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Beyond the baby bust: Parents quietly exit Colorado public schools
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, Red State, Top Stories

Beyond the baby bust: Parents quietly exit Colorado public schools

By Christian Horstmann | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice Our public schools lost 10,000 students this year. Is there another reason beyond the baby bust and a population pinch? Colorado’s public schools just posted their steepest enrollment slide since the pandemic: down more than 10,000 students this year, affecting each of our top ten largest districts and many others statewide.1 Denver Public Schools alone lost about 1,200 students2 and the district is already projecting another 6,000 by 20293 – almost certain to trigger even more school closures on top of the ten that have already been shuttered over the last few years.  Interestingly, overcrowded classrooms were presented during recent school board campaigns as an issue to address, but the opposite sce...
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Know Your Enemy: Lies That Look Like Truth
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Devotional, Top Stories

Know Your Enemy: Lies That Look Like Truth

By Pastor Drake Hunter | Commentary, Elevating Life Church So that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine… rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up. ~ Ephesians 4:14 15 ~ A vivid memory from my time in the Air Force keeps coming back to me. We were practicing in low visibility in rural Germany (Büchel - 1989) at dusk, navigating unfamiliar terrain under mounting pressure. Everything seemed correct on paper—landmarks matched, instruments confirmed our location, and the plan felt solid. Yet, I had a strange feeling that something wasn't quite right. It wasn’t fear, but a sense of discernment. I paused and said, “Hold up. Something doesn’t match.” Some colleagues rolled their eyes, ...
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When Rhetoric Escalates: How Polarizing Language Shapes Public Conflict
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, National, Top Stories

When Rhetoric Escalates: How Polarizing Language Shapes Public Conflict

By Shaina Cole | Commentary, Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice Political speech extends well beyond the moment it’s expressed. Words travel. They settle into public discourse and shape how authority, disagreement, and risk are understood over time.  Research shows that rhetoric does more than mirror tension. In certain conditions, it redirects it—especially when government leaders frame conflict in threatening or moral terms. That context helps explain why the White House published an article titled “57 Times Sick, Unhinged Democrats Declared War on Law Enforcement.” The article quotes Democrat state governors, congressmen, and other public figures whose statements the administration has characterized as contributing to a hostile environment for federal la...
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The numbers Polis didn’t tweet about Colorado’s workforce decline
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, State, Top Stories

The numbers Polis didn’t tweet about Colorado’s workforce decline

By Mike O’Donnell | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice I found it curious that Governor Polis felt a need to post to his half a dozen, die-hard, mentally-ill supporters on ‘X’ this week, a tweet to the effect that contrary to President Trump’s assertion that people are leaving Colorado “in droves,” Colorado’s population has continued to GROW under his august leadership since 2019. To support this assertion, he pasted a screenshot from factcheck.org stating that “since Polis took office in 2019, the moderate upward trend in the state’s population over the last decade has continued, although the data is only through 2022.” https://twitter.com/GovofCO/status/2010759061692641539 This fact checker also stated that similar supporting data was available from the ...
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“You don’t get to ride both horses”: Appeals court presses both sides in Tina Peters case
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Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

“You don’t get to ride both horses”: Appeals court presses both sides in Tina Peters case

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice “Reset the clock.” Defense attorney John Case used a football analogy as the Colorado Court of Appeals sorted out timing for oral arguments in Tina Peters’ appeal. It had nothing to do with the case itself—just how much time each side would have. But the aside drew a brief laugh before judges turned to a record years in the making. Defense attorney Peter Ticktin, who represents Peters and spoke with RMV after the hearing, said the depth of the judges’ questions tracked the briefs closely. “This is a big file,” Ticktin said. “This isn’t something you can read in an afternoon. They clearly did the work. They were chasing down each avenue and each argument that we had in our briefs.” Watch the full oral arguments below ...
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Behind the zero: What Colorado’s opening day didn’t say about the true cost of lawmaking
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Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Behind the zero: What Colorado’s opening day didn’t say about the true cost of lawmaking

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice “Governor Polis told us we should please work together,” Sen. Janice Rich said Wednesday, recounting a recent exchange as she stood on the Senate floor during opening session. Inside the chamber, legislative leaders spoke about shared goals and economic pressure on families. What didn’t make it into the speeches, according to Rich, was where many of the real financial consequences of those bills are already hiding. Rich, the Senate Minority Whip and vice chair of the Statutory Revision Committee, said the optimistic tone often masks how legislation actually moves once the gavels come down—particularly in how costs are presented, debated and ultimately shifted onto taxpayers and local governments. “They say they want to work...
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Griswold, county clerks urge Polis to reject clemency for Tina Peters ahead of appellate arguments
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Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Griswold, county clerks urge Polis to reject clemency for Tina Peters ahead of appellate arguments

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice With Peters’ appeal heading into oral arguments, Griswold and the Colorado County Clerks Association put it in writing for Gov. Jared Polis: don’t step in. The Jan. 13 letter carries three signatures: Griswold’s, Jackson County Clerk & Recorder Hayle Johnson’s and Colorado County Clerks Association executive director Matt Crane’s. In it, the group asks Polis not to grant clemency, warning that doing so would have consequences beyond Peters’ case. “In 2021, then-Clerk Tina Peters coordinated the breach of her own election equipment in the nation’s first public elections insider threat,” the letter states, asserting that her conduct placed the security of Mesa County elections and public confidence in democracy at risk. The a...
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How Colorado laws are really made: What Rep. Matt Soper says voters rarely see
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Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

How Colorado laws are really made: What Rep. Matt Soper says voters rarely see

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice The Colorado legislature is about to gavel in for another 120-day sprint, and with it comes a flood of bills most Coloradans will never see until the consequences land.  What many don’t see is how quickly ideas move, who pushes them forward—and why outcomes can feel disconnected from public input. Few lawmakers are positioned to explain that gap as clearly as Matt Soper, now the longest-serving Republican in the House and widely regarded inside the building as the caucus “dean.” With term limits constantly churning the legislature, Soper has watched the same policy ideas cycle through multiple sessions, often repackaged and moving faster each time. “There’s the textbook version of how a bill becomes a law that everyone...
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This is the real insurrection
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, National, Top Stories

This is the real insurrection

By Mark Salley | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice What has happened to people in America? We have a contingent of people supporting and praising the law breakers.  Let’s call it what it is: insurrection. Just five years ago this month, the left branded patriotic protestors at the nation’s capital as “insurrectionists.”   None of the protestors there that day were obstructing justice. None of them were standing in the way of enforcing the nation’s laws. No one on that day was attacking law enforcement officers, pummeling them with bricks or frozen water bottles, or for that matter, ramming them with cars. And not a single one was charged with insurrection. Today officers of Immigration and Customs Enforcement are attacked and harassed rele...
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Aurora council immigration resolution sparks warnings from police chief, draws resident response
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Local, Top Stories

Aurora council immigration resolution sparks warnings from police chief, draws resident response

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice Aurora City Council took up immigration enforcement Monday night and approved a resolution criticizing federal actions it described as unlawful and overreaching. The item arrived late on the agenda. It did not immediately change city policy. But it didn’t fade into the background, either. Council members pointed to several incidents they said shaped the decision. One involved the death of a Colorado woman during an Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation in Minnesota. Others cited included reported illness concerns at the GEO ICE detention facility in Aurora and a recent arrest involving a parent and child. In the resolution’s language, council members said both U.S. citizens and immigrants...
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