- the bed.”

That's one graphic way to describe a collapse that will partly spoil this season, eventually to be remembered for Utah's first Pac-12 South championship.

Utah will have to live with a double dose of disappointment. Counting a frustrating loss to Washington in the Pac-12 championship game, the Utes (9-5) will carry consecutive defeats into the offseason for the first time since 1996. This episode will bother them, just because of how they were dominating Northwestern behind Jason Shelley's two touchdown passes in the first half.

No. 17 Utah had hoped to win a sixth straight bowl game and earn the program's second 10-win season of the Pac-12 era.

Those achievements seemed likely, before No. 22 Northwestern (9-5) scored four touchdowns in the third quarter, with the Wildcats' run partly – although not completely – attributable to Utah's four turnovers in the period.

One play especially will haunt the Utes. Imagine this: Utah had a first-and-goal opportunity at the Northwestern 6-yard line with less than seven minutes remaining in the third quarter, leading 20-10. By the start of the fourth quarter, the Utes were trailing 31-20. Everything changed with Joe Gaziano’s strip-sack of Shelley, as Jared McGee returned the fumble 86 yards for a touchdown.

That sequence stemmed from Utah's inability to run the ball against Northwestern's defense. Offensive coordinator Troy Taylor, calling Utah's plays for the last time before moving to Sacramento State as head coach, sent in a run-pass option play. When the pass protection broke down and Shelley couldn't escape the rush, this game was permanently altered.

Once the momentum swung to the Wildcats, not even Utah's proud defense could do anything about it.

Northwestern's surge “kind of just killed our morale,” linebacker Francis Bernard said.

The Utes lost six turnovers: two interceptions of Shelley, his two fumbles and two more fumbles by receiver Jaylen Dixon, after catches.

The Utes were mildly disappointed as the first half ended, with the offense settling for a field goal after wasting a first-and-goal chance in the last minute. Even so, Utah's 20-point, 243-yard half was a lot more impressive than the offense's entire production of three points and 188 yards vs. Washington a month ago at Santa Clara, Calif.

With junior quarterback Tyler Huntley not being cleared to play, eight weeks after sustaining a broken collarbone, Shelley made his fifth start. He showed more poise than ever in the first half, continually avoiding the rush and finding open receivers. Shelley passed for 155 yards in the half, including touchdowns of 27 yards to Dixon and 4 yards to tight end Jake Jackson.

Utah's defense allowed some long completions in the half, but the Wildcats managed only a field goal after a first-and-goal chance. The Utes played aggressively, with two sacks of quarterback Clayton Thorson stemming from blitzes. Marquise Blair's interception led to Utah's second field goal.

But that was the Utes' only takeaway, and everything crumbled for Utah in the third quarter. Concluding his 25th season in the program, Whittingham said he had never experienced a quarter like that.

The Utes likely will maintain a Top 25 ranking in the final poll. “You judge the body of work as a whole, not one game,” Whittingham said. Even so, this snapshot will have a lasting impression, as 2018 ended.

A woman who helped kidnap Elizabeth Smart is living several blocks away from a Salt Lake City elementary school following her release from prison in September, according to Utah’s sex-offender registry.

Wanda Barzee, 73, is listed in the registry as living in an apartment near the school after her initial placement in a halfway house after she was released on parole much earlier than anticipated despite her refusal to cooperate with mental health professionals while incarcerated.

Federal probation officers did not return a telephone message Monday seeking comment about the living arrangement for Barzee near Parkview Elementary School.

She was sentenced to 15 years in prison in 2010 after pleading guilty to helping her husband, street preacher Brian David Mitchell, who abducted Smart at knifepoint in 2002 when she was 14 and repeatedly raped her. Smart was held captive for nine months before she was found and rescued.

Smart, now 31, has become a child safety advocate and is married with three young children. She had no immediate comment about Barzee living near the school, according to her spokesman, Chris Thomas.

Smart has criticized Barzee’s release, which came more than five years earlier than expected after the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole determined it had miscalculated the time Barzee was required to serve in prison.

Smart called it “incomprehensible” that someone who had not cooperated with her mental health evaluations or risk assessments could be let out, but also said she wouldn’t let Barzee’s release stop her from living her life.

Barzee is serving five years of federal supervised release. The release guidelines don’t seem to set limits on how close she can live to a school.

Sex offenders in Utah are prohibited from going on school grounds, according to state rules.

The school, which has students from kindergarten through fifth grade, is closed for winter break.

Yandary Chatwin, a spokeswoman for the Salt Lake City School District, had no immediate comment.

Orem • Christmas for the Montfleurys is usually a party.

The family, all of whom have come to Utah from Haiti over the years, is close — and big. All the aunts, uncles and cousins get together. They laugh, they dance.

But this year, the family had no celebration.

It didn’t feel right. Not without Mackenley there.

For the past four months, 27-year-old Mackenley Montfleury has been locked up in an immigration detention center after he pleaded no contest to a marijuana and a domestic violence charge.

And while he is a lawful permanent resident in the United States, these low-level convictions could result in his deportation back to Haiti — a country he hasn’t been to since he was 10.

But Mackenley didn’t know when he took a plea deal in September that it could affect his immigration status. His public defender never discussed it.

On Monday, more than a dozen of Mackenley’s family members filled an Orem courtroom as his new attorney, Jonathan Paz, asked the justice court judge to let his client withdraw his pleas.

“I need my son back home,” Micheline Montfleury said in tears.

From Haiti to Utah

Mackenley’s father, Joseph Ernst Montfleury, first came to the United States in 2002. He was involved in politics, and ran to be a congressman in Haiti. But after the election, his family home was bombed.

“We tried to resist for two years,” the father said. “The situation got worse and worse and worse. That’s why I decided to leave.”

The elder Montfleury asked for political asylum. He first brought his daughter to the United States, then his two sons and wife came later that year.

“We follow the rules,” the father said. “We don’t give any problems.”

The Montfleurys raised their family in Orem. Everyone in the family eventually became U.S. citizens except for Mackenley, who has a green card that does not expire until 2026.

The father said the family held off on applying for citizenship for Mackenley because, at that time, he was a teenager who had started getting into some trouble. The kind of trouble that’s typical of many teenagers — sneaking out of the house, smoking marijuana. They worried then he could be denied citizenship because of it.

And then, last Thanksgiving, Mackenley got into a fight with his father.

“We have rules and he didn’t follow the rules,” the father said of the altercation. “He became aggressive with me. He hit me in the eye.”

The police were called. And despite the father’s objections, prosecutors filed an assault charge against his youngest son. Montfleury later wrote a letter to the judge asking that the case be dropped, but it didn’t work.

Mackenley pleaded no contest in September and was sentenced to 30 days in jail. Grant Nagamatsu, his public defender, later wrote in a court affidavit that he never discussed the possible ramifications a conviction for even low-level crimes could have on Mackenley’s immigration status.

“I was unaware [he] was not an American citizen,” the attorney wrote. “I made no personal observation that would indicate he was not born in the United States.”

‘They will deport him’

When Mackenley got to the Utah County jail to serve his sentence, immigration officials were notified. He was then sent to an immigration detention center in Colorado.

Paz said he first told Mackenley’s family to wait.

“They don’t have to deport him,” Paz said. “He’s a lawful permanent resident. They’ll look at the charges and they’ll see they’re pretty low-level and they won’t try to deport him. But now it’s 2019, and we’re in the current administration we’re in, and now with those kind of charges, they will deport him.”

On Monday, Paz asked Orem Justice Court Judge Reed Parkin — the judge who heard Mackenley’s case months ago — to let the young man take back his pleas.

Mackenley is expected to go before a Colorado immigration judge Wednesday and request that he be allowed to post bond and be released. If he were allowed to take back his pleas, Paz said, there would be no conviction to hold him on.

Defendants are supposed to be advised of such consequences by their attorney, but Orem Prosecutor DJ Summers argued in court that Mackenley signed plea agreement documents that briefly explained his convictions could affect his citizenship.

“Those are signed by his own hand,” the prosecutor argued.

Judge Parkin, however, ultimately wouldn’t hear the issue, saying the request should have been filed at the district court level, not with him at the justice court. Even as Paz pleaded with him several times to hear the case, the judge wouldn’t budge.

“What the court effectively has done has made it so Mackenley absolutely cannot get out,” Paz argued as the judge made his ruling. “He will be subject to mandatory detention. He will be subject to deportation hearings.”

Parkin’s decision to not hear the case was devastating to Mackenley’s family.

His aunts cried after the hearing, worrying that their nephew would be killed if he were sent to Haiti. His father said they worry he could be targeted for political reasons and said there’s no real family left in the country that Mackenley could turn to for help.

Paz said he’ll still ask the immigration judge later this week to set a bond for Mackenley so he might be released — but it will be more difficult than if Parkin would have let his client take his plea back.

The attorney said cases like Mackenley’s show a dramatic shift in immigration policies under President Donald Trump’s administration. Several years ago, he said it was unlikely someone would be deported for such small crimes.

Now, deportations for misdemeanors are becoming more common.

“Mackenley didn’t rape anyone. He didn’t kill anyone,” Paz said. “He didn’t sell drugs. He possessed marijuana in a small quantity. The only violent offense is a fight with his father — who hired me, who’s been in court all day with us, who’s been calling me nonstop trying to get his son out, who sent a letter to the court saying do not convict him of this assault. This was a mistake.”

Washington • House Democrats unveiled a package of bills Monday that would re-open the federal government without approving funding for President Donald Trump’s border wall with Mexico, establishing an early confrontation that will test the new power dynamic in Washington.

The House is preparing to vote as soon as the new Congress convenes Thursday, as one of the first acts after Democrats take control, according to an aide who was not authorized to discuss the plan and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Democrats under Nancy Pelosi are all but certain to swiftly approve the two bills, making good on their pledge to try to quickly resolve the partial government shutdown that’s now in its second week. What’s unclear is whether the Republican-led Senate, under Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., will consider either measure — or if Trump would sign them into law.

“It would be the height of irresponsibility and political cynicism for Senate Republicans to now reject the same legislation they have already supported,” Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement late Monday.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The package does not include the $5 billion Trump wants for the wall on the southern border.

The president told Fox News Channel in an interview Monday that he was "ready, willing and able" to negotiate. He added: "No, we are not giving up. We have to have border security and the wall is a big part of border security."

McConnell spokesman Donald Stewart made it clear Senate Republicans will not take action without Trump’s backing. “It’s simple: The Senate is not going to send something to the president that he won’t sign,” he said.

Republican senators are refusing to vote on any bills until all sides, including Trump, are in agreement. Senators were frustrated that Trump had dismissed their earlier legislation to avert the shutdown.

House Democrats did not confer with Senate Republicans on the package, but the bills are expected to have some bipartisan support because they reflect earlier spending measures already hashed out between the parties and chambers.

One bill will temporarily fund the Department of Homeland Security at current levels, with $1.3 billion for border security, through Feb. 8, while talks continue.

The other will be on a measure made up of six other bipartisan bills — some that have already passed the Senate — to fund the departments of Agriculture, Interior, Housing and Urban Development and others closed by the partial shutdown. They would provide money through the remainder of the fiscal year, to Sept. 30.

The House is planning two separate votes for Thursday. If approved, the bills would go to the Senate.

Senate Democrats support the measures, according to a senior aide who was unauthorized to discuss the plan and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., the chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, tweeted that without funding for Trump’s wall, the package is a “nonstarter.” He said it “will not be a legitimate answer to this impasse.”

But as the shutdown drags on, pressure is expected to build on all sides for a resolution, as public parks and museums close, and some 800,000 federal workers are going without pay.

Trump could accept or reject either bill, and it’s unclear how he would respond. The president continued to insist Monday he wants to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, despite assertions otherwise of three confidants.

“An all concrete Wall was NEVER ABANDONED,” Trump tweeted Monday. “Some areas will be all concrete but the experts at Border Patrol prefer a Wall that is see through (thereby making it possible to see what is happening on both sides).”

Trump’s comments came after officials, including his departing chief of staff, indicated that the president’s signature campaign pledge to build the wall would not be fulfilled as advertised. White House chief of staff John Kelly told the Los Angeles Times in an interview published Sunday that Trump abandoned the notion of “a solid concrete wall early on in the administration.”

“To be honest, it’s not a wall,” Kelly said, adding that the mix of technological enhancements and “steel slat” barriers the president now wants along the border resulted from conversations with law enforcement professionals.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., emerged from a Sunday lunch at the White House to tell reporters that “the wall has become a metaphor for border security” and referred to “a physical barrier along the border.”

Graham said Trump was “open-minded” about a broader immigration agreement, saying the budget impasse presented an opportunity to address issues beyond the border wall. But a previous attempt to reach a compromise that addressed the status of “Dreamers” — young immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children — broke down last year as a result of escalating White House demands.

Graham told CNN before his lunch with Trump that “there will never be a deal without wall funding.”

The partial government shutdown began Dec. 22 after Trump bowed to conservative demands that he fight to make good on his vow and secure funding for the wall before Republicans lose control of the House on Wednesday. Democrats have remained committed to blocking any funding for the wall, and with neither side engaging in substantive negotiation, the effect of the partial shutdown was set to spread and to extend into the new year.

Washington • It has begun.

The field of candidates for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination is starting to form, with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., announcing Monday that she has launched a campaign "exploratory committee" — the same step that former housing and urban development secretary Julian Castro took earlier in December. Spoiler alert: Exploratory committees always come to the same conclusion. They're both running.

Actually, who isn’t running? At this point, by some counts, as many as 30 potential Democratic candidates either have expressed interest in taking the plunge or have significant constituencies urging them to do so. If you thought the 2016 GOP debates were crowded, just wait. This year, Democrats may have to debate in shifts, or perhaps stand on risers like a choir.

And no, they won’t all be singing the same tune. That’s a good thing. Even more than it needs new blood, the party needs new ideas. In the wake of President Trump’s nihilistic vandalism, the next president will have much to do — not just healing the nation, but moving it forward.

Democratic hopefuls should have a vigorous argument about Medicare-for-all. They should have fact-based debates about comprehensive immigration reform, renewing our infrastructure, worker-friendly trade policy, the Middle East wars and the best ways to confront climate change.

And they should spend zero time worrying about whether the party is being pulled too far to the left or the right. One thing Trump's election showed is that the left-right axis on which we traditionally situate politicians is irrelevant to many voters. I'm old enough to remember when the Republican Party supported a muscular foreign policy, believed in fiscal discipline and wanted to rein in entitlements. Post-Trump, Republicans are ready to pull out of Syria, exchange fist-bumps for sky-high deficits and paint themselves as staunch defenders of socialized medicine, though they do not call it that.

So should retiring Democratic Rep. John Delaney of Maryland — an announced candidate who skipped the "exploratory" nonsense — be seen as a "centrist" because he supports letting companies repatriate money at a lower tax rate, with the revenue to be spent on infrastructure? Or is he a "progressive," as he claims, because of his support for bold steps against climate change, including a carbon tax?

Labels are not going to sort this field out. Let's see whose ideas catch fire.

To those who bemoan coverage of the "horse race" aspect of the contest: Sorry. That's what a campaign is, and it's ridiculous to try to assess any race without noting who's ahead and who's behind.

It's also ridiculous to give too much weight to polls taken months before the first debate and more than a year before anyone actually casts a vote. With those caveats, a mid-December poll of Democrats in Iowa, whose caucus is the first primary contest, showed former Vice President Joe Biden leading all potential contenders with 32 percent support, followed by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders with 19 percent, rising star Beto O'Rourke, a congressman from Texas, with 11 percent, Warren with 8 percent, California Sen. Kamala Harris with 5 percent, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker with 4 percent, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg with 3 percent and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar with 3 percent.

That's good news for all of the above. Biden and Sanders have run national campaigns, and their support is surely boosted by superior name recognition; still, if they choose to run, they have a head start. O'Rourke should be especially happy, since he had no national profile at all before his electrifying — but unsuccessful — 2016 campaign against Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, who should have waltzed to re-election but instead almost got sent home to Houston.

Warren should be pleased, too. She has systematically laid the groundwork for her candidacy, traveling widely around the country, establishing connections, displaying her prowess as a fundraiser. Her appeal as a champion of the beleaguered middle class could resonate at a time when the phrase "economic populism" defines an increasingly powerful, if still fuzzy, strain of thought.

Bloomberg can spend billions of his own dollars campaigning, if he chooses, but might encounter a public wary of sending another wealthy Manhattanite to the White House. Harris, Booker and Klobuchar should be delighted to be on the map. And at least two other senators — Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York — seem likely to be major players before this is over.

And keep this in mind: On New Year's Day 2015, no rational person thought Donald Trump would become president. Candidate X may be offstage, waiting to pounce. Buckle up.

Eugene Robinson writes a twice-a-week column on politics and culture and hosts a weekly online chat with readers. In a three-decade career at The Washington Post, Robinson has been city hall reporter, city editor, foreign correspondent in Buenos Aires and London, foreign editor, and assistant managing editor in charge of the paper’s Style section.

@Eugene_Robinson

Los Angeles • It was supposed to be a great year for marijuana entrepreneur Brian Blatz.

When California broadly legalized pot on Jan. 1, the lawyer with a background in banking and health care had been working for a year to set up a trucking company that would whisk fragrant marijuana buds, infused juices and other products from fields and production plants to store shelves.

On its website, Long Beach-based Verdant Distribution said the company’s goal was to be the United States’ pre-eminent business for transporting cannabis.

But it’s all gone. The trucks were sold to cover debt, a warehouse vacated, its license expired.

The choppy rollout of California’s legal market saddled the company with costly delays, but it was undone by an abrupt state rule change that allowed just about any marijuana business to become its own distributor, undercutting the need for stand-alone companies like Verdant.

In California’s emerging market, “the challenges are tremendous,” said Blatz, who is now advising clients in the fledgling industry. “Suddenly, the whole game changes on you.”

In a nation increasingly embracing legal cannabis, California stands out as the country’s biggest pot shop . Top-shelf marijuana, concentrates, balms and munchies are being produced and sold. Some companies are doing well, especially those with deep pockets that can handle the market’s twists and turns.

But many are not. And some, like Blatz’s company, already are casualties.

At year’s end, California’s effort to transform its longstanding illegal and medicinal marijuana markets into a unified, multibillion-dollar industry remains a work in progress. It’s a mix of success stories, struggles and crashes.

The illegal market continues to flourish — by some estimates, up to 80 percent of the sales in the state still are under the table, snatching profits from legal storefronts.

With many communities banning marijuana sales, limiting the number of licenses or simply not creating rules for the legal market to operate, the supply chain is fragile, leaving some shops with sparsely stocked shelves. A battle over home deliveries of pot in communities that have banned marijuana businesses could end up in court.

A promised state tax windfall has yet to arrive, while businesses complain about hefty tax rates that can approach 50 percent in some communities. The number of testing labs remains tight. Meanwhile, shifting rules and start-up costs are taking a toll.

In Los Angeles, where the pace of licensing has lagged, Adam Spiker, who heads an industry group, summed up the condition of most companies with one word, “Pain.”

He says tax rates need to be cut to entice buyers into the legal market, and the city needs to rapidly expand the number of licenses for shops to sell cannabis.

“The encouraging sign, the state is open for business,” said Spiker, executive director of the Southern California Coalition. But “if you have limited access to retail, that’s going to force a lot of companies to fail.”

A year into broad legal sales, “no one has it figured out in California,” he said. “It’s so new, so big, so turbulent.”

Patchwork growth

In general, California treats cannabis like alcohol, allowing people 21 and older to legally possess up to an ounce and grow six marijuana plants at home.

What’s emerged is a patchwork. Marijuana farms proliferate in Santa Barbara County and legal pot shops are never far away in San Francisco. But other places ban all commercial marijuana activity, or allow cultivation but not sales.

The state’s top pot regulator, Lori Ajax, said her goal in 2019 will be to get more licensed businesses in the marketplace, while increasing enforcement against illegal operators.

One of the fortunate ones has been Arizona-based Harvest Health & Recreation, which has operations in a dozen states and more than 400 employees, including in California, and recently started trading on the Canadian stock exchange. By the end of next year, the company expects to have at least 20 retail shops in California, a manufacturing plant and a statewide distribution system.

Company president Steve Gutterman praised the state’s efforts to open the legal market — the consumer is getting quality, safe products. But he said he’d welcome a more aggressive push against illegal operators, and pot companies need access to banking — most financial institutions won’t do business with cannabis companies because it remains illegal at the federal level.

“There has been good and bad,” he said, but “California is a great place for us.”

That’s not the case for many retail businesses in Los Angeles.

Drive through California’s largest city and there are plenty of shops and billboards advertising pot sales, and some businesses provide Apple store-like settings to pick from buds with names like Blue Dream and Chocolate Gelato.

But the number of shops is part of the problem — hundreds are illegal. Here, and elsewhere, the illicit market that thrived for decades continues to do robust business, often in plain sight.

Police do periodic crackdowns on individual businesses, but it barely makes a dent in the illicit marketplace.

In a letter to Los Angeles officials in November, the United Cannabis Business Association said legal shops are struggling to keep their doors open while illegal storefronts flourish, selling products for as much as 50 percent below legal rivals.

Those illegal shops “do not pay taxes, do not pay the cost of ... city and state regulations, and do not follow required worker protections,” wrote the group, which represents legal retailers.

Larger companies can weather the transition to the legal market — some say government rules favor them — but smaller operators are taking out second and third mortgages, industry experts say.

In L.A., “we are seeing a regulated industry that is bleeding out,” said Ruben Honig, the business group’s executive director.

Utah singer Jimmy Osmond suffered a stroke last week during a stage show in England.

Osmond, the youngest member of the family singing group The Osmonds, was taken to a hospital in Birmingham after Thursday night’s production of Peter Pan, in which he played Captain Hook, according to a news release by the theater, The Birmingham Hippodrome.

“After pushing through the evening’s performance of Peter Pan at Birmingham Hippodrome, Jimmy Osmond was driven straight to hospital and diagnosed with a stroke,” a spokesperson for Osmond said in the theater's news release.

Osmond, of Provo, was performing in the Hippodrome’s annual pantomime, or “panto,” a theatrical holiday tradition in England that features colorful, high-energy productions of fairy tales.

“Everyone here at Birmingham Hippodrome has been deeply saddened to hear of Jimmy’s sudden illness,” said the Hippodrome’s artistic director and chief executive, Fiona Allan. “Jimmy loved being a part of the Hippodrome’s well-renowned panto, and his portrayal of Captain Hook was both dastardly and heartwarming. He won the adoration not just of our audiences, but also of all our staff – we all send Jimmy and his family very best wishes for a speedy recovery.”

Washington • Human feces, overflowing garbage, illegal off-roading and other damaging behavior in fragile areas were beginning to overwhelm some of the West’s iconic national parks on Monday, as a partial government shutdown left the areas open to visitors but with little staff on duty.

“It’s a free-for-all,” Dakota Snider, 24, who lives and works in Yosemite Valley, said by telephone Monday, as Yosemite National Park officials announced closings of some minimally supervised campgrounds and public areas within the park that are overwhelmed.

“It’s so heartbreaking. There is more trash and human waste and disregard for the rules than I’ve seen in my four years living here,” Snider said.

The 10th day of the partial federal government shutdown, which has forced furloughs of hundreds of thousands of federal government employees, has left many parks without most of the rangers and others who staff campgrounds and otherwise keep parks running.

Unlike shutdowns in some previous administrations, the Trump administration was leaving parks open to visitors despite the staff furloughs, said John Garder, senior budget director of the nonprofit National Parks Conservation Association.

“We’re afraid that we’re going to start seeing significant damage to the natural resources in parks and potentially to historic and other cultural artifacts,” Garder said. “We’re concerned there’ll be impacts to visitors' safety.”

“It’s really a nightmare scenario,” Garder said.

Under the park service’s shutdown plan, authorities have to close any area where garbage or other problems become threats to health and safety or to wildlife, spokesman Jeremy Barnum said in an email Monday.

“At the superintendent’s discretion, parks may close grounds/areas with sensitive natural, cultural, historic, or archaeological resources vulnerable to destruction, looting, or other damage that cannot be adequately protected by the excepted law enforcement staff that remain on duty,” Barnum said.

Campers at Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California’s deserts were reporting squabbles as different families laid claims to sites, with no rangers on hand to adjudicate, said Ethan Feltges, who operates the Coyote Corner gift shop outside Joshua Tree.

Feltges and other business owners around Joshua Tree had stepped into the gap as much as possible, hauling trailers into the park to empty overflowing trash bins and sweeping and stocking restrooms that were still open, Feltges said.

Feltges himself had set up a portable toilet at his store to help the visitors still streaming in and out of the park. He was spending his days standing outside his store, offering tips about the park in place of the rangers who normally would be present.

“The whole community has come together,” Feltges said by phone. “Everyone loves the park. And there’s a lot of businesses that actually need the park.”

Most visitors were being respectful of the desert wilderness and park facilities, Joshua Tree’s superintendent, David Smith, said in a statement.

But some are seizing on the shortage of park staffers to off-road illegally and otherwise damage the park, as well as relieving themselves in the open, a park statement said. Joshua Tree said it would begin closing some campgrounds for all but day use.

At Yosemite, Snider, the local resident, said crowds of visitors were driving into the park to take advantage of free admission, with only a few park rangers working and a limited number of restrooms open.

Visitors were allowing their dogs to run off-leash in an area rich with bears and other wildlife, and scattering bags of garbage along the roads, Snider said.

“You’re looking at Yosemite Falls and in front of you is plastic bottles and trash bags,” he said.

Officials at Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado said Monday they were closing restrooms and locking up trash bins in many locations.

In Yellowstone National Park, private companies have picked up some of the maintenance normally done by federal workers. The contractors that operate park tours by snowmobile, buses and vans are grooming trails, hauling trash and replacing toilet paper at pit toilets and restrooms along their routes.

Nearly all roads inside Yellowstone are normally closed for winter, meaning most visitors at this time of the year access park attractions like Old Faithful or the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone through guides. Those guides are splitting the cost of grooming the trails used by their vehicles to keep their operations going, said Travis Watt, general manager of See Yellowstone Alpen Guides based in West Yellowstone, Montana.

The tour companies can likely keep this system going through the entire winter season if they need to, Watt said.

“It’s definitely not our preference — the park service does a good job doing their thing and we hate to see them out of work,” Watt said. “But it’s something we can handle.”

San Diego • The word of the year just past, the descriptive one Kyle Whittingham used more than any other to characterize his football team is … resilient.

Was.

It’s normally a good, fitting word, one the coach wanted to unsheathe again and apply directly on Monday night, after Northwestern defeated Utah, 31-20, in the Holiday Bowl. He could not, though, not on this occasion, not specific to these exact circumstances.

This particular showing required three different words: beaten, shocked and heartbroken. Whittingham added another: “nightmarish.”

In a game that by its very structure and nature, a contest between two hardy-more-than-handsome teams that were built to require that first description out of whoever was going to win it, the Utes could not find a way to hold on, to power through, to be themselves.

They looked strong early, on the verge of blowing out the Wildcats, and then …

And then, things got ridiculous.

The Utes crumbled in bewildering manner, while Northwestern slapped them for their lack of effort, lack of poise, lack of execution. Falling behind, 20-3, the Wildcats were the ones who embraced resiliency, facing and facing down a necessary reversal of a difficult flow.

“You’ve got to respect a team that doesn’t give up,” Utah linebacker Cody Barton said of the victors.

Turnovers gave that team a lift.

“When you keep turning the ball over,” Whittingham said, “momentum is a powerful thing.”

The Wildcats started their dramatic comeback — and Utah commenced its collapse — early in the third quarter with a gift from the Utes, an intercepted pass from quarterback Jason Shelley that was turned into a Northwestern touchdown, set up on a subsequent 62-yard pass by QB Clayton Thorson that preceded a scoring throw seconds later, cutting the margin to 10.

Next, with 6:40 left in the third, and Utah threatening with a first-and-goal at the Northwestern 6-yard line, Shelley fumbled the ball back to the 14, where it was picked up by Wildcats defender Jared McGee, who returned it the distance, 86 biggies, slicing the Utes’ lead to three.

Then, Jaylen Dixon fumbled a completion, returned this time to the Utah 31, followed by a Northwestern touchdown pass, and the lead was the Wildcats’. It stayed in their possession.

Turned out, the Utes could not win a game neither team wanted to be playing in. One more victory for either of them, and they would’ve been running for the Roses in the Arroyo Seco. Overcoming that disappointment, in itself, was burdensome.

The Utes started with energy, but simply could not finish. They lacked composure and precision in that back half. It was a conflicted performance that was much more flat than it was flawless. As much as the Utes had previously earned that initial R-word, this time, they were neither resolved nor rock-steady.

So, there was no reward.

That was plain from the collective body language displayed by the 2018 Utes on the field at SDCCU Stadium as the final seconds slid off the clock. They hung their heads, embracing one another, in consolation rather than celebration, taking in a 9-5 season that would have turned out a whole lot better at 10-4.

It was not the way to punctuate an otherwise standout season and year for these Utes. Not a step forward for whatever comes next for Utah football. The returning talent is sound and solid, but that promise will have to wait a while to emerge, what with the sting of defeat dominating this day.

Between the Pac-12 title game and the Holiday Bowl, this postseason has been a major disappointment. The Utes were really good this year, and that’s what made its ending as indicting as it was promising.

Despite the disappointment of not playing in Pasadena, there had been a festive importance to this Holiday Bowl, at least in the run-up, where a general kind of regrouping for the teams existed, and perhaps for the fans, too. Those who were on hand could sense and feel it. It certainly was better than the Heart of Dallas Bowl, the Foster Farms Bowl, the Maaco Bowl, the Poinsettia Bowl, the Humpty Dumpty Bowl, the Whatever Bowl, just about every bowl before and after the Fiesta and Sugar Bowls.

There was more heft to it, more significance.

Over the past 40 years, since the Holiday Bowl’s inception, the game has grown in renown, if not prestige. It has lasted and preserved itself well. Playing the Western division champ from the Big Ten was a decent, worthwhile hurdle — and the Utes knew it.

But that reality, that essence did not soak through into the action on the field.

“We let the game get away from us,” Whittingham said.

He used one last word, a word the Utes most definitely were on the wrong end of: “landslide.”

GORDON MONSON hosts “The Big Show” weekdays from 3-7 p.m. on 97.5 FM and 1280 AM The Zone.