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Gazette editorial board: Colorado’s green agenda is pricing out homeowners
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Approved, Commentary, denvergazette.com, State

Gazette editorial board: Colorado’s green agenda is pricing out homeowners

The Gazette editorial board | Denver Gazette Colorado’s governor and Legislature may claim they want more affordable housing — but they aren’t about to let it stand in the way of their headlong rush toward green energy. Their zero-emissions-at-any-cost dogma seems to trump all other policy priorities. Which helps explain why the state’s Energy Code Board is poised to impose extreme energy standards — even more stringent than those already in effect — on new home construction. The pending rules would turn the screws on wide-ranging aspects of the building code — and are projected to add tens of thousands of dollars to the cost of a new home in Colorado. That’s right — it’ll add $25,000 to $35,000, by one estimate, in what is already the most expensive state for housing that is not ...
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Montrose Commissioner Pond: The Constitution isn’t a suggestion—it’s a line in the sand
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Approved, Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Montrose Commissioner Pond: The Constitution isn’t a suggestion—it’s a line in the sand

By Sean Pond | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice Something is happening in Colorado. You can feel it. Not on the surface, but beneath it. Beneath the silence. Beneath the carefully packaged language of equity, sustainability, and progress. We are being conditioned. Slowly, quietly, and deliberately. Conditioned to comply. Conditioned to accept change without question. Conditioned to believe that liberty is negotiable, that tradition is outdated, and that resistance is somehow wrong. But here’s the truth they don’t want you to hear. The Constitution doesn’t need to evolve. It needs to be defended. Freedom isn’t something you bargain with. It’s something you protect. And this get-along-with-everybody mentality? That’s the problem. That’s the trap. In my first 100...
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Schaffer’s ‘unsafe school choice’ policy gets new life under Trump
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Approved, Education Week, National

Schaffer’s ‘unsafe school choice’ policy gets new life under Trump

By Evie Blad | Education Week When the Trump administration urged states to use a little-known provision in federal education law to boost school choice, the congressman who helped author the language 24 years ago had an immediate reaction. “It’s about time,” said former Congressman Bob Schaffer. In a May 7 letter, Acting Assistant Education Secretary Hayley B. Sanon urged states to ease their criteria for labeling schools as “persistently dangerous"—a designation that legally comes with an obligation to offer families an option to transfer to another public school. “The number of persistently dangerous schools reported nationwide appears low particularly given the number of violent offenses in schools reported” in federal data, she wrote. It’s a message that Schaffer, ...
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Denver’s not just going to the dogs—it’s leaving children behind
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Approved, Local, Westword

Denver’s not just going to the dogs—it’s leaving children behind

By Thomas Mitchell | Westword About 50 percent of this city's residents have a dog. Only 20 percent have children under eighteen. Denver is no longer a cowtown. It's a dog city. Long known as a hub for livestock, Denver has corraled several more amenities over the years. Outdoor sports, craft beer, legal weed, live music and a wave of tech jobs have attracted travelers and transplants alike. But those who stay in this city must acknowledge its four-legged rulers, whether you own one or not. Around 50 percent of Denver's residents have a dog, with 68 percent reporting that they own at least one pet, according to a 2024 survey by the Colorado Polling Institute. In the same poll, just 20 percent of Denver residents said they had children under eighteen. Population n...
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O’Donnell: Behind the headlines, Colorado’s job growth tells a different story
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Approved, Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

O’Donnell: Behind the headlines, Colorado’s job growth tells a different story

By Mike O’Donnell | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice Last week, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released April 2025 job creation numbers by state. The national numbers were released earlier in the month and for the nation as a whole 177,000 new jobs were created in April, and this was considered a “solid” number by those who consider themselves experts. Colorado’s share of that total was 8,400 and those same experts consider that an “exceptionally solid” month for Colorado. Somewhere, champagne corks were likely popped. Nonetheless, behind every number is a story and that story for Colorado is quite revealing.  Yes, Colorado added 8,400 new jobs in April – but 5,500 (65%) were in bars and restaurants, and 4,500 (54%) in health care and social assistance. ...
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Illegal immigrant stole $400,000 in benefits and voted in U.S. elections, DOJ reports
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Approved, National, The Western Journal

Illegal immigrant stole $400,000 in benefits and voted in U.S. elections, DOJ reports

By Jack Davis | The Western Journal A Colombian woman who masqueraded as an American citizen for more than 20 years has been indicted for identity theft. The woman received rental assistance, Social Security and SNAP benefits under a phony name, according to a Department of Justice news release, and also was able to vote. Through use of the fake identity, she obtained a REAL ID in Massachusetts as well as eight other state IDs. A court filing said the suspect obtained her first state ID – a learner’s permit – in 2004 by using a false identity. The filing indicated that officials who vetted her passport application in November 2024 were the first to catch on to the fraud that had been taking place. After being initially arrested and indicted in February, Lina M...
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Retired military leaders to Congress: Chinese Communist Party threat against Taiwan ‘shrinking our options’
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Approved, National, The Western Journal

Retired military leaders to Congress: Chinese Communist Party threat against Taiwan ‘shrinking our options’

By Jack Davis | The Western Journal Protecting Taiwan against a Chinese invasion is an urgent mission that requires the United States to up its game in the Pacific, experts recently told Congress. “America’s ability to defeat a coercive attack conducted by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) against Taiwan continues to shrink,” retired Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery said in his testimony recently during a hearing of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party. Addressing that requires urgency, said retired Army Gen. Charles Flynn, who until last year commanded U.S. Army forces in the Pacific, according to the Washington Times. “The threat of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan is no longer distant or theoretical,” he said. “The urgency to restore credible deterrence in the Indo...
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Colorado native charged in attempted firebomb attack on American Embassy in Israel
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Approved, kdvr.com, Local, National

Colorado native charged in attempted firebomb attack on American Embassy in Israel

Fox31 via The Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) — A dual U.S. and German citizen originally from Colorado has been arrested on charges that he traveled to Israel and attempted to firebomb the branch office of the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, officials said Sunday. Federal prosecutors in New York said the man, Joseph Neumeyer, walked up to the embassy building on May 19 with a backpack containing Molotov cocktails but got into a confrontation with a guard and eventually ran away, dropping his backpack as the guard tried to grab him. Law enforcement then tracked Neumeyer down to a hotel a few blocks away from the embassy and arrested him, according to a criminal complaint filed in the Eastern District of New York. READ THE FULL STORY AT KDVR.COM
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Fighting for a country that doubted them—but never broke them
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Approved, denvergazette.com, Local, National

Fighting for a country that doubted them—but never broke them

By Vince Bzdek | Denver Gazette In his 99 years on the planet, Ken Akune has been sorted into many bins. The first was Nisei, the term for second-generation Japanese Americans born in the United States. Akune had lived in both the United States and Japan and his family was divided between the two. The second bin was “evacuee.” That was the term given to 18-year-old Akune, his brother Harry and 7,000 other Japanese Americans shipped out to the Granada Relocation Center in Colorado at the start of World War II because of worries about their loyalty. Franklin Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 forcibly removed them from their home on the West Coast to a remote plain of sage and dust in southeastern Colorado, known simply as Amache. “I was mad, jealous, whatever you want to call i...
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‘A place where silence speaks volumes’: Fort Logan among top Memorial Day sites honoring the fallen
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Approved, kdvr.com, Local, National

‘A place where silence speaks volumes’: Fort Logan among top Memorial Day sites honoring the fallen

By Spencer Kristensen | Fox31 DENVER (KDVR) — It’s Memorial Day Weekend, and all across the United States, citizens will travel to National Cemeteries to pay tribute to the lives of friends, family, community members or even complete strangers who made the ultimate sacrifice while serving in the U.S. military. Crowds of people will gather in the burial grounds, but not a peep will be heard as a moment of silence is held for the fallen. Ahead of Memorial Day, Choice Mutual, an insurance company, surveyed over 3,000 U.S. citizens on which cemetery they would most like to visit. Fort Logan in Denver was one of the most mentioned in the survey, and landed in the No. 20 spot. The top 10 most popular mentions included: Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia Gettysburg Nation...
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