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The warning before SPEED: How an ongoing Colorado wolf dispute shaped the permitting debate
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Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

The warning before SPEED: How an ongoing Colorado wolf dispute shaped the permitting debate

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice Before Congress voted to overhaul the nation’s permitting process, a Colorado lawmaker had already issued a formal warning that federal law was being set aside in the rush to move forward. On December 13, 2024, Rep. Lauren Boebert sent a detailed letter to then–Interior Secretary Deb Haaland arguing that Colorado’s wolf reintroduction plan triggered federal jurisdiction and could not legally proceed without updated federal Resource Management Plans and a proper National Environmental Policy Act review. She asked the Department of the Interior to press pause on any additional wolf imports until those federal duties were met. More than a year later, the House passed the Standardizing Permitting and Expediting Economic De...
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“This is the team”: Michael Knowles at TPUSA AmFest on holding a coalition together
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, National, Top Stories

“This is the team”: Michael Knowles at TPUSA AmFest on holding a coalition together

By RMV Editorial Board The opening night of AmericaFest did not unfold as a unified rally. Disagreements among speakers played out in real time, reflecting a broader conservative fracture now visible nationally and within state parties, including in Colorado. Michael Knowles articulated what the evening had already revealed. “In the absence of our generation’s political peacemaker,” he said, “we find ourselves in the latest right-wing civil war.” https://www.youtube.com/live/hcBd0whz8ec?si=osLqunNpf8BDHrdl Knowles did not frame that civil war as scandal or betrayal. He treated it as a structural failure. Conservatives, he observed, are independent-minded by nature. They argue. They splinter into factions. That part is not new. What is new is the absence...
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Protect Kids Colorado Pushes to Fund Signature Drive as Ballot Timeline Tightens
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Protect Kids Colorado Pushes to Fund Signature Drive as Ballot Timeline Tightens

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice Ballot deadlines are closing in, and organizers with Protect Kids Colorado have begun pushing harder on fundraising and volunteer outreach connected to three citizen-led ballot initiatives slated for the 2026 election. The proposals deal with medical interventions for minors, girls’ sports and sex-based spaces, and penalties for child sex trafficking — areas campaign leaders say have evolved over time through legislation, court decisions, and regulatory guidance rather than direct statewide votes. The three proposals are being circulated separately — so voters would weigh in on each one individually if they make the ballot. Organizers have acknowledged that legal and political challenges are likely, particularl...
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COVID and the Collapse of Wisdom: How Fear, Certainty, and Coercion Broke Human Coexistence
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COVID and the Collapse of Wisdom: How Fear, Certainty, and Coercion Broke Human Coexistence

By C. J. Garbo | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice A recent CNN report says the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is planning to place a “black box” warning on COVID-19 vaccines, the agency’s most serious safety label for medicines. This warning is meant to highlight life-threatening risks that doctors and patients must consider. The report says this move is unusual because such warnings are rare for vaccines and could change how people see COVID-19 immunizations. The plan is not finalized and may change, but it represents a major shift from how vaccines were framed earlier in the pandemic. This recent development affirms the doubts many people had from the beginning about how information was shared, how risk was communicated, and how baseless the certainty experts and o...
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Good News or Fake News: Joy — Real News Worth Celebrating
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, Devotional, Top Stories

Good News or Fake News: Joy — Real News Worth Celebrating

By Drake Hunter | Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice If hope helps us wait and peace helps us stand, then joy helps us move forward. Joy can sometimes be misunderstood. People often mix it up with happiness, think it’s just an emotion, or even brush it off as silly. But joy has its own special meaning! At its core, true joy isn’t shallow or fragile; it's strong and active. It shows up in our lives when things are real, and it deserves to be celebrated. As we reflect during this Advent season, let’s continue to think about this important question: “What’s shaping who you are—the Good News or the fake news?” The source you trust can really influence your peace and your joy in life. We understand that fake news promotes self-sufficiency, cynicism, and entitlement. Conversel...
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Delay as policy: A double standard Colorado must answer
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Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Delay as policy: A double standard Colorado must answer

By RMV Editorial Board Colorado is asking a court to decide whether doing nothing can amount to doing too much. In its lawsuit over frozen federal funding, the state argues that agencies crossed the line when they allowed congressionally approved programs to stall through delay and inaction. At some point, Colorado contends, refusing to decide becomes a veto Congress never granted. That argument deserves to be taken seriously—and it raises an unavoidable question closer to home. If delay is unlawful at the federal level, why has it become routine at the state level? The standard Colorado is asking courts to enforce In its lawsuit over frozen electric vehicle infrastructure funding, Colorado argues that process cannot be used to achieve outcomes lawmakers ...
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Colorado’s Budget Is Bigger Than Ever. Health Care Is Why.
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Colorado’s Budget Is Bigger Than Ever. Health Care Is Why.

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice Colorado’s state budget is larger than it used to be. That much isn’t disputed. What has changed over the last twenty years is where that growth landed. The Common Sense Institute’s “Colorado Budget: Then and Now” (December 2025) Colorado’s state budget has grown faster than population and inflation since the mid-2000s. The shift wasn’t sudden. It accumulated, year by year, across multiple budgets and multiple administrations. The increase shows up clearly in the numbers. In the mid-2000s, state spending worked out to a little under $5,600 per person once population and inflation were accounted for. It didn’t stay there. Year by year, the number crept higher. It now sits above $7,300. The increase...
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What Xcel promised regulators and what customers were told before Dec. 17 shutoff warnings
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What Xcel promised regulators and what customers were told before Dec. 17 shutoff warnings

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice Coloradans are being asked to prepare for the chance of a planned outage on Dec. 17. The company’s public alerts tell people to watch the map. The filings tell a fuller story about thresholds, timelines and who is supposed to be in the loop when a shutoff is on the table. That framework was not created overnight. It was built through years of filings with the Colorado Public Utilities Commission (PUC) and formally approved in 2025. As of Dec. 16, the documents already on record allow for a clearer picture of what Xcel committed to regulators and what customers were actually told as the wind event approached. Dec. 17 was not an improvisation Public Safety Power Shutoffs (PSPS) are not ad hoc emergency decisions. They are a s...
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When the State Disarms the Innocent, Violence Gets Time to Work
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, National, Top Stories

When the State Disarms the Innocent, Violence Gets Time to Work

By C. J. Garbo | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice What happened in Australia was not merely a criminal act. It was a demonstration. A hard, visual lesson about time, power, and responsibility. Dozens of videos show attackers firing openly while innocent people run, hide, and plead. The footage is disturbing, but it is also instructive. It shows fear. It shows chaos. Most importantly, it shows uninterrupted time. Time during which violence was allowed to operate without resistance. This is not a theory. It is not ideology. It is a visible reality, recorded from multiple angles. Violence expands when nothing confronts it. It contracts only when it is met. THE MOMENT THAT DETERMINES EVERYTHING Every mass attack contains a decisive window. A moment whe...
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The Bill of Rights was written to limit power. One civics lesson explains how.
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The Bill of Rights was written to limit power. One civics lesson explains how.

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice “I observed… the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer,” Ben Franklin. Bill of Rights Day is often marked with references to free speech, due process and other familiar rights. Less attention is paid to the reason those protections exist at all: to place clear limits on government power. That question sits at the center of a handwritten civics lesson now being shared among homeschool students, one that walks through how the Constitution was designed to restrict government authority, including economic decision-making. Susie Dean, a homeschool civic...
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