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The Poudre records: How a school “safe space” became a five-year parental-rights battle
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Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

The Poudre records: How a school “safe space” became a five-year parental-rights battle

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice It has been just over five years. No one has been held accountable. That is how Erin Lee describes what happened on May 4, 2021 and everything since. Federal litigation, Supreme Court petitions and public records battles have produced thousands of pages of emails, court filings and internal policies. "It's been an insane five years," she told RMV in May. “She came home and excitedly proclaimed she was transgender” The Lees moved from Florida to Wellington, Colorado in 2020. Erin says she and her husband were "faithless, left-leaning parents" with a close relationship with their daughter. In spring 2021 that daughter had just turned twelve and was enrolled at Wellington Middle School. Her homeroom and art teacher was Jenn...
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The joy weapon: Rowing with Jesus through the battles of life
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Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice, Top Stories

The joy weapon: Rowing with Jesus through the battles of life

By Drake Hunter | Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice "Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream…merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.” Children sing this rhyme with a smile, but adults sing it exhausted because life feels like a battlefield. Bills, relationships, politics, and bodies weaken. Expectations come and go, betrayals and drifting dreams make us row harder and angrier. Then Jesus steps onto the shoreline and says, “Follow Me.” That command truly shifts everything. Jesus never guaranteed His followers a life free of storms; instead, He assured them of His presence right in the middle of them.  That’s where the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-16) come into play. They’re not just gentle religious sayings meant for pillows or sentimental Hallmark moments. No, th...
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Beyond the military record: What war left behind for one family
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Beyond the military record: What war left behind for one family

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice A faded military form cannot explain what war does to a family. The DD214 for Willie Jerome Evans Sr. records medals, overseas assignments and an honorable discharge from the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War. It does not record the anger that settled over his family, the silence between father and son or the moment decades later when that same son held his father’s hand in a Colorado hospital room and whispered forgiveness. Willie Jerome Evans Sr. at his 1962 high school graduation in North Carolina. Family photos and documents courtesy of Kalvin Evans For years, Kalvin Evans knew only fragments of his father’s military story. The hardest parts of Willie’s military experience did not come directly from him. In an interview with RM...
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A Person’s a Person No Matter How Small
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Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

A Person’s a Person No Matter How Small

By Ken DeGraaf | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice This story is not merely about a brave young girl gone viral for a poignant poem. It is about a canary in a coal mine gasping for air as the poisons of a culture increasingly unable to tolerate truth swirl ever thicker in the atmosphere around it. When a 7th grader is barred from presenting a poem titled “A life is a life, no matter how small” to her Honors English classmates because it defended unborn life, Colorado should take stock of its condition. In a Jeffco district claiming that “all students…feel that their voices and perspectives are valued,” the promotion of life itself was deemed too offensive. A healthy civilization does not fear competing moral arguments. It does not silence peaceful dissent or require instit...
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America’s Next Top Entrepreneur: The Patriot Pitch Competition
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Commentary, National, Rocky Mountain Voice, Top Stories

America’s Next Top Entrepreneur: The Patriot Pitch Competition

By Justin D. Everett | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice Since the founding of our nation, American innovation has transformed lives by turning bold ideas into reality. As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, this legacy is accelerating—driven by policies that prioritize American ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit. This spirit is embodied by the Freedom 250 Patriot Pitch Competition, a national initiative led by the U.S. Small Business Administration to spotlight and support the businesses propelling America forward. With a $1 million prize pool—made possible by a generous contribution from Clover Network, Inc.—the competition celebrates entrepreneurs who exemplify American ingenuity by solving problems, building businesses, and creating jobs. Eligible small ...
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Colorado’s annual seat belt crackdown returns. The numbers suggest it isn’t working.
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Colorado’s annual seat belt crackdown returns. The numbers suggest it isn’t working.

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice "Their lives might have been saved if they invested three seconds in safety and buckled up." Col. Matthew C. Packard, chief of the Colorado State Patrol, said that Monday about the 191 Coloradans who died in crashes last year without a seat belt. CDOT's release marked the launch of the state's annual Click It or Ticket enforcement campaign with five years of fatality data. The numbers have not moved. Since 2021, the unbuckled share of passenger vehicle deaths in Colorado has held between 48 percent and 52 percent each year. Through May 18 of this year, 40 unbuckled drivers and passengers have died on Colorado roads, 51 percent of all passenger vehicle fatalities. Across the full five-year period, 1,052 of 2,087 passenger v...
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Jeffco student barred from reading pro-life poem after school calls it “too politically charged”
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Local, Rocky Mountain Voice, Top Stories

Jeffco student barred from reading pro-life poem after school calls it “too politically charged”

By Kelly Notarfrancesco | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice Jeffco School District values maintaining schools where “…all students…feel that their voices and perspectives are valued." Yet one 13-year-old 7th grade honors student said she does not feel respected at school, after school officials told her she is not allowed to participate in her class poetry presentation because her submission is “too offensive” and “too politically charged.” The Drake Middle School 7th grader, whose name is being withheld as she is a minor, submitted a poem titled, “A life is a life, no matter how small,” about choosing life over abortion.  Shortly after submitting her poem Monday, the student was approached by her 7th grade Honors English Language Arts teacher Laura Wolf and told she would...
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Colorado debated abortion oversight while Lexi’s autopsy stayed redacted
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Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Colorado debated abortion oversight while Lexi’s autopsy stayed redacted

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice Taco Tuesdays with her mother. Motorcycle rides with her stepdad. Choir, books and afternoons at the Denver Aquarium. That was the teenager her family remembered. Alexis Arguello was 18 when she died in Fort Collins on Feb. 6, 2025 after a second-trimester abortion. Coincidentally, it was less than a week after her death that Rep. Scott Bottoms introduced a bill for abortion-clinic oversight. A relative of Arguello testified for the bill a month later, even while the portions describing the abortion and related medical complications remained hidden from view. It took an order from a district court judge for the records to be released unredacted.  In the order, St. John emphasized that autopsy reports are public records subject to dis...
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Colorado killed its only data center water bills. Cities are filling the gap themselves.
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Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Colorado killed its only data center water bills. Cities are filling the gap themselves.

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice Colorado spent a year trying to answer a basic question: should companies building massive AI data centers be required to disclose how much water they use? The answer, as of May 11, was no. Senate Bill 26-102 would have required operators of new large data centers to report annual water use to state health officials. A companion measure, House Bill 26-1030, sought to attract data centers through voluntary tax incentives tied to water efficiency standards. HB26-1030 died in committee on May 7. SB26-102 followed four days later. 238 lobbyists registered positions on one or both bills on behalf of 221 clients, according to Secretary of State records. Five days after the legislature adjourned, Denver City Council unanim...
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Coastal desalination could save Colorado’s water. The pushback? Cost
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Coastal desalination could save Colorado’s water. The pushback? Cost

By Michael J Badagliacco, “MJB” | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice Colorado’s water rights must never become a bargaining chip.  The 1922 Colorado River Compact apportioned 7.5 million acre-feet annually to the Upper Basin, including Colorado, and the same amount to the Lower Basin states. The 1928 Boulder Canyon Project Act fixed specific Lower Basin shares: California 4.4 million acre-feet, Arizona 2.8 million acre-feet, and Nevada 0.3 million acre-feet. The 1948 Upper Colorado River Basin Compact later assigned Colorado roughly 51.75% of the Upper Basin’s share, or about 3.86 million acre-feet. The 1964 Arizona v. California Supreme Court decree confirmed federal oversight of these mainstream allocations while highlighting the need for supply solutions beyond repeate...
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