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Colorado Springs Districts Send Clear Message: Schools Exist to Educate, Not Indoctrinate
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The Gazette, Approved, Commentary, Local

Colorado Springs Districts Send Clear Message: Schools Exist to Educate, Not Indoctrinate

By The Gazette Editorial Board | The Gazette A blue wave that saw conservatives nationwide lose governors’ races, ballot initiatives and even school board elections appeared to have affected Colorado, as well. It was a setback in our state for candidates running on student academic growth against the union machine. But there was a bright spot — El Paso County — where reform-minded candidates swept Academy District 20’s three seats, won two of three contested seats in the ultra-competitive Colorado Springs School District 11, and won at least one of two seats up for grabs in School District 49. The second race in D49 remains too close to call.  All three El Paso County districts preserved their pro-education reform majorities. These victories, hard-fought and locally grounded,...
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Grassroots effort pays off as GOP-endorsed school board candidates win big in Delta County
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, Local, Top Stories

Grassroots effort pays off as GOP-endorsed school board candidates win big in Delta County

By Angie Many & Shirley Bauer | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice We won! We won! At the Watch Party after the monthly Delta County Republican meeting, the mood was ‘Elation!’ as it was almost certain that GOP-endorsed candidates Adena Kreutz and Sheldon Kier had become newly-elected members of the local school board.  Over 40 people were at the GOP meeting, which combined regular monthly business with waiting for election results with fingers crossed and silent prayers offered. Both Adena and Sheldon attended and thanked those present for their support while everyone watched the vote tallies with cautious optimism. Adena and Sheldon were each almost 1,000 votes ahead of opponents by the time the meeting and GOP Watch Party ended. (A total of about 10,000 people voted in the...
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Fort Lewis College Reverses Course and Quickly Approves TPUSA Chapter After Student Backlash
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Fox News, Approved, Local

Fort Lewis College Reverses Course and Quickly Approves TPUSA Chapter After Student Backlash

By Joshua Q. Nelson | Fox News The decision came after a petition launched backing TPUSA, garnering over 1,000 signatures A Colorado college student government reversed its decision to block a Turning Point USA (TPUSA) chapter during an emergency meeting on Friday night. The Associated Students of Fort Lewis College (ASFLC) voted to approve the TPUSA chapter after previously rejecting senior Jonah Flynn’s proposal to register the group with the university. "It was strange. They put us in a tiny room, with at least 100 people being forced to wait outside. Tons of local conservatives, students and community members. Inside the meeting, we got to speak briefly, and they immediately voted and unanimously approved it," Flynn told Fox News Digital. Flynn planned to appeal t...
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Mesa County sheriff appeals budget constraints that could cut 28 deputies
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Local, Top Stories

Mesa County sheriff appeals budget constraints that could cut 28 deputies

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice Mesa County Sheriff Todd Rowell appeared before the Board of County Commissioners on Nov. 6, 2025, to warn that this year’s budget proposal could undo nearly a decade of progress under the 2017 voter-approved 0.37% public-safety sales tax. The budget appeal on the third floor of the county administration building doubled as a press conference, drawing commissioners, staff and reporters eager to see what “doing more with less” means for Mesa County public safety. Sheriff Todd Rowell, right, speaks with Commissioner Bobbie Daniel and Undersheriff Matt King during the Nov. 6 budget appeal in Grand Junction. Rowell said the math no longer works. “I gave up five deputies to submit a flat budget… 13 more were defunded… $980,000 in line-item...
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Fort Lewis College Faces Political Fire from GOP Lawmakers After Blocking Turning Point USA
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The Denver Gazette, Approved, Local

Fort Lewis College Faces Political Fire from GOP Lawmakers After Blocking Turning Point USA

By: Marissa Ventrelli | The Denver Gazette Republican state lawmakers are criticizing the student government at Durango’s Fort Lewis College for rejecting a proposal to establish a Turning Point USA chapter on campus. Turning Point USA is a nonprofit organization that advocates for conservative issues on high school and college campuses. Its founder, Charlie Kirk, was killed during a campus event in Utah in September. According to the Durango Herald, more than 30 students spoke on the matter during a four-hour-long meeting last week, with most expressing opposition to the proposal. The effort to bring Turning Point USA to the Fort Lewis campus was led by senior Jonah Flynn, who told the Durango Herald he wanted to “keep the conversation going” about conservative values in ...
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ICE Denies Claims of Mistaken Detention, Calls Allegations ‘Absurd’
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kdvr.com, Approved, Local

ICE Denies Claims of Mistaken Detention, Calls Allegations ‘Absurd’

By: Heather Willard | KDVR FOX31 DENVER (KDVR) — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is lashing back at statements made by Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet, among others, who said that federal agents had mistakenly arrested a father and his two children and subjected the trio to verbal and physical abuse. The case centers around Fernando Jaramillo-Solano, 45, of Colombia, who was taking his 12- and 15-year-old children to school when they were all detained by ICE on Oct. 27. Immigrant rights groups, ICE disagree on status The Colorado Immigration Rights Coalition said that the family has a fully-documented, pending asylum case and has strong ties to the community, built over the last 18 months. ICE says Jaramillo-Solano came into the country without documentation...
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Erasing My Line in the Sand: How Montrose County Proved Colorado’s “Blueprint” is Complete
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, Local, Top Stories

Erasing My Line in the Sand: How Montrose County Proved Colorado’s “Blueprint” is Complete

By Sean Pond | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice Earlier this year, I wrote in these pages that “The Constitution isn’t a suggestion. It’s a line in the sand.” I meant every word of it. I said I was done being quiet. I said this was no longer about politics, it was about survival. The survival of liberty, of local control, and of the rural Colorado way of life. I believed I was drawing that line on firm ground, in one of the last conservative strongholds in the state, Montrose County. I was wrong. This week’s recall of Commissioner Scott Mijares did not just remove one man from office. It erased that line in the sand. Not with a court ruling or a federal order, but with a ballot. With a local vote. If you think your county is safe from what just happened here, you are l...
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CSU faculty under fire as students allege “hostile environment” in anti-racism course
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The Chronicle of Higher Education, Approved, Local

CSU faculty under fire as students allege “hostile environment” in anti-racism course

By: Emma Pettit | The Chronicle of Higher Education After taking a social-work course at Colorado State University in 2023, one student had striking words to share in a course evaluation: “I don’t feel safe in this classroom,” they wrote, adding that “judgment and rejection” came from the two instructors. “This makes me shut down.” One of those instructors was Quinn Hafen, then a Ph.D. student at Colorado State and now an assistant professor at the University of Wyoming. Hafen, who uses they/them pronouns, was surprised by the comment. Their counterpart, a senior instructor named Marie Villescas Zamzow, was not. She receives this sort of comment every semester. “I can actually predict who’s going to write that it’s not a safe learning environment,” she said, according to a re...
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Democratic Socialists Claim Local Victories in Colorado School Board Races
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Complete Colorado, Approved, Local

Democratic Socialists Claim Local Victories in Colorado School Board Races

By: Sherrie Peif | Complete Colorado FORT COLLINS – An unusual twist on candidate support appears to have paid off for the Fort Collins chapter of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) – an overtly extreme left-wing organization. The socialism advocacy group officially “endorsed” just one candidate, Zoelle Lane in Fort Collins City Council District 5,  while “recommending” two dozen others in local races around northern Colorado the DSA said “represent our chapter’s best advice to voters,” including a pair of Republican school board candidates in Greeley. Although their lone endorsement lost her bid for city council, the group’s recommendations were successful in 15 out of 22 other races, including clean sweeps on both the Greeley Evans School District 6 and Poudre Schools b...
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Commissioner Daniel: It’s Time for Fiscal Common Sense in Colorado
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The Business Times, Approved, Commentary, Local

Commissioner Daniel: It’s Time for Fiscal Common Sense in Colorado

By Bobbie Daniel | Commentary, The Business Times In the business world, there’s one principle that separates success from failure: You can’t spend what you don’t have. If a company tried to launch a dozen new initiatives without funding them, investors would walk, creditors would call, and the board would be out by morning. Yet somehow, that’s exactly how the State of Colorado has been operating. Each year, new laws are passed that sound good on paper but come with no money to make them work. Those costs get quietly pushed down to local governments — and ultimately to taxpayers. We call them unfunded mandates, and they’re the public-sector version of bad business. Here in Mesa County, we’ve been tracking these costs for two years, and the numbers tell the story. This year alon...
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