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Colorado’s budget hole: How Democrats’ spending spree forced a special session
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Christian Home Educators of Colorado, Approved, Commentary, State

Colorado’s budget hole: How Democrats’ spending spree forced a special session

By Colleen Enos | Commentary, Christian Home Educators of Colorado (CHEC) Just Stop Digging! You can almost smell the school supplies in the air as all families with school-age children or university students start scheduling their year and make the annual trek back to campus or begin rearranging and assigning their homeschool curriculum. Fall is in the air, but for the Colorado State Legislature, another budget session begins on August 21st to plug the self-induced hole in the 2025-2026 state budget.  The session will last a minimum of three days but can continue as long as it takes the General Assembly to complete its work. Since Colorado law requires a balanced budget, Governor Polis announced a Special Session to resolve the issue. The Governor’s announcement was entit...
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Dear Colorado Legislature: Here’s Your $1 Billion Cut List
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ScottKJames.com, Approved, Commentary, State

Dear Colorado Legislature: Here’s Your $1 Billion Cut List

By Scott K. James | Commentary, ScottKJames.com Colorado’s $1B budget hole isn’t rocket science – we found the cuts. From illegal immigration perks to bloated credits, here’s the fix. (And Yes, We Found It In the Couch Cushions) Colorado lawmakers are about to lock themselves in a special session cage match because they’ve managed to spend themselves $1 billion into the red. Cue the finger-pointing, cue the “hard choices” speeches, cue the “we just need more revenue” crocodile tears. Well, guess what? We did your homework for you. We found your billion. And unlike your staff memos written in bureaucrat-ese, this cut list is in plain English – with receipts. Brace yourselves, this will be long, but I’ll give you a TL, DR version right up front… TL;DR: Colorado’s ...
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Same week, same county, different response: Inside the Elk and Lee fires
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Approved, Local, Top Stories

Same week, same county, different response: Inside the Elk and Lee fires

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice Flames boiled the pond on Mike Clark’s ranch, scorched irrigated fields and melted fiberglass fence posts in minutes. On August 6, the Lee Fire came so fast friends were calling with warnings as his family scrambled to clear trees and pump water toward the house.  Just miles away on the Elk Fire side, air tankers and ground crews had been dropping water since early morning. Mike Clark is no stranger to high stakes. A fourth-generation Coloradan and CEO of Petrox Resources, he built his life and business in the same place he raised his children. For decades, Clark has run Petrox while also working the family’s ranch, a property he moved to more than 30 years ago for its open spaces, agricultural roots and the chance to raise his kids in a...
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Denver Eliminates Jobs but Preserves Core Public Safety Services
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The Denver Gazette, Approved, Local

Denver Eliminates Jobs but Preserves Core Public Safety Services

By Deborah Grigsby and Dan Boniface | The Denver Gazette Denver's Office of Transportation and Infrastructure lost the most employees with 31 layoffs. The specifics of Denver's staffing layoffs became clearer on Wednesday, when Mayor Mike Johnston revealed the positions that have been eliminated within city agencies this week. Some agencies took a heavy hit, where the Johnston administration cut as much as a third of their budgeted workforce. The public safety agencies saw nearly 100 vacant positions eliminated, though no officer was laid off.   The mayor sought to guarantee no impact to several services, but he hinted that the cuts will affect programs. Even his own initiative on homelessness — he had promised to end the crisis in his first term as may...
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Adam Schiff Launches Legal Defense Fund as DOJ Investigation Tightens
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National, Approved, The Western Journal

Adam Schiff Launches Legal Defense Fund as DOJ Investigation Tightens

By Joe Saunders | The Western Journal The man who led the prosecution of President Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial is now worried about his own defense. Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff, the longtime California congressman and chief impeachment manager against Trump in 2019-20, has launched a legal defense fund amid accusations that he engaged in mortgage fraud for more than a decade. It’s an accusation Schiff denies, but the director of the Federal Home Financing Agency is talking very tough. In a criminal referral to Attorney General Pam Bondi sent in May, FHFA Director William Pulte wrote that Schiff and his wife, Eve, purchased property in Potomac, Maryland, in 2003 that they affirmed would be their “primary residence.” That designation, Pulte wrote, enabled the Schiff...
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Trump Backs Jeff Crank in Colorado’s 5th District Reelection Bid
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State, Approved, The Gazette

Trump Backs Jeff Crank in Colorado’s 5th District Reelection Bid

By Ernest Luning | The Gazette President Donald Trump formally endorsed U.S. Rep. Jeff Crank’s bid for reelection on Tuesday, calling the Colorado Springs Republican a “Fierce Advocate for our America First Agenda.” Crank, a staunch Trump ally, is seeking a second term in the reliably Republican 5th Congressional District, whose border roughly coincides with that of El Paso County. The former podcaster and veteran political operative won election last year by a wide margin following nine-term Republican Doug Lamborn’s announcement that he wouldn’t seek another term. “Congressman Jeff Crank is doing a truly fantastic job representing the Great People of Colorado’s 5th Congressional District!” Trump said in a post to Truth Social, the social media site he controls. “Jeff is a F...
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Colorado Springs Community Partners Transform School Into Shelter for Homeless Families
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Local, Approved, The Gazette

Colorado Springs Community Partners Transform School Into Shelter for Homeless Families

By Debbie Kelley | The Gazette Children’s laughter again will fill the hallways of an old elementary school in the Hillside neighborhood that closed nine years ago, but the kids won’t be in classes, they’ll be right at home with their parents. Helen Hunt Elementary School at 601 S. Institute St. is now Hunt Family Housing, a 24-unit transitional apartment complex for parents and children exiting homelessness. “We think this will have a significant impact on reducing family homelessness in our community,” Andy Barton, CEO of Catholic Charities of Central Colorado, said at a grand opening and ribbon-cutting event Wednesday. The annual count of the homeless population in El Paso County that was released last month showed 62 children through age 17 living in emergency shelters on o...
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USCIS to Screen Visa Applicants for Signs of Anti-Americanism
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National, Approved, The Gazette

USCIS to Screen Visa Applicants for Signs of Anti-Americanism

By Kanishka Singh, Reuters | The Gazette WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump's administration has said it will assess applicants for U.S. work, study and immigration visas for "anti-Americanism" and count any such finding against them, sparking concern about implications for free speech. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said in a "policy alert" dated Tuesday that it gave immigration officers new guidance on how to exercise discretion in cases where foreign applicants "support or promote anti-American ideologies or activities" as well as "antisemitic terrorism." Trump has labeled a range of voices as anti-American, including historians and museums documenting U.S. slavery and pro-Palestinian protesters opposing U.S. ally Israel's military assault on Gaza. "Anti-Amer...
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Denver Cuts Costs With Targeted Staff Reductions Amid Budget Crisis
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Local, Approved, kdvr.com

Denver Cuts Costs With Targeted Staff Reductions Amid Budget Crisis

By Parker Gordon | KDVR Fox 31 DENVER (KDVR) — The city and county of Denver announced it has completed layoff notifications to 169 employees “as part of a larger effort to balance the 2026 budget.” In a press release on Wednesday, the Denver mayor’s office said the 169 city employees were notified and that there will be no additional layoffs or furloughs for the agencies impacted this year. This comes after city workers waited for information on the layoffs when Denver Mayor Mike Johnston sent a letter to city and county employees in July that layoffs would begin on Monday. On Monday, the mayor’s office announced that the city would be eliminating 928 positions as a result of the $200 million budget shortfall. The layoffs were reportedly announced by the mayor’s office to ...
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Lawmakers Pass The Buck On Budget Deficit Leaving Decisions To Governor Polis
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State, Approved, The Gazette

Lawmakers Pass The Buck On Budget Deficit Leaving Decisions To Governor Polis

By Marianne Goodland | The Gazette Most measures introduced for special session offer no clear plan to solve budget deficit. More than two dozen bills have been introduced ahead of Thursday’s special legislative session, where lawmakers will try to come up with nearly $800 million in budget cuts. What’s notably absent from the proposed bills so far is any clear plan for how those cuts would be made. Indeed, only one bill even hints at specific reductions — a proposal from Western Slope lawmakers to cut $264,000 from the state’s wolf management program and redirect that money to help pay for health insurance subsidies. There are two bills, similar in some regards, from members of the Joint Budget Committee, that deal with Gov. Jared Polis' authority to enact spending cuts whe...
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