In the Book of Mormon, a character named Captain Moroni uses his torn coat as a banner to motivate the Nephite army.

The scriptural character’s inscription, known as the “Title of Liberty,” is among the most beloved passages within The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and it made an appearance in the mailbox of some Utah voters this weekend as part of the campaign materials of a Republican candidate for the state House.

“Please vote in memory of our God, our religion, and freedom, our peace, our wives and our children,” read a mailer for Todd Zenger in near-identical language to the scriptural verse Alma 46:12.

The mailer also describes Zenger as “the only House 36 candidate” who supports limiting abortion, the free exercise of religion, the public display of “In God We Trust” and recognizing pornography as a public health crisis.

Zenger is running against Rep. Patrice Arent, D-Millcreek, a four-term incumbent and the state’s only Jewish legislator. Photos of the mailer gained significant attention online over the weekend, with reactions that ranged from criticizing the material as in bad taste, to accusations of anti-Semitism.

Ew gross #utpol pic.twitter.com/4bR6NTeuQp

— Latter-day Liberals (@LdLiberals) November 4, 2018

In a prepared statement, Arent said she was disappointed by the mailer. She said Jews across the country feel vulnerable in the wake of a shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue, and the lesson of that tragedy should be one of respect and tolerance.

“The right to worship as we choose is one of our most precious liberties,” Arent said. “It is vital that we judge everyone by their merits, regardless of religion or creed.”

In a statement provided to The Tribune on Monday, Zenger said he recognizes the contributions made by people of all walks of life, religions, faiths and beliefs. He added that he regrets any misunderstanding caused by his mailer and believes in showing kindness, compassion and respect to all people.

“I apologize for any hurt caused by my choice of words,” Zenger said. “It was never my purpose or intent to be insensitive to any person, race or religion, or to malign any religion or race.”

The United Jewish Federation of Utah had posted on Facebook that the implications of Zenger’s campaign materials were “naive, spurious and misguided.”

“With religious freedom under attack and congregants viciously martyred," the post stated, "this is no time to sow discord and discrimination implicitly or even unintentionally.”

And Utah Gov. Gary Herbert also weighed in on the issue, tweeting a photo of himself and Arent and calling her a wonderful person who respects the points of view of others.

“I can say that while we don’t agree on every topic,” Herbert said, “I have always appreciated her dedication to preserving freedom of religion and conscience.”

In a subsequent tweet, Herbert suggested that anyone mischaracterizing Arent’s positions read passages from the Bible and Book of Mormon, including 2 Nephi 9:34 which reads, “Wo unto the liar, for he shall be thrust down to hell.”

I would refer anyone mischaracterizing her position on religious freedom to Exodus 20:16 or 2 Nephi 9:34. 😇

— Gov. Gary Herbert (@GovHerbert) November 5, 2018

Zenger currently serves as a member of the Granite School District Board of Education. According to a biography on his campaign website, he previously worked at the Salt Lake City law firm Kirton McConkie, which is the main law firm for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but left in 2017 to develop his own firm.

The mailer was the first of two instances of campaign tactics that alluded to the beliefs and practices of the state’s predominant faith.

On Sunday, many Utahns reported that they received unsolicited text messages from an individual or group claiming to be the Independent Republicans of Utah. The text message encouraged support for Ben McAdams, the mayor of Salt Lake County and Democratic opponent to Rep. Mia Love in Utah’s 4th Congressional District race.

“The Independent Republicans of Utah want you to know: you won’t be excommunicated for voting for Dem Ben McAdams — he’s the best Republican in the race,” the text stated, seemingly referencing a disciplinary consequence for Latter-day Saints who are found to be violating church teachings.

Love posted a screenshot of the text message to her Facebook page, calling it “inappropriate” and saying her daughter had received the message while at Sunday church services.

On Monday, Love said the message is consistent with the “deceptive tactics used by the national Democrats” during the current election cycle.

“I am disappointed at the extent people would go to win this election," Love said.

At least one of the callback numbers listed for the text message led to a disconnected line. And Rob Anderson, chairman of the Utah Republican Party, said the GOP is investigating the text but is as yet unaware of the individual or individuals responsible.

“I have no idea who they are,” Anderson said. “I don’t think it’s a prank. I think it’s a deliberate attempt to affect voters and the votes they cast.”

The matchup between Love and McAdams is among the most competitive in the state, with recent polling showing tied support or an emerging lead for McAdams. National political handicappers have also ranked the race as either a “toss-up” or leaning in the direction of the Democratic challenger.

On Sunday, McAdams' campaign spokeswoman Alyson Heyrend denied any involvement in the text messages.

“These texts are not coming from the Ben McAdams for Congress campaign, or anyone affiliated with our campaign,” Heyrend said in a prepared statement. “As an active member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Mayor McAdams respects the church’s long-standing neutrality in political races and would never imply their involvement in this race.”

For more than 200 years, Congress operated largely as the country’s founders envisioned — forging compromises on the biggest issues of the day while asserting its authority to declare war, spend taxpayer money and keep the presidency in check.

Today, on the eve of a closely fought election that will determine who runs Capitol Hill, that model is effectively dead.

It has been replaced by a weakened legislative branch in which debate is strictly curtailed, party leaders dictate the agenda, most elected representatives rarely get a say, and government shutdowns are a regular threat because of chronic failures to agree on budgets, according to a new analysis of congressional data and documents by The Washington Post and ProPublica.

The study found that the transformation has occurred relatively quickly — sparked by the hyperpolarized climate that has enveloped politics since the 2008 election of President Barack Obama and the subsequent dawn of the tea party movement on the right. During that time, as the political center has largely evaporated, party leaders have adhered to the demands of their bases, while rules and traditions that long encouraged deliberative dealmaking have given way to partisan gridlock, the analysis found.

While few of these changes made headlines, taken together they have fundamentally altered the way Congress operates — and morphed this equally powerful branch of government into one that functions more as a junior partner to the executive, or doesn’t function at all when it comes to the country’s pressing priorities.

Immigration — a major flash point in recent elections — has been formally debated only a few days in Congress over the past five years with no resolution. Efforts to reach a bipartisan agreement on health-care markets — an issue both parties considered urgent — stalled.

And in July, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., declined to allow debate on a proposal that sought to limit foreign influence in U.S. elections, warning colleagues such a bill could become a "two-week ordeal," according to the sponsor of one proposal, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.

Instead, the Senate spent most of the next three months confirming President Donald Trump's judicial and administrative nominees.

"That's why I left. You couldn't do anything anymore," said Tom Coburn, the former Oklahoma Republican senator who resigned in 2014.

Tuesday's elections could bring big changes to the Capitol, particularly if Democrats win control of the House and launch aggressive investigations of the Trump administration, but there is little evidence that the leaders of either party are prepared to rebuild the old system.

"If this continues, they're going to evolve, or devolve, into irrelevancy very quickly," said former Senate Majority Leader Thomas Daschle, D-S.D.

The election of Obama set off partisan moves, and then countermoves, that drove the institution into ideological corners — followed by the election of Trump and a reverse set of moves.

To document this transformation, The Post and ProPublica analyzed publicly available data from the House and Senate, committees, and members of Congress, dating back several decades. Some institutional decline began 25 years ago, but the study showed that the steepest institutional drop came in just the past 10 years.

The study showed that:

• Junior senators have fewer opportunities to wade into the issues of the day, largely because Senate leaders limit the number of votes on amendments to proposed legislation. The number of such votes have shrunk to an all-time low under McConnell, less than 20 percent of all roll calls, down from 67 percent 12 years ago.

• House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, R-Wis., has logged an all-time high the past two years for the number of “closed rules,” when leaders eliminate any chance for rank-and-file amendments. Ryan closes off discussion four times as often as former speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., did 20 years ago.

• Committees meet to consider legislation less than ever. As recently as 2005 and 2006, House committees met 449 times to consider actual legislation, and Senate committees met 252 times; by 2015 and 2016, those numbers plummeted to 254 and 69 times, respectively, according to data compiled by the Policy Agendas Project at the University of Texas.

Even newcomers recognize the futility.

As heated Senate hearings on a Supreme Court nominee kicked off in early September, Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., devoted his opening statement to explaining why the judiciary confirmation wars have become so rancorous. His argument: Presidents fill the void when Congress cannot act, leading to lawsuits and leaving the courts to resolve disputes.

"More and more legislative authority is delegated to the executive branch every year. Both parties do it. The legislature is impotent. The legislature is weak," Sasse, in just his fourth year in office, said.

Executive branch agencies now make law, not Congress, he said. "There's no verse of Schoolhouse Rock that says give a whole bunch of power to the alphabet soup agencies."

It’s true. That 1970s Saturday morning jingle “I’m Just a Bill” would have to be rewritten for today’s Congress. The regular order that the character explained — start in committee, passage in each body and then a compromise between the House and Senate versions — only occurs on noncontroversial bills with sweeping support.

Some of today's leaders reject the idea that there is anything wrong with Congress, particularly McConnell. He points to overwhelming bipartisan passage of a bill to battle the opioid epidemic at the same time as the bitter partisan fight over Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court nomination.

"We were both able to have a big robust fight over something both sides felt deeply about and still work together on other issues at the very same time," McConnell said at a news conference after the Kavanaugh confirmation.

Pressed about the findings, Republican leaders insisted that this nearly two-year session of Congress has been one of the most productive, highlighting GOP passage of a $1.5 trillion tax cut and arguing that the media pays little attention to passage of bipartisan legislation.

McConnell's office offered a list of accomplishments, most notably the confirmation of 84 judges. The office also highlighted completion of a bipartisan water infrastructure bill and a five-year reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration.

McConnell's aides say that in passing bills to combat opioid abuse and on aviation, committee chairmen worked with rank-and-file lawmakers to include many of their proposals before the legislation reached the Senate floor.

"This has been the most accomplished Congress in decades," Don Stewart, McConnell's spokesman, said in a statement.

While campaigning for Republicans this fall, Ryan also touted the accomplishments of this Congress, but he acknowledged dysfunction in more reflective moments. "I really think this budget process is irreparably broken," he said in an interview in April after announcing his plans to retire.

Congress used to regularly approve several spending bills by the deadline and then throughout the fall pass the rest. But when Republicans took over the House in 2011, their showdowns with Obama left the process in tatters.

In 2013, Republicans forced a 16-day partial government shutdown in an unsuccessful effort to get Obama to defund the health-care law. Democrats forced a three-day shutdown this past January over their disagreement with Trump on immigration.

Over seven years, not a single spending bill passed on time, almost always leading to a huge measure funding every federal agency. The process hit rock bottom in late March, almost halfway through the fiscal year: Rank-and-file lawmakers had less than 24 hours to review the more than 2,000-page legislation funding the government.

This summer and fall, with support from Democratic leaders, Ryan and McConnell tried to pass as many of the 12 annual bills that fund the government through regular order. And, by the statutory deadline of Sept. 30, Congress had enacted five spending bills, the most in 20 years.

But leaders achieved that goal by limiting rank-and-file involvement, shutting down the process to all but a few powerful lawmakers. And Trump is threatening another partial shutdown in December if he does not get funds for a border wall.

One $854 billion bill covered the departments of Defense, Health and Human Services, and Education — it received less than four days of debate in mid-August, and senators were only allowed to offer five amendments, four of which were so noncontroversial they passed unanimously.

—

Every new congressional leader promises rank-and-file members they will return the place to its glory years, working from the ground up through the committee process.

“It’s time to start moving America forward,” Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., declared in January 2007, upon becoming majority leader. He even held a brief joint news conference with McConnell to profess their friendship — before they went on to spend the next decade in a bitter feud.

"If you have ideas, let's hear them," Ryan told his colleagues three years ago upon taking the speaker's gavel.

Perhaps no one promised a more wide-open process than McConnell, who delivered several speeches ahead of the 2014 midterm elections vowing to end Reid's reign of institutional dictatorship. He singled out one senator, Democrat Mark Begich of Alaska, for having never gotten a vote on a single amendment that he offered in his entire six-year term.

"Our constituents should have greater voice in the process," McConnell said.

Four years later, Sen. Dan Sullivan (R), who defeated Begich, has received just one vote on an amendment.

The initial culprit is well-known: Political polarization in a divided nation.

"I don't really worry about the Senate so much. I do worry about the fact that our country itself is where it is," said Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., who is retiring after 12 years in office. "The Senate very much mirrors the American people."

Each side, seeing the chance of claiming the majority in the next election, focuses first on trying for the political wins by driving up turnout from their most loyal partisans.

Compromise legislation, crafted over many months and allowing dozens of amendments and input from both sides, does not excite either party's base.

But the Post-ProPublica examination revealed that Congress mostly functioned in a traditional manner all the way into Obama's first year in office.

Twenty years ago, the House leadership permitted debates to occur on about half of all bills. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., began to tighten the leash on amendments during the latter half of her speakership in 2009 and 2010. Today, Ryan and his GOP leadership have the final say on amendments to almost every bill.

The result is that, on major issues, the average member of Congress waits for leadership to emerge from behind closed doors and instruct them how to vote.

—

The Senate has seen an even more precipitous drop in rank-and-file participation.

Eight years ago, more than half of the votes in the chamber came on amendments — meaning that much of the action on the Senate floor revolved around accepting or rejecting legislative provisions offered by members. By 2013 and 2014, under Reid’s leadership, that rate plummeted to 20 percent. And McConnell is on course to break Reid’s record.

Coburn blamed the Democratic landslides of 2006 and 2008 for building up such a majority that Reid stopped reaching out to most Republicans. Reid either tried to get all 60 votes from his caucus — for six months in 2009 and 2010 they held a filibuster-proof 60 seats — or only negotiated with a couple of moderate Republicans to lock down deals.

The former leader, who retired at the end of 2016, agrees that Democratic success played a role in changing Congress, but because so few Republicans were left who were willing to broker compromise.

"The moderates either all lost or changed parties," said David Krone, Reid's chief of staff as majority leader.

In turn, Republicans began using parliamentary weapons that had been rarely, if ever, used before, deeply souring the relationship between Reid and McConnell.

Reid countered by increasingly shutting down the avenues for anyone to offer amendments in the ensuing years.

In 2013, Reid ended the 60-vote filibuster hurdle for all presidential nominees except for the Supreme Court. Old-time senators warned that it was the "nuclear option" and would lead to repercussions.

In 2017, faced with Democratic opposition to Trump's Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch, McConnell changed the rules, ending the filibuster hurdle for high-court picks.

The result is a Senate that is primarily there to confirm the president’s selections — “personnel business,” according to McConnell. More than 55 percent of roll call votes now come on nominations, up dramatically from a decade ago when those votes accounted for less than 10 percent of Senate action.

—

Almost as soon as he became House speaker in 2011, Republican John Boehner faced an internal revolt from conservative purists who opposed any deals with Obama. Boehner had the title — and yet none of the real power of his predecessors.

He controlled the floor, but he could not move on big deals with Obama that he pursued on federal debt or immigration.

In July 2015, Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., filed a motion to eject Boehner as speaker, only the second time in the nearly 230-year history of the House anyone ever used that parliamentary tool. The rebels took a tactic originally intended as a quick way to oust a corrupt speaker and used it for political gain.

Two months later, rather than put the House through such a vote, Boehner quit.

A decade ago, a fringe character like Meadows would have been relegated to lower-tier committees. Today, he is a regular on Fox News who chats with the president several times a week.

One solution, offered by longtime Washington hands, is to break away from the now-accepted weekly schedule of being in session just two full days a week.

"Stay in session. I think if we stayed here longer, that would be good," said Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., who is finishing his 40th year in Congress.

Daschle thinks of Congress as an institution that needs to be rebuilt from the ground up, starting with new campaign laws and a different work attitude.

"It's kind of like a bombed building," he said. "The rubble is there, and we just have to reconstruct the building with as much appreciation for what it once was."

—

This article was co-published with ProPublica, a nonprofit news organization in New York. Derek Willis is a news applications developer at ProPublica.

ProPublica and The Washington Post analyzed data on legislative activity to study how congressional leaders control debate on bills.

We used roll-call voting data from the Senate and the House of Representatives, along with records on amendments filed by senators and rules governing legislative debate in the House. Voting data comes from the ProPublica Congress API, which uses official House and Senate records. Amendment data is from the Government Publishing Office's bulk legislative data service.

To calculate the percentage of Senate votes related to presidential nominations, we used all Senate roll-call votes that were about any nomination, including any procedural votes that were not confirmation votes.

For data on rules controlling debate in the House, we used information from the House Rules Committee and from Tony Madonna, a political science professor at the University of Georgia who studies the congressional process. To calculate the number of days that the Senate was in session, we used data from the Library of Congress' Congress.gov site.

To document the decline in congressional committee hearings about legislation, we used data gathered by the Comparative Agendas Project, which includes hearings through the 114th Congress, which ended in 2016.

After spraining his left ankle Saturday night, unable to put any weight on it as he left the court, Donovan Mitchell missed less than three minutes of game action before returning to try to save the Utah Jazz.

It turns out his second absence may last longer.

Mitchell is missing the Jazz’s game Monday against the Toronto Raptors due to the ankle sprain, his second missed game in three contests. Mitchell also missed last Friday’s game against the Memphis Grizzlies due to right hamstring tightness. With that injury, an MRI came up negative for any tears.

“We’ve been here before, and obviously we didn’t win that game against Memphis,” Jazz head coach Quin Snyder said. “Guys have to be ready to go.”

There’s no word on how long Mitchell figures to be out, though his return against Denver is a good sign for the long-term prognosis. Mitchell joins Raul Neto as definitely out for the game against the Raptors, but they do have good news: Alec Burks’ status has changed from out to available after missing the last four games due to a left hand chip fracture.

With Mitchell out Friday, rookie Grayson Allen moved into the starting lineup, scoring nine points in 27 minutes. Allen, though, ended up with a game-low -18 in a contest the Jazz lost by 10. A healthy Burks figures to get some of Allen’s minutes Monday night.

“It’s not one guy’s responsibility, it’s collective," Snyder said. "Roles sometimes evolve or take shape during a given game to reflect that, guys have to play their game, not trying to get outside of themselves.”

Derrick Favors (left knee soreness) and Jae Crowder (right ankle sprain) are now listed as available for Monday’s game.

For Toronto, Kawhi Leonard figures to return after missing Sunday night’s game against the Los Angeles Lakers. Even with Leonard’s return, though, it could be a difficult game for the Raptors due to schedule factors.

Salt Lake County Clerk Sherrie Swensen complied with state election law in issuing ballots to registered voters in a timely manner, a judge ruled Monday.

Third District Judge Robert Faust dismissed a lawsuit filed Thursday by Swensen’s opponent, Republican county clerk candidate Rozan Mitchell, and Rep. Dan McCay, R-Riverton, who had pointed to discrepancies between the clerk’s statements to the media about when and how many ballots were mailed in the first batch sent to voters to make their case.

“It was baseless, it was without merit and I believe it was a political tactic,” Swensen told The Salt Lake Tribune after the judge’s ruling. “And the sad part of it was the disservice to the voters because we had a cost to it, and not to mention the confusion that it might have caused.”

McCay and Mitchell contended that between 14,000 and 32,000 ballots were not mailed by a state-mandated deadline. They asked the judge to order Swensen to issue a mailed apology to voters informing them of alternative voting options and to require her to provide them with a list of each affected voter — requests he denied on Monday.

Swensen said the clerk’s office had ordered and mailed one ballot for each person who had registered as an active voter in Salt Lake County before the deadline of Oct. 16 — in plenty of time for Tuesday’s election under a “robust system” of absentee and mail-in ballots.

“That system saw nearly 500,000 ballots hit voters’ mailboxes as early as October 8, 2018, with more than 30,000 additional ballots printed, prepared and delivered — in some instances twice — as voters continued to register,” Swensen’s response to the lawsuit states. “That system did not, as Petitioners blithely assert with no facts in support, result in 14,000 to 32,000 ballots not being timely mailed.”

Swensen said confusion over “late” mailings may have stemmed from a delay in ballots sent after the first batch. The ballot printer the county contracts with in Washington state ran short on envelopes after an error, which Swensen said delayed around 5,500 ballots in getting out to voters who had recently registered or changed their addresses.

But she says those were late not by a legal standard but by the office’s expectations, and that all ballots were mailed to voters between Oct. 22 and Oct. 28. Ballots mailed out after Oct. 24 were even mailed and printed locally in an effort to get them out faster, she said.

Mitchell, who is on unpaid leave as county elections director as she campaigns, said after the ruling that she was “disappointed” with the verdict but hoped the suit had helped raise awareness of issues she’s raised in her campaign.

“I think the bottom line is that we brought attention to the fact that maybe it isn’t as fair and transparent within the office as people may think it is,” she told The Tribune. “And I hope that at the end of the day, people recognize that we need a change.”

District Attorney Sim Gill and Swensen are deciding whether to “seek reimbursement to the taxpayers of attorney fees and costs incurred in connection with the suit,” according to a press release from the county.

Voters in Salt Lake County can still vote at any of 43 polling places in the county through Election Day.

After again falling back an hour over the weekend to end daylight saving time and readjusting body clocks, would you like a chance to vote to end such twice-a-year switching?

The issue actually had a chance to be on Tuesday’s ballot, but legislators last year narrowly defeated a bill that would have allowed it. A Provo lawmaker who has pushed for such a public vote says he’s thinking about making another run at it.

“My inconsistent colleagues said, ‘No, we don’t want to have nonbinding opinion questions on the ballot. That would be a horrible idea,” said Rep. Norm Thurston, R-Provo. “Then this year, they put a different nonbinding question on the ballot about the gas tax.”

That “Nonbinding Opinion Question No. 1” asks residents if they would support raising Utah’s gasoline tax by 10 cents a gallon. It would indirectly raise money for schools by shifting some general fund money now used for transportation to eduction, and replacing it with revenue from the higher gasoline tax.

Thurston complains that when he tried to ask a nonbinding question about daylight saving time — hopefully to give lawmakers enough ammunition to end perpetual debates about it — they said it would set a dangerous precedent and usurp their job as representatives.

As Rep. Doug Sagers, R-Tooele, said during the 2017 debate on HB78, lawmakers are elected “to do a job. Taking this route [of using a nonbinding ballot question] is an abdication of our responsibility.”

Thurston said when he pointed at the inconsistency during debate this year on the gas-tax question, others told him that voting on education funding is different. “I said, ‘It’s not different.’ Let the people express their opinion. What do we have to be afraid of?”

Citizen groups also gathered signatures to put three other binding propositions on the ballot this year — dealing with medical marijuana, Medicaid expansion and gerrymandering — arguing that legislators ignored polls showing voters wanted action in those areas.

Thurston say he may explore allowing such a daylight saving time ballot question again, or at least try a resolution to ask the federal government to give states more power to decide how and whether to implement daylight saving time.

Currently, states have the option of the twice-a-year clock changing — followed by 48 states including Utah — or they can stay on standard time all year, as Arizona and Hawaii do. They are not allowed the option of keeping daylight saving time all year, which Thurston personally prefers.

Sen. Wayne Harper, R-Taylorsville, this year proposed a resolution to ask Congress to allow states the option of keeping daylight saving time all year (with Thurston as his House sponsor), but it died on a 1-5 vote in committee. Every year, some sort of daylight saving time bills are introduced in the Legislature.

U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, this year also introduced a bill in Congress to allow states to decide how to observe daylight saving time — but it never had a hearing.

Bishop said when it was introduced, “For any student of federalism, this is a no-brainer. The range of industry and lifestyle is so varied across our country, it only makes sense to have the ability to set their watches the way they best see fit.”

It is one of six bills about daylight saving time filed in Congress this session.

Thurston sees some hope of action — both in the Utah Legislature and Congress — because Florida passed legislation this year that would make it the first state to use daylight saving time year round, if Congress will give it permission to do so. A bill has been introduced in Congress to allow that but it has had no hearings.

But such action “in a big state like Florida might help us to get some traction saying, yes, let states decide what schedule and time frame works best for them,” Thurston said.

Utah conducted a survey on daylight saving time in 2014, ordered through legislation. The Governor’s Office of Economic Development held several public hearings, and conducted a nonscientific survey that attracted 27,000 responses.

Participants' lengthy and passionate comments on the issue added up to 574,000 words — nearly as many as in the novel “War and Peace.”

In its final tally, 67 percent of respondents favored keeping standard time all year. Another 18 percent wanted daylight saving time all year. In last place, 15 percent preferred keeping the current system with its twice-a-year changes.

Thurston said legislators gave that survey little weight because it was not scientific. He said a ballot question would carry far more weight.

Rapper Mac Miller died from a mix of the powerful opioid fentanyl, cocaine and alcohol, the Los Angeles medical examiner announced Monday.

The 26-year-old rapper died in September after being discovered unresponsive in his Studio City home. Authorities performed an autopsy on Miller the following day but "a cause of death was deferred pending further investigation," the medical examiner's office said in a release.

It took months to complete the toxicology report, which revealed that Miller had the deadly mix of drugs in his system. The coroner ruled the official manner of death as an accident.

Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, is 50 to 100 times stronger than morphine. While used to treat severe pain, like that experienced by cancer patients, illegally made fentanyl is often mixed with heroin or cocaine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Last year, the country experienced a record number of drug overdoses, an increase driven by synthetic opioid use, the CDC found.

Several recent high-profile deaths have also been linked to the drug. Prince died at 57 in April 2016, and a medical examiner ruled it an accidental overdose, finding fentanyl in his system. Tom Petty, 66, died in October 2017 from an accidental overdose after mixing medications, including the opioid.

Miller's death rocked the music community. A "Celebration of Life" concert with performances from Chance the Rapper, John Mayer, SZA, Travis Scott, Miguel and Anderson .Paak was held last month in Los Angeles and live-streamed on Miller's official Facebook page.

After Miller's death, his family released a statement calling him "a bright light in this world for his family, friends and fans."

Born Malcom McCormick in Pittsburgh, Mac Miller became a sensation in 2011 with his album "Blue Slide Park," which debuted at No. 1 debut on the Billboard 200 chart. But critical pans accompanied his success, and he had been candid about his struggles with stress, depression and drugs.

Just before his death, Miller had announced a joint tour with Thundercat, to start in October. And a Vulture profile published the day before he died painted a picture of a musician who mostly "spends his days relatively upbeat and preoccupied with music, and also with working out and balancing his diet," while also "not above mistakes and indulgences," including a DUI charge in months earlier.

“I used to rap super openly about really dark” things, Miller told Vulture, “because that’s what I was experiencing at the time. That’s fine, that’s good, that’s life. It should be all the emotions.”

Sandy • For two playoff games, Real Salt Lake’s execution has been almost as precise as surgery.

And for those two playoff games, RSL’s focus translated into surprising results: a 3-2 road win over Los Angeles Football Club in the knockout round, and a 1-1 draw against a much more rested Sporting Kansas City team Sunday.

But in one moment, Real’s execution slipped. A seemingly routine clearance for keeper Nick Rimando was deflected by a defender and bounced 20 yards from the goal to Diego Rubio, who beat Rimando’s dive with a strike and tied the game after subbing in less a minute earlier.

“The goal that we conceded was kind of a fluke,” defender Brooks Lennon told KSL after the game.

The reason Rimando was clearing the ball in the first place was because it was played back to him by Justen Glad. Head coach Mike Petke said there were several points throughout the game, particularly in the first half, where his players gave the ball to Rimando when it may not have been necessary to do so.

“I don’t think the ball that Nicky got blocked should have came back to Nicky,” Petke said Monday after the game. “Again, it goes back to how many balls were played back to Nick tonight. I think there were better options than to play back to him.”

Petke said Rimando may have had more touches on the ball Monday than he has the entire season. The veteran keeper tallied 54 touches, per whoscored.com.

Several players expressed disappointment in the way they conceded the goal to Rubio, including Corey Baird, who was named Rookie of the Year by the league Tuesday, who considered it a fluke.

“That’s just what happens when you play a quality team — guy gets space in front of the box like that, he’s going to punish you,” Baird said Monday. “It’s just unfortunate that space came from a deflected clearance, not a nice buildup from them.”

But in the playoffs, a fluke is enough to cost a team its season. Giving up that goal to the road team means RSL has to score at least two in Kansas City to make sure it advances to the next round in the event of a tie.

If another 1-1 tie transpires, RSL and SKC will play overtimes and possibly go to penalty kicks, just like they did in the 2013 MLS Cub final. Of course, If Real wins outright, it will also advance.

This election has seen some surprises and some things that were absolutely predictable. Few of us would have imagined that Republicans could think they'd be able to get away with suddenly proclaiming themselves the true champions of protections for people with pre-existing conditions, for instance. But centering their campaign on racist appeals to fear and hatred? I think we all saw that coming.

It doesn't look like it's going to work, though we won't know for sure until Tuesday night. But it does raise a question that will help determine the shape of our politics for the next few years: What happens afterward? Especially if they lose the House as pretty much everyone assumes they will, will Republicans conclude that the campaign they ran was a mistake, and try to change?

I don't mean that they'll conclude it was a moral mistake, because they've proven time and again that as a group they really have no moral principles they aren't willing to transgress if it means winning the next battle. You'd think that when the former grand wizard of the KKK is applauding the president for his racist campaign ads and white supremacist web sites are lighting up with joy over his rhetoric, it might lead to some reflection on the right. But we know it won't.

So if nothing else, if they're not successful in holding the House, Republicans could decide that it was a tactical mistake to embrace race-baiting as a campaign strategy. And I'm sure some will. The problem is that the party as a whole may be trapped into repeating the same strategy for the next couple of elections.

That might seem counter-intuitive. After all, if they lose, wouldn't they want to change? That's the view The Washington Post's Matt Viser describes here:

"By running so overtly on racially tinged messages, the GOP is putting that explosive form of politics on the ballot. If Republicans maintain control of the House, the notion of running a campaign built on blunt, race-based attacks on immigrants and minorities will have been validated. A loss, on the other hand, might prompt a number of Republicans to call for a rethinking of the party's direction - but that would collide with a sitting president who, if anything, relishes over-the-edge rhetoric."

That seems to make perfect sense, and there are many Republicans running right now, particularly in suburban districts, who wish the president would dial down the racism so they could just appeal to traditional party loyalties and assure voters they're reasonable and responsible. But this is Trump's party, and if you have an "R" next to your name, you're going to own whatever he does. There will be some Republicans saying the party made a mistake, but their arguments will fall on deaf ears.

Let's consider what will happen to the GOP after this election is over. Democrats are definitely going to pick up seats in the House; we just don't know yet whether the number will be 20, 30, 40 or more. What we do know is that the Republicans who lose will be the more moderate members. While there are a few exceptions here and there, as a general matter, the more conservative a district is the safer the seat and the more intensely right-wing its member of Congress.

That means that your average Freedom Caucus member is going to get re-elected even in a blue wave, while the vulnerable members are the more moderate ones who represent swing districts. This will produce a somewhat ironic result in the next Congress: The bigger the blue wave, the more conservative the Republican caucus will end up being when it's over, and the less equipped the GOP will be to run a different kind of campaign in 2020.

If all the reporting and polls are wrong, we'll end up with a Republican Congress that looks like it does now (which, to be clear, is incredibly conservative). On the other hand, if Democrats get just enough seats to take the House, a couple dozen of the more moderate Republicans will be defeated, shifting the center of the caucus that remains to the right. And if there's a huge blue wave, every Republican with even the slightest impulse toward moderation will be gone.

So imagine that happens, and as we approach 2020, all the GOP voices in the House (and nearly all in the Senate) are concerned about appealing to conservative districts and states where they fear only a primary challenge from the right. Not only that, Donald Trump is running his own re-election campaign, one that will be built on the same racist and xenophobic appeals that helped him get elected in 2016 and that he's pressing now.

We know that's what Trump will do, not only because it's who he is but because he clearly believes its the best strategy to win. If Democrats win a huge victory tomorrow, Trump isn't going to say, "Gee, I guess I was wrong about all that anti-immigrant stuff. I need to reach out to a broader electorate to get re-elected." He'll tell himself that the 2018 defeat only happened because he was not personally on the ballot, and it would have been much worse had he not executed such a brilliant strategy.

That story line will also be validated by the conservative media. Feeding the racial fears and resentments of older white people is to Fox News and conservative radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh what game highlights are to ESPN. It's the core of the business model, and has been for a couple of decades now. And the GOP base - aghast at an unprecedented number of victories by Democratic women and people of color - will become even more susceptible to the message of fear.

You can extend it out even further. What happens in 2022? If Trump wins in 2020, it will validate the race-baiting, and if he loses it means there will be a Democratic president and a right-wing backlash a la the Tea Party. The earliest we could see the GOP truly try to reach out to a broader swath of voters is 2024.

And this year, they're going to come to the same set of conclusions whether they win or lose. Was the racist fear-mongering a mistake? Nope, midterm losses just happen to the president's party. Was it wrong to try to suppress the votes of racial minorities in places like Georgia and North Dakota? Nope, we just didn't do a thorough enough job of it. Should we try something different? We might like to, but as long as Donald Trump is president, this is the strategy we're going to follow.

There’s a lot more ugliness to come.

Paul Waldman is an opinion writer for the Plum Line blog. @paulwaldman1

“He’s not a racist president, and I’m not a racist.”

“I don’t think he’s racist. It’s just the far left trying to do anything they can to stop him.”

— Two Trump supporters at the president’s Columbia, Mo., rally, quoted by The Washington Post

I am frankly insulted you would insinuate that any of my support for President Trump might be in any way tied to racism. Please, I am not racist. I could not be further from being racist if Being Racist were walking down the street minding his own business and I had rapidly crossed the road to avoid him.

It is rude and wrong of people to insinuate that I am racist just because what motivates me to come to the polls are:

1) creepy ads that demonize all immigrants,

2) ominous warnings about The Caravan that Fox News has covered 24/7 in a way that makes me believe invaders are coming for my lake house, or

3) the president shouting the word "NATIONALIST" while my dog whimpers in agony.

The mere fact that what inspires me to vote is the idea that the president wants to dramatically undercut the 14th Amendment doesn't make me racist. At best, it would make me — Golly, what is the word? — racially tinged! Racially charged. Daubed with the faintest racial chiaroscuro.

I'm not racist. I don't care if you're blue, green, purple — you are not welcome in this country. I don't see color. Or rather, I would prefer not to see color.

Just because I really responded to these fearmongering tactics that demonize immigrants does not mean I would respond any less strongly to fearmongering tactics that demonize any other minority group. You can’t know. You can’t. I’m insulted you would imply that.

I am sick of being told this is about race, as the president who announced his candidacy by descending an escalator and demonizing immigrants repeats that The Caravan is "not little angels." I think all these allegations of racism are a distraction from the real problem: people from non-Scandinavian places who want to come to this country.

It is not a problem because I am racist. I just don't want people to come here and be disappointed that we are not as full of dreams and equality as they were led to believe. Really, I am looking out for them.

Anyway, enough of the smears. I just want a campaign about the issues: the nightmare cloud filled with everything that most frightens me that the president insists is sweeping across the country. More ads should be about that.

I want it to be clear, though: You brought this on yourself. Years ago, President Barack Obama said something in what I took to be a sneering or patronizing tone, and I have resented it quietly for the past decade. Not for racist reasons, though, just as I did not want to see his birth certificate for racist reasons. I equally wish to see Hillary Clinton's birth certificate, because I do not believe she was ever born but emerged fully formed from a cauldron filled with cursed Democratic National Committee fundraising emails with plaintive subject lines.

Also, unrelatedly, Oprah has no business in politics. I am sick and tired of being told how to vote by celebrities who have no idea what they are talking about. Leave that to the president.

I want to repeal the 14th Amendment because I think it is unlucky to have an amendment after 13. I respond to this talk of nationalism because we live in a nation definitely and on a globe only maybe. Have you ever seen the curvature of the Earth? I haven’t. Better safe than sorry.

I have a vitriolic distaste for people who do not stand during the national anthem, but that, again, has nothing to do with race. I just love to stand. Stephen King's "The Stand" is my favorite book. Similarly, my support for Steve King has no racial component.

Likewise, when I chant "Build the Wall," it is because I just like walls. It's less of an anti-immigration and more of just a general pro-wall stance. The only thing that Ronald Reagan ever did to disappoint me was to urge Mr. Gorbachev to tear down that wall.

I just want a wall — the bigger, the better — and if it keeps out what I am convinced is a terrifying invasion, so be it! But I am not particular as to where that wall would be. Why, the wall could even be in the middle of the country keeping out White Walkers, for all I care, but unfortunately there is no border there and White Walkers do not exist, so may as well put it by Mexico. I am broad-minded like that.

I am not voting Republican this year because I am racist. It is just that racist appeals resonated with me and motivated me to come to the polls. Totally different.

Follow Alexandra Petri on Twitter, @petridishes.

Travis Wilson and Troy Williams may not be remembered among Utah’s greatest quarterbacks, but they are the only two in the program’s Pac-12 history to last a full season as the starter.

Tyler Huntley's absence marks the sixth time in eight seasons that Utah has needed a replacement for multiple conference games at the QB position, due to injury.

Utah coach Kyle Whitingham did not clarify the nature of Huntley’s injury, which is reportedly a broken collarbone. He allowed for the possibility of Huntley’s returning for a bowl game, depending on when and where Utah is assigned (only one of the Pac-12′s affiliated games, the Las Vegas Bowl, is scheduled before Christmas Day). Oregon quarterback Justin Herbert was sidelined for six weeks with a fractured collarbone last season; the Ducks beat Utah 44-20 without him, rushing for 347 rushing yards.

Huntley’s injury was especially tough to have happen to a player who “loves football as much as he does” and is “just so passionate about what he does,” Whittingham said during his weekly news conference.

“He ran this type of offense very efficiently in high school. Did a great job. Put up big numbers.”

-Whittingham on Jason Shelley pic.twitter.com/tB24iW8Lk2

— JP Chunga (@JP_Chunga) November 5, 2018

Shelley’s starting debut Saturday vs. Oregon will make him the seventh backup quarterback that Whittingham has promoted in the Pac-12 era, counting one switch attributed to inefficiency.

As of mid-August, the likely scenario if Huntley got hurt was for highly regarded freshman Jack Tuttle to become the starter. Shelley altered that script by beating out Tuttle for the No. 2 job in preseason camp. The depth chart changed in mid-October when Tuttle withdrew from school, intending to transfer. So in less than three weeks, former walk-on Drew Lisk has gone from No. 4 to No. 2, and nobody is No. 3 — although one of two ex-high school QBs, receiver Britain Covey or linebacker Chase Hansen — will be prepared for emergency use.

A redshirt freshman from Lone Star High School in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, Shelley was a four-year starter for the Rangers and led the team to the Class 5A Division II state championship game as a junior. “He transformed our program,” Lone Star coach Jeff Rayburn said.

Utah is not making Shelley available to the media this week.

Based on his experience of inserting a backup quarterback, Whittingham said, “First of all, the team's got to rally around him. Everybody's got to embrace him and up their level of play. … The surrounding cast has to be better, the defense has to be better. We've got to make sure Jason knows we've complete confidence in him, which I believe he does.”

“I believe in Shelley,” center Orlando Umana said. “He’s a hard worker, so we all believe in him.”

In the Utes' first three years of Pac-12 membership, the original starting quarterback became sidelined at various stages: Jordan Wynn in 2011, Wynn again in 2012 and Wilson in 2013. Kendal Thompson was injured during a game he started vs. Oregon in November 2014, after taking the job from Wilson.

Wilson (2015) and Williams (2016) each played a full season. Huntley beat out Williams as the starter in 2017, but Williams made three starts in Pac-12 play in two segments when Huntley was hurt. And now Huntley will miss the remaining two conference games of his junior season.

Williams lost to Stanford and USC and beat Colorado in his fill-in starts last year, with the advantage of considerable experience in comparison to Shelley. Williams had started one game for Washington, played one year for a California junior college and started a full season for the Utes, before becoming the backup QB.

Shelley has played in four games this season, completing 6 of 14 passes for 99 yards. Saturday’s 38-20 loss at Arizona State (he entered with the Utes trailing 21-17) was his first appearance with the outcome in question. He went 4 of 11 for 59 yards with an interception on his last pass, as the ball was wrestled away from a Ute receiver in the end zone.

Jon Hays is Utah's biggest Pac-12 success story as a fill-in quarterback. In 2011, he replaced Wynn and lost his first two starts, but then won four straight games before losing to Colorado with an opportunity to advance to the Pac-12 championship game. Hays led Utah's rally to an overtime win over Georgia Tech in the Sun Bowl, as John White finished the season with a school-record 1,519 yards rushing.

In 2013, Adam Schulz's first start came in a 44-21 loss at Oregon. The Utes then lost 49-37 at Washington State and were eliminated from bowl consideration, before finishing with a 24-17 win over Colorado.

An Afghan national army pilot who served alongside Utahn Brent Taylor, a major in the National Guard who was killed in an insider attack Saturday while stationed in Kabul, wrote a letter to Taylor’s wife. In it, he mourns the loss of his comrade, remembers him as a “compassionate man” and credits him for changing his views on family and democracy.

“I gained a great deal of knowledge from him and I am a better person for having met him,” wrote Abdul Rahman Rahmani in the note that he shared on Twitter.

Rahmani, a major and pilot with the Special Mission Wing, said he flew on assignment with Taylor and grew close to him as they worked together to help Afghanistan train its own forces. Taylor had temporarily left his post as mayor of North Ogden in January to serve in his second deployment to the country and his fourth overall — including two others in Iraq — during his decadelong career with the Utah National Guard.

Taylor’s remains will return to the United States early Tuesday morning at Dover Air Force in Delaware. Funeral plans are still pending.

The Utah mayor posted often on Facebook about the Afghan soldiers whom he interacted with, saying he was inspired by their dedication. Rahmani wrote in his letter that Taylor was the inspirational one.

“He died on our soil but he died for the success of freedom and democracy in both of our countries.”

Taylor, 39, died Saturday while on a foot patrol when an Afghan soldier attacked him. Other Afghan fighters quickly killed the assailant, according to NATO. Utah National Guard Maj. Gen. Jefferson S. Burton has described the attack, which remains under investigation, as a betrayal.

Rahmani has asked Taylor’s family not to view “the violent act that took his life as representative of us or our sentiments toward Americans.”

“I assure you that the one who shot him represents evil and violence,” he said, noting that he has lost eight members of his own family to the war and been wounded twice himself.

There are fewer than 14,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan this year, which is a significant drop from the 100,000 there in 2011, when the war was still considered a combat mission. Most of those soldiers are focused on advising Afghan forces, but that leaves them susceptible to insider attacks.

Rahmani said Taylor always volunteered for tough assignments, was humble and “a true patriot.” He added in a message to The Salt Lake Tribune on Monday that the biggest impact Taylor had on him was with his family.

He said the major talked about his wife and seven kids back home in Utah, how they were “everything” to him. Rahmani said before he met Taylor, he didn’t think men and women should be treated equally and he wouldn’t say his wife’s name out loud.

“You may or may not be aware of some of our cultural differences,” he wrote in the letter, addressed to Taylor’s wife, Jennie, “but in Afghanistan family is not everything, for many of us, family are treated as property.”

But Taylor, he told The Tribune, “changed a conservative man to a liberal who can [say] his wife’s name loud out for the whole world to hear.” And, Rahmani added, Taylor taught him to “love my wife Hamida as an equal and treat my children as treasured gifts.”

“On behalf of my family and Brent’s friends here in the Special Mission Wing, we pledge to continue to work hard until the end, the day when peace will return to our country and violence and hatred no longer claim the lives of both of our countrymen.”

Dear Mrs. Taylor,
Maj Taylor was my friend. I wrote this letter for his family.
I hope this little contribution eases your pain.

Note: this letter was sent to his physical add by one my American mentors. I tried to email too but I failed to find her email. pic.twitter.com/28nH7o4W6D

— Abdul Rahman Rahmani (@rahmanrahmanee) November 5, 2018

Provo • BYU head coach Kalani Sitake and offensive coordinator Jeff Grimes acknowledged Monday that they “could have done things differently” and mistakes were made by coaches and players alike in the final minute of BYU’s 21-16 loss to Boise State last Saturday.

Both men also said that if BYU had executed better in the first 58 minutes of the game, the outcome wouldn’t have come down to the final play. Freshman quarterback Zach Wilson was sacked at the Boise State 4-yard line as time expired and the Broncos escaped with their fifth straight win over BYU at Albertsons Stadium.

“We shouldn’t have put ourselves in that position,” Sitake said as preparations began for Saturday’s 10 a.m. MST game against UMass at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass. “I thought there were enough mistakes to go around for a lot of people to take blame for the loss, myself included.”

Sitake and Grimes said the plan on the last play — which began with seven seconds remaining — was for Wilson to make a quick slant pass to Talon Shumway or throw the ball away.

“I like the [play] design,” Grimes said. “I think it was the right call. There was poor protection. We missed a block. However, that ball should have been gone by then. It was [supposed to be] a really quick throw, and [Wilson] should have let the ball go.”

Grimes said on his “Coordinators’ Corner” program Monday that if the quick pass didn’t work, he already had another play in mind.

Wilson “is a young guy that certainly gave us a chance to win that game,” said Grimes, who called plays from a booth in the press box for the first time this season. “However, he makes some mistakes sometimes, too, and he wishes he could have had that one back. That was the first thing he said to me after the game.”

Wilson said immediately after the game he made a “freshman mistake” and held himself accountable for not throwing the ball away.

“Your natural reaction when someone is in your face is to get out of the way,” he said.

Sitake said Wilson “had time for two plays in that last [seven seconds], but we wouldn’t have been down there if it weren’t for him. We wouldn’t have been in that position if he wasn’t making the plays he did before that.”

Indeed, the freshman threw for a career-high 252 yards and outplayed Boise State senior Brett Rypien, who threw for 214 and a touchdown but was intercepted by BYU’s Michael Shelton.

Wilson is “also that guy sometimes that you might be frustrated with because he didn’t follow the design as well as he could have. But again, I don’t attribute that to him in any way being stubborn or uncoachable,” Grimes said. “He’s just young, and he’s still learning how to play the game, within limits. And what you love about him is he’s that guy that wants to take the last-second shot.”

As to why he called several running plays after BYU reached the BSU 5-yard line with less than a minute remaining, Grimes said the 59-yard screen pass to Matt Hadley changed their approach completely.

“I thought, ‘let’s go back to our run/RPO package, which had been the most efficient thing that we had done all game,’” he said.

As for the questionable clock management in the final minute, including the failure to call a timeout to keep precious seconds from burning off the clock, Sitake said he didn’t think it was going to take so long to get the play off on first-and-goal from the 5.

“I just wanted to score,” he said. “I didn’t care how much time was left on the clock. I would have been happy scoring on [Matt] Hadley’s screen, if that would have gone in the end zone. I would have liked to play defense in a two minute situation and stopped them from getting into the end zone.”

The coach confirmed that junior cornerback Chris Wilcox sustained a lower leg injury in the game and is out for the remainder of the season.

“It is not a surgery required injury, but he will be out, even for a bowl game, with the timing it will take for it to heal,” Sitake said.

Wilcox had started at right corner in every game this season. Redshirt freshman D’Angelo Mandell is listed as the new starter in the depth chart released Monday. Sitake said that two players who might have been redshirted this season — freshmen Isaiah Herron and walk-on Jaylon Vickers — will probably have to play now. Other freshman candidates to get more playing time are Keenan Ellis and Malik Moore, who has been moved to safety.

Saturday’s Game

At Gillette Stadium, Foxborough, Mass.

BYU at UMass, 10 a.m. MST

TV: BYUtv/NESN/Ch. 11

The battle for the hottest prices this holiday season is spilling into a new arena: the fight over free shipping.

As Walmart, Target and Amazon launch a price war for merchandise in the weeks before Thanksgiving, they are now wooing customers with the promise of fast, efficient, no-cost shipping. On Monday, Amazon upped the ante by expanding free shipping to all customers through the holidays, with no minimum purchase required. The retail and tech giant is also offering Prime members free same-day delivery on more than three million items. Prime members, who pay $119 a year for the service, already receive free two-day shipping with no minimum purchase necessary.

It’s a move, analysts say, that Amazon hopes will edge out its brick-and-mortar competitors and maybe even lock in new Prime subscribers going into 2019.

But with grand promises come high risks: fall short on getting customers their presents in time, and those shoppers go elsewhere.

(Amazon's founder, Jeff Bezos, owns The Washington Post.)

“This is going to boil down to: ‘How do I want to shop? Who’s the cheapest in price. And who do I trust the most?’” said Mark Cohen, director of retail studies at Columbia Business School.

To be sure, Target and Walmart are playing ball. Last month, Target announced that from Nov. 1 to Dec. 22, it will offer free two-day shipping with no minimum purchase or membership required. In March, Target said shoppers who spent at least $35 or used a company credit card could get free two-day shipping. In previous holiday seasons, Target offered free standard shipping.

Walmart will continue to offer free two-day shipping in the United States on purchases of $35 or more. It is also expanding its free two-day shipping to third-party marketplace sellers.

“Amazon took out a potential challenge to its supremacy,” Cohen said. “‘Free‘ is a very addictive drug.”

Cohen said Amazon has “a chokehold on competitors” largely because of the revenue generated through Prime memberships, which Bezos most recently put at more than 100 million worldwide in his annual shareholder letter. But dominating e-commerce is particularly crucial for the tech giant.

Charlie O’Shea, lead retail analyst for Moody’s, noted that Amazon isn’t selling the majority of its products in physical stores, as is the case with Walmart and Target. O’Shea estimated that brick-and-mortar stores with comparatively strong online presences, like Best Buy, don’t even incur 20 percent of revenue through e-commerce.

While free shipping is one of the easiest promotions a retailer can offer, O’Shea said it comes at a steep price. Amazon’s shipping costs for fiscal year 2017 totaled nearly $22 billion, O’Shea said, with about $7.4 billion in the fourth quarter. The retailer posted just more than $3 billion in profit in 2017.

Still, the promise of free shipping doesn’t guarantee shoppers will get their goods on time. Retailers of all sizes often grapple with a surge of holiday orders carried by FedEx, UPS, the Postal Service and other third-party shippers that must contend with a huge spike in demand.

Paula Rosenblum, co-founder and managing partner of retail systems research, said Amazon’s pledge will be tested through its third-party Prime operators that sell and ship their products through Amazon’s website. While those third-party shippers generate profit for Amazon, they “could be a thorn in [Amazon’s] side” if they leave customers hanging, Rosenblum said.

An Amazon spokesperson said the offer applies to all items eligible for free shipping, including items from millions of third-party sellers.

As Target and Walmart signal to Amazon that they “are not going to roll over,” Rosenblum said Amazon’s move is just the latest in the “race to the bottom.”

“As far as I can tell, price parity has been achieved,” Rosenblum said. “Once you can achieve shipping cost parity, then it becomes very interesting.”

O’Shea put it another way.

“I call it a limbo contest,” he said. “How low can you go?”

New York • For a fundamentally nerdy subject, net neutrality is pushing a lot of political buttons.

The latest salvo is over a California law that restores a ban on cable, wireless and other broadband providers from impeding people's ability to use their favorite apps and services. The federal government had rescinded that ban, and the Trump administration is seeking to block California's effort as an imposition on federal prerogatives.

Although net neutrality started off more than a decade ago as an insight into how to make networks work most efficiently, it has taken on much larger social and political dimensions lately. The issue has emerged as an anti-monopoly rallying point and even a focus for “resistance” to the Trump administration.

“Any time the cable companies and the Trump administration are on one side, it looks good for companies to be on the other side,” Boston Law School professor Daniel Lyons said.

But the idea hasn’t always been political or partisan. Net neutrality traces back to an engineering maxim called the “end-to-end principle,” a self-regulating network that put control in the hands of end users rather than a central authority. Traditional cable-TV services, for instance, required special equipment and controlled what channels are shown on TV. With an end-to-end network like the internet, the types of equipment, apps, articles and video services permitted are limited only to imagination.

And the internet subsequently grew like nobody’s business — largely because it wasn’t anyone’s business.

But as internet use expanded, so did the power of the big companies that offer internet service to the masses. It became clear that they could, and sometimes would, restrict what people did. The Associated Press found in 2007 that Comcast was blocking or slowing down some file-sharing. AT&T blocked Skype and other internet-calling services on the iPhone until 2009.

Law professor Tim Wu, now at Columbia University, coined the term “net neutrality” in 2003 to argue for government rules that would prevent big internet providers from discriminating against technology and services that clashed with other aspects of their business. Allowing such discrimination, he reasoned, would choke off innovation.

Big telecommunications companies, on the other hand, argue that they should be able to control the pipes they built and owned.

The Federal Communications Commission subscribed to the principle of net neutrality for over a decade and enshrined that as specific rules in 2015 under chairman Tom Wheeler, an Obama appointee. Among the rules: Broadband companies couldn’t block websites and apps of their choosing. Nor could they charge Netflix and other video services extra to reach viewers more smoothly.

Once President Donald Trump took office, net neutrality became one of his first targets as part of broader government deregulation. The FCC chairman he appointed, Ajit Pai, made rollback a top priority.

And thus net neutrality became increasingly political. As a vote loomed for months, the once-obscure concept was debated endlessly on talk shows and online chats. Big-time Hollywood producer Shonda Rhimes tweeted a link to a story about saving net-neutrality on her lifestyle website. Actor Mark Ruffalo urged people to contact members of Congress by tweeting, “Long live cute dog videos on YouTube! #RIPinternet.”

The debate created strange bedfellows: Support for net neutrality comes from many of the same people who are also critical of the data-sucking tech giants who benefit from it.

Yet on net neutrality, these tech companies got to be the “good guy,” siding with the younger “digital first” generation and consumer groups calling for more protection. No matter that these companies are keeping their own business interests at heart, as a net-neutrality rollback could mean higher costs for access to the “pipes.”

Politicians glommed on to the debate to appear consumer friendly.

“No politician will ever lose votes by supporting net neutrality,” said Gus Hurwitz, law professor at the University of Nebraska and a member of the conservative group The Federalist Society. “It’s an ill-defined term that voters don’t really understand other than that it is a scary concept they know they don’t want to lose.”

Meanwhile, ISPs haven’t done themselves any favors in appealing to the consumer. They’ve long had a reputation for bad service and high prices. Unlike the high-profile support for net neutrality, the opposition was limited to behind-the-scenes lobbying.

Nonetheless, the FCC rolled back the net-neutrality rules last December on a 3-2 party-line vote. The decision took effect in June.

On Monday, the Supreme Court declined to hear appeals from the broadband industry to strike down a lower court ruling in 2016 that was in favor of net neutrality. That effectively shut down an appeal that had already become largely moot when the FCC rolled back the rules. But in other arenas, the fight is likely to drag on.

Several tech companies including Mozilla and Vimeo are challenging the FCC’s rollback decision in a federal appeals court. That’s separate from the challenge to the California law, which is on hold until the tech companies‘ lawsuit is resolved. Oral arguments in the tech companies‘ case are expected in February.

Oregon, Washington and Vermont have also approved legislation related to net neutrality.

And a Democratic takeover of the House in Tuesday's midterm elections could revive efforts to enact net neutrality into federal law, though Trump would likely veto any such attempts.

“Net neutrality is only the fifth round of a 12-round boxing match,” Wedbush Securities Managing Director Dan Ives said.

Civilian drones pose a "steadily escalating threat," as the devices are likely to be used by terrorists, criminal groups or drug cartels to carry out attacks in the U.S., FBI Director Chris Wray told a Senate committee.

"Terrorist groups could easily export their battlefield experiences to use weaponized" drones, Wray said in written testimony for a hearing Wednesday of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Wray's comments, his most forceful to date on the threat from drones, come as U.S. law enforcement and homeland security agencies have just obtained legal authority to monitor drone communications and to disable them in extreme cases as a result of such concerns. The anti-drone measures were contained in a bill setting aviation policy that President Donald Trump signed on Friday.

"The FBI assesses that, given their retail availability, lack of verified identification requirement to procure, general ease of use, and prior use overseas," drones will be used in an attack in the U.S. including "a mass gathering," Wray said.

The rapidly expanding civilian drone market has prompted optimism it will be an economic boon for farmers, utilities and delivery companies, and the Trump administration in May unveiled 10 test beds for the new technology. The government predicts the total U.S. fleet of small drones will reach 1.6 million this year.

At the same time, however, growing concerns about criminal and terrorist use of the devices have slowed the government's plans for broader flight rules.

The Federal Aviation Administration had planned by the end of 2016 to propose a framework for allowing routine flights over people for the first time. That action was blocked after the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security raised concerns. As a result, the government is drawing up regulations that will require most of the devices to broadcast their identity and location so that they can be tracked by authorities.

The FBI has observed "repeated and dedicated" attempts by Islamic State, also known as ISIS, and al-Qaida to use drones in attacks, Wray said. Criminal gangs such as MS-13 and Mexican drug cartels have also used the devices, he said. Drones apparently were used in a recent unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro.

The FBI has disrupted at least one effort to use drones in an attack in the U.S., Wray said. A Massachusetts man was sentenced to 17 years in prison in 2012 for attempting to attack the Pentagon and Capitol using jet-powered model planes.

A Roy woman is facing a charge of negligent homicide for allegedly firing the bullet that fatally struck Zack Kempke, a 14-year-old Weber County boy who had been riding in a car with his family in northern Utah.

Kayleen Richins, 40, was charged Monday in Rich County with the class A misdemeanor, which carries a potential penalty of up to a year in jail.

Charging documents allege Richins and her family were target shooting in the Monte Cristo area Sept. 23 using a paper target on a cardboard box to sight in a hunting rifle. Beyond the target was a dense forest — and a road that could not be seen from where the family was firing the weapon.

Kempke and his family happened to be driving along that dirt road looking at the fall leaves in an aspen forest when prosecutors say Richins fired the gun. The bullet whizzed through the forest, broke through the jeep’s window and struck the young teen in the head. He died immediately.

Rich County Attorney Benjamin Willoughby said in a Monday news release that while the road could not be seen from where Richins fired the rifle, she should have investigated beyond the trees to ascertain what was downrange.

It’s clear, Willoughby said, that the woman did not intend to endanger anybody.

“This case serves as a sad reminder to never shoot until you know for certain what is downrange,” Willoughby said.

The county attorney noted Richins has been cooperative with investigators, and called the shooting a “tragedy.” The woman does not have a defense attorney listed in court records, and no court dates have been immediately set.

Willoughby said in the news release that Kempke’s family wished for privacy for themselves as they continue to mourn, and asked for the same privacy for Richins and her family.

Kempke’s uncle, Cory Hopkins, told The Salt Lake Tribune in September that his family did not want the boy’s death to become a topic in a gun control debate and didn’t feel strongly that charges should be filed against the shooter.

Kempke was a ninth-grader at North Ogden Junior High. Hopkins said the family had been taking photos in the Monte Cristo area to send to Kempke’s older brother, who is serving a mission in Oregon for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Do Imagine Dragons ever sleep? Not apparently.

Less than a year and a half after releasing the double-platinum album “Evolve” and crisscrossing the globe on a 100-date tour, the band is back with a dozen new songs. Whew.

“Origins” is supposed to be a sister companion to last year’s monster “Evolve” and it’s an intriguing follow-up, offering more textures and sonic experiments. If “Origins” was the band stalking around as an arena powerhouse, “Origins” is their quirky little sister, making cool stuff in her bedroom.

Don’t let the first single, “Natural,” fool you. That slice of bombastic, fist-pumping bravado seems to indicate more of the same on “Origins,” but they drift into other areas, like the blissed-out summer jam “Cool Out” that could be on a DNCE album, and the gloriously anarchic, disruptive “Digital,” which plays with dub step and chops itself into pieces.

The album sees the Dragons again reteaming with producers Alex da Kid and Mattman & Robin — folks who have delivered some of the band’s biggest hits — but, to everyone’s credit, not doing more of the same.

“Bullet in a Gun” is fresh with unpredictable electronic flourishes, and the club-ready “Only” has interesting tempo shifts and unexpected layered parts, as if the Dragons are fighting monotony this time. “West Coast” is basically a folky tune that could happily sit in a Lumineers album — how’s that for predictable?

Lyrically, “Origins” dwells on modern-day alienation and the band’s own uncomfortable relationship to its own fame. On “Zero,” lead singer Dan Reynolds reminds everyone he once felt empty and unreal. On the moody “Bullet in a Gun,” he notes sadly: “To make a name you pay the price” and later the words “sellout, sellout, sellout!” are heard.

The Dragons also explore a dehumanizing digital world, like in their plea for “Love,” where Reynolds notes everyone tones out shocking news: “We put on our headphones.” Elsewhere, he screams: “I’m not a part of your machine/I am the machine.”

The new album extends the band’s flirtation with Charles Darwin — taking its name from “On the Origin of Species” and coming right after “Evolve.” In some ways, the names should be reversed: “Origins” shows their sound really evolving.

Provo • BYU’s women’s soccer team will face an old Mountain West Conference foe when the NCAA women’s soccer tournament begins later this week.

It was announced during the NCAA Selection Show on Monday that BYU will play at TCU in the first round on Friday at Garvey-Rosenthal Soccer Stadium in Fort Worth, Texas. First kick is 6 p.m. MST.

The winner of the TCU-BYU match will face the winner of the Texas A&M-North Texas match at a site to be determined. That second-round match will be played on Nov. 16.

The Horned Frogs went 12-4-3 and tied for third in the Big 12 with a 5-3-1 conference record. BYU went 13-4-1 and claimed the West Coast Conference title with an 8-1 league record.

“TCU has had a great season,” BYU coach Jennifer Rockwood said. “I feel like we’ve seen some of the top teams in the nation and we’ve played up to the level of competition each time. We are just proud to represent the WCC.”

The Cougars are returning to the NCAA Tournament after missing it last year and will be making their 19th appearance. They lost 1-0 to South Carolina in the 2016 tournament’s third round.

BYU’s RPI is 44, while TCU’s is 20. The teams faced one common opponent, Santa Clara. The Broncos downed the Horned Frogs 3-0 on Sept. 13 and lost 2-0 to BYU on Oct. 27.

Utah’s four GOP House representatives recently debated their challengers. The four — Rob Bishop, Chris Stewart, John Curtis and Mia Love — cited and endorsed their own Utah “values” while continuing to generally support and endorse their party and its leader, Donald Trump. There is an inconsistency, even a hypocrisy, in citing Utah values while endorsing Trump.

The current GOP is corroded, corrupt, untruthful, uncivil, indecent and incapable of governing. A number of prominent Republicans now argue that the party needs to be destroyed so it can be reborn as a principled, honest, conservative party. This process can be expedited by voting against the Trump GOP party — against its candidates at all levels — now and in 2020.

Utah values are inconsistent with the immorality, the meanness, the prejudice, the indecency and the lies and crimes of Trump and his now-valueless GOP.

Those running under the banner of the GOP do not deserve your vote. They have chosen to continue with the GOP, rather than renounce their membership and their support of Trump and his corroded party.

Vote for values, principles and courage.

Joseph Andrade, Salt Lake City

Submit a letter to the editor

When a rich couple splits, divorce attorney Lowell Sucherman gets blunt.

"Look I've been doing this for 50 years," he says early in the negotiations. "I know how this case is going to come out within a few dollars." Find a fair way to settle quickly, he says, and you can save enough in legal fees to send your kid to college. Or, you can fight tooth and nail, he adds, "and I'll send my grandchildren to college." His warnings only work some of the time.

This year though, some estranged spouses have a more powerful incentive than ever to call a truce: President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax overhaul eliminates the deduction for alimony payments — for divorces finalized starting in 2019. For many wealthy couples, reaching a deal by Dec. 31 could mean tens of thousands of dollars in tax savings every year. That’s pushing more of them to finally follow Sucherman’s advice and cooperate as the deadline nears.

Divorce often means war for the top 1 percent. The richer you are, the more homes, possessions, investments and businesses there are to fight over. In a single-income family, the non-earning spouse can be worried about being cheated by the earning spouse. The result is often expensive negotiations that stretch on for years, as each party tries to inflict maximum damage on the other.

Alimony, also known as spousal support or maintenance, is typically paid by the higher-earning spouse for a period of time after a divorce. For decades, the payers of alimony have been able to deduct the payments on their tax returns. Receivers of alimony, meanwhile, were required to report the money as taxable income. The tax overhaul reverses that arrangement, denying the tax deduction to alimony payers while making alimony tax-free to those who receive it.

Because the payers of alimony are almost always in a higher tax bracket than their exes, the new rules will mean less after-tax money to go around.

"We're trying to get everybody divorced in 2018 who can be divorced in 2018," said Linda Ravdin, an attorney at Pasternak & Fidis in Bethesda, Maryland. After finishing a trial in a complex divorce case recently, Ravdin said she urged the judge to render his decision this year.

Michael Stutman, a partner at Stutman, Stutman & Lichtenstein in Manhattan, said he's seeing more feuding couples open to negotiation as the alimony deduction deadline looms. "When you've got people pretty close to an agreement, the specter of losing that benefit is pushing people together," he said.

Stutman is currently handling a divorce for a real estate mogul, and it's taking a long time for two skilled forensic accountants to untangle the family's holdings. The couple is "beside themselves" with how long it's taking, he said.

The old system of allowing for alimony deductions sometimes served as a way to "grease the skids" for a deal and make the payments less painful, said Peter Walzer of Walzer Melcher, a law firm in Los Angeles. Now the threat of losing the deduction is accelerating the process. Walzer said one of his clients got a call from her husband, urging her to speed up the proceedings after he learned about the tax law change. The irony is that previously he had been the one slowing down the divorce, Walzer said.

Even spouses who haven't started divorce proceedings are wondering if they should rush to get a deal done before year end. Sucherman, who works at San Francisco-based Sucherman Insalaco, said he's getting inquiries from potential clients -- whom he called very wealthy "Silicon Valley people" -- wondering if they should be rushing to divorce court because of the rule change. In most cases, he said, they aren't even separated yet.

For couples just starting proceedings now, ending a marriage by Dec. 31 will be difficult, and virtually impossible if they’re wealthy. It can take months, at a minimum, to just catalog and appraise possessions. Until that’s done, many spouses won’t even start negotiations. The process can stretch for months and even years, especially since there are many ways to bog down a divorce — like turning in intentionally sloppy and incomplete paperwork.

Still, there may be a workaround. If a settlement agreement, which often includes alimony terms, is reached by the end of this year, many divorce lawyers said that would likely be sufficient to still get the alimony tax break. But that isn't airtight, and there could be issues if the agreement is altered in the future.

The Internal Revenue Service hasn't issued any guidance on the alimony tax change, but some answers could come in the bluebook, Congress's official handbook explaining the law, expected to be released later this year. An IRS spokeswoman declined to comment.

The difference between getting a divorce finalized this year or not is significant, especially as incomes rise. A chief executive officer living in New York City who's divorcing a stay-at-home mom would pay about $35,000 in child support for their two young kids. If he makes $1 million a year and agrees to pay her $360,000 in alimony, the 2019 rule change could cost them about $23,000 annually in higher taxes, according to an analysis by Chris Chen of Insight Financial Strategists, a firm specializing in post-divorce financial planning.

If he earns $4 million and pays her $500,000 in alimony, the added cost because of the tax change rises to $35,500 a year, Chen said.

The end of the year typically tends to be a busy time for divorces. For both emotional and financial reasons, people in the midst of a divorce are often eager to finalize their splits before the holidays, Ravdin said. Many are eager to start the new year off single again. Being divorced on Dec. 31 also means tax returns can be filed as a single person.

The alimony change puts even more year-end pressure on divorce lawyers, judges and clerks. It's not clear courthouses will be able to handle the extra crush of paperwork.

Just to be safe, lawyers are getting paperwork in as soon as possible.

“They’re going to have a hard time processing all these judgments,” said Walzer.