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Poll Finds Colorado Majority Opposes Prostitution Legalization and Questions Wolf Reintroduction
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Colorado Politics, Approved, State

Poll Finds Colorado Majority Opposes Prostitution Legalization and Questions Wolf Reintroduction

By Marissa Ventrelli | Colorado Politics A majority of Colorado residents — 61% — oppose legalizing prostitution in the state, an idea that lawmakers floated earlier in the legislative session before pulling their proposal. Just over half of Democratic respondents said they would support legalization, while 76% of Republicans and two-thirds of unaffiliated voters said they are against it. Meanwhile, half of the respondents said they would support a measure suspending the reintroduction of gray wolves on public lands in Colorado, while 39% said they are opposed to the idea, according to the Other statewide Democrats also saw their favorability ratings drop, though relatively stable compared to the governor’s numbers, the poll conducted by the Colorado P...
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Commentary Questions Whether Colorado Leaders Mirror The Power They Protest
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Complete Colorado, Approved, Commentary, State

Commentary Questions Whether Colorado Leaders Mirror The Power They Protest

By Jon Caldara | Commentary, Complete Colorado Though most of us celebrate “No Kings Day” on July 4, the Trump-deranged got a head start last weekend with rallies around the state. Attendees bravely fought oppression by blocking traffic for people with jobs. Rally-goers demanded freedom from tyranny, many right after voting to ban all but beige house paint at their HOA meetings. After pausing briefly to DoorDash something gluten-free, they returned to the barricades to secure democracy in Colorado for one more day. They risked everything, except mild discomfort, to call the guy who won both the popular vote and the electoral vote a tyrant. Yes, I’m having fun at their expense. And yes, they have a point. When you build a country on principles instead of a per...
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Colorado fought scrutiny—until a lawsuit forced a cleanup
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, State, Top Stories

Colorado fought scrutiny—until a lawsuit forced a cleanup

By RMV Editorial Board | Rocky Mountain Voice Back in 2019, Colorado’s voter rolls were already showing the problem—if anyone in charge had been willing to look at them. Forty counties had more registered voters than eligible citizens. Call it whatever you want—but it’s not normal. That wasn’t a partisan claim. It wasn’t a social media theory. It was data. And for a long time, it just sat there. No press conference. No urgency. No statewide fix. Then something happened. Someone sued. The lawsuit no one was supposed to take seriously Eventually, someone stopped waiting for the state to act. By October 2020, it had crossed a line. Judicial Watch took it to federal court, filing suit against Jena Griswold under the National Voter Registration Act. An...
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He lost once. Now he’s back: Why David Willson jumped into Colorado’s AG race late
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Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

He lost once. Now he’s back: Why David Willson jumped into Colorado’s AG race late

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice For ten years, David Willson stood in Colorado courtrooms defending parents accused of neglect—many of them homeless, addicted or on the verge of losing their children. He learned quickly the system doesn’t operate in clean lines. “I went into that work thinking people were just partying and getting high. It took me about six months to realize they’re trying to get high because their life is so miserable.” Now, his daughter is entering law enforcement. “She said, we arrest a lot of homeless people who have warrants.” For Willson, that isn’t a contradiction. It’s the reality he’s seen from both sides. “You have to understand what people are dealing with. But you also have to enforce the law.” He got in late. The Republica...
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Lawmakers Debate Fee Based Plan To Cut Insurance Costs With Hail Resistant Roof Grants
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The Colorado Sun, Approved, State

Lawmakers Debate Fee Based Plan To Cut Insurance Costs With Hail Resistant Roof Grants

By Bente Birkeland | The Colorado Sun Colorado insurance premiums have risen 65% in 5 years. Hail storms are mostly to blame. Colorado lawmakers want to impose a per-policy fee on home insurance providers to raise $20 million a year for a program that would provide grants to homeowners to protect their properties against hail. The hope is that the program will protect enough Colorado homes against hail that insurance rates will drop across the state. A similar effort failed last session. In the last five years the average premium in the state has gone up 65%, according to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. That makes Colorado one of the top-10 most expensive states in the country for homeowners insurance.   Climate exp...
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Livestock Losses And Budget Overruns Fuel Federal Review of Colorado’s Wolf Program
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Colorado Politics, Approved, State

Livestock Losses And Budget Overruns Fuel Federal Review of Colorado’s Wolf Program

By Marianne Goodland | Colorado Politics Federal wildlife officials have opened a formal review of Colorado’s wolf reintroduction program, launching a public comment period to assess how the state has handled rising conflicts between wolves and livestock. A notice from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was published in the Federal Register on Monday, setting a June 5 deadline for the comments. The notice says the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is seeking information on how Colorado has implemented the federal 10(j) rule issued in 2023. It also explains that the agency signed a memorandum of understanding with Colorado Parks and Wildlife outlining goals, such as providing timely public updates on the restoration program, conducting outreach, and carrying out ...
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Colorado lawmakers move to sidestep Supreme Court ruling on therapy speech
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Sey Anything, Approved, Commentary, State

Colorado lawmakers move to sidestep Supreme Court ruling on therapy speech

By Jennifer Sey | Commentary, Sey Everything The Colorado legislature is attempting to sidestep the Supreme Court ruling with a new "conversion therapy" lawsuit bill The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on March 31, 2026, in Chiles v. Salazar (8-1 decision, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissenting) that Colorado’s 2019 ban on “conversion therapy” for minors violates the First Amendment’s free-speech protections as applied to talk therapy. (I wrote about it here.) The Supreme Court’s ruling said the Colorado law was unconstitutional because it constituted “viewpoint discrimination.” The Supreme Court made it clear that talk therapy is protected speech, not “conduct.” But Colorado refuses to accept the Supreme Court’s ruling. Instead, the insane state that I l...
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Follow the money faster: New tool unlocks Colorado spending data in minutes
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

Follow the money faster: New tool unlocks Colorado spending data in minutes

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project I have mentioned (and used) the TOPS system, our state’s online checkbook register, multiple times. It’s a great way to see who our state is paying and for what. I noticed recently (within the last 6 months) that the people who run it made it significantly harder to use: I’m not sure why, but at some point they made it so you can only go month by month.** I had a reader kindly volunteer his time and skill at computer programming to come up with a way to automate TOPS searches so I, and now you since the program is public, don’t have to click and wait month by month to find what we need. The program this person came up with lives online and is linked first below. They titled it a TOPS scraper. It’s pretty i...
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From Kazakhstan to Colorado: Secretary of State candidate James Wiley’s plan to scrap electronic voting machines
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Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

From Kazakhstan to Colorado: Secretary of State candidate James Wiley’s plan to scrap electronic voting machines

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice James Wiley was 7 on Election Night 2000. He remembers the decorations from his birthday staying up for two more weeks while the country waited to find out who had won. He didn’t understand hanging chads or voting machines. At the time, he was living in Almaty, Kazakhstan, where his missionary family had been since he was three months old. What stuck with him from those years wasn’t the mechanics of elections. It was how power operated. He’s 32 and running for Colorado Secretary of State as a Republican, after years working on election cases and a stint as executive director of the Libertarian Party.  What he’s saying on the campaign trail isn’t new for him. The push to get rid of electronic voting machines and move to hand-cou...
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What Sets J.J. McKinzie Apart in Colorado’s Secretary of State Race
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Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

What Sets J.J. McKinzie Apart in Colorado’s Secretary of State Race

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice J.J. McKinzie is one of four Republicans running for the open Secretary of State seat,  and he is not running on name recognition. He is running on a resume that looks nothing like most politicians'. McKinzie spent more than 25 years inside some of the largest companies in the world, advising on regulatory compliance and operational efficiency. He has owned small businesses, led nonprofits, and homeschooled his children for over two decades.  He holds degrees from Colorado State University, the University of Houston-Clear Lake, and Charis Bible College, with training in psychology, business, technology, futures studies, and biblical studies, including five master’s degrees. "In consulting, I had to deliver...
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