Cannot restart, shutdown or log out I am on 10.14.4, the same thing was happening at least on 10.14.1.

Laptop: MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2014)

So the problem is if I open  "Apple Menu" in top left corner and click any of the following options:


Shut Down...
Restart...
Log out My Name


nothing happens.

sudo reboot works fine, holding the power button works fine, but that's not a graceful shutdown and I would like to avoid it, it also prevents updates from being applied if shut down this way.

Also when I go to Preferences > Software Updates > click Update Now then a dialog pops up with an option "Restart Now". Clicking it does nothing similar to Apple Menu.

What I tried:


I checked the Console application for logs (nothing relevant in there)
I checked /var/log/system.log, I checked /var/log/shutdown_monitor.log (nothing relevant in there)
SMC reset
NVRAM reset
Created new fresh user, to see if it's a problem with my user account (the issue persists)
I disabled all the login items and bunch of startup services (java updates, and bunch of similar non-system stuff)
This looks suspiciously like a problem with permissions. Open /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility and fix permissions on your drive then reboot and see if it works.

EDIT: After comment, repair permissions is not available anymore in newer macos releases. 

Then you will have to reinstall macos, I am afraid.