Utah

OGDEN, Utah (AP) — U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah said Friday he supports President Donald Trump’s push for a border wall that has led to a government shutdown and questioned why Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi won’t agree to “another few miles” of barriers on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Romney also said he plans to keep working with other senators to find interim solutions, such as legislation that would make sure essential government employees still working get paid now.

OGDEN, Utah (AP) — Rachael Weatherly is a senior adviser for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but she’s considering trying to get a job at a grocery store.

Weatherly is among the 800,000 federal employees who aren’t getting paychecks for the first time Friday because of the lingering government shutdown.

They are scaling back spending, canceling trips, applying for unemployment benefits and taking out loans to stay afloat, with no end in sight for a partial shutdown that enters its 21st day Friday and will be the longest in history by this weekend.

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — The recent beating of a young man and his father at their Salt Lake City tire shop by an attacker who told police he targeted them because they were Mexican is renewing criticism of the state’s hate crime law, which one prosecutor is calling unusable.

Rather than protecting specific groups, the 1990s-era measure speaks generally about crimes that block people from freely exercising their constitutional rights.

VERNAL, Utah (AP) — Sheriff’s deputies arrested two teenage boys they say stole a small airplane at a private airstrip in rural eastern Utah and flew about 15 miles (24 kilometers) before landing successfully at Vernal Regional Airport.

The Desert News reported the 14- and 15-year-old boys stole the single-engine Cessna Thursday from a private airstrip in Jensen along U.S. Highway 40 about 15 miles (24 km) west of the Colorado line.