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Tag: Democrat Lawmakers

Enos: Colorado’s 2025 session pushed the most woke agenda we’ve ever seen
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Approved, Christian Home Educators of Colorado, Commentary, State

Enos: Colorado’s 2025 session pushed the most woke agenda we’ve ever seen

By Colleen Enos | Commentary, Christian Home Educators of Colorado “Woke” does not begin to describe the ideological beliefs of the majority in the Colorado legislature. They have become bold in their desire to reorder our lives in accordance with two basic ideological beliefs. First, there is no intrinsic value to human life. It is a commodity to be disposed of at will, and the destruction of pre-born life is a required service in every emergency room. Second, there is no such thing as a person’s sex; it is merely a “gender identity” seen through “gender expression.” Ryan Anderson explains that the origins of “trans” thinking come from cultural breakdown and fear, among other things. “Too many people were afraid to say that the emperor has no clothes,” he reasons. The...
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Hancock: The future of Colorado hangs between boom and blackout
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Approved, Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Substack, Top Stories

Hancock: The future of Colorado hangs between boom and blackout

By Michael A. Hancock | Commentary, Substack There's a difference between dreaming big and hallucinating. Colorado's progressive legislators have yet to figure that out. Once a beacon of frontier grit and entrepreneurial promise, Colorado is drifting into a twilight of self-imposed stagnation. This isn't the result of some unforeseeable external shock. No. The decline is being engineered — brick by legislative brick — by a political class more interested in social signaling than in fostering economic vitality. The question isn't whether Colorado faces a reckoning. The question is whether we will admit the cause before we hit the wall. Let's start with energy, the lifeblood of any serious economy. Colorado holds a wealth of natural resources—oil, gas, coal, and uranium— all of ...
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Colorado Republicans: Effort to save taxpayers money ‘shredded’ by Democrats this session
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Approved, denvergazette.com, State

Colorado Republicans: Effort to save taxpayers money ‘shredded’ by Democrats this session

By Marianne Goodland | Denver Gazette Republican lawmakers, who are in the minority at the state Capitol, said they saw little success in their campaign to save residents money this year, as Democrats "shredded" that goal. At the beginning of the session, Republicans unveiled a series of measures that, they insisted, would save the average Colorado family $4,500 each year. "We had hopes to make life more affordable," said Senate Minority Leader Paul Lundeen of Monument. The agenda included measures to repeal the state's grocery bag ban and undo a retail delivery fee, ride share fees, and regulations around cage-free eggs. They also sought reductions in energy and utility costs, and pushed to reduce and — eventually repeal — the state income tax and the state tax on Social ...
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Gazette editorial board: Veto HB 25-1147 to stop the soft-on-crime overreach
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Approved, denvergazette.com, State

Gazette editorial board: Veto HB 25-1147 to stop the soft-on-crime overreach

The Gazette editorial board | Denver Gazette Our state was slammed by a crime wave a few years ago — aided and abetted by a notoriously offender- friendly, victims-be-damned Legislature — leaving it to hard-hit local governments to figure out how to respond. With state lawmakers abandoning the crime fight on every front — hard drugs, auto theft, illegal immigration, you name it — a number of Colorado cities, commendably, took the reins. Some municipalities imposed stiffer sentences than the state’s for shoplifting and motor vehicle theft. Some made clear they’d continue to cooperate with federal authorities seeking to catch lawbreakers who had entered the country illegally. Some cities also stepped up policing to bridge the gap in justice created by a Capitol that had gone...
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Brauchler: SB25-276 is lawmakers’ latest mockery of immigration enforcement
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Approved, denvergazette.com, State

Brauchler: SB25-276 is lawmakers’ latest mockery of immigration enforcement

By George Brauchler | Commentary, Denver Gazette SB 25-276 is a Democrat-only sponsored bill that attacks the rule of law and will make Colorado less safe and less just. It contains a predictably steep, yet unquantified, unfunded mandate to counties, who fund the 23 district attorneys’ offices across Colorado. SB 276 expands the opportunity for “noncitizen defendants” to challenge every guilty plea they have entered to every class of misdemeanor, petty offense, and even municipal charges,” at any time following the entry of a guilty plea.” There is no time limitation for this challenge. Why? To protect noncitizens from the immigration consequences associated with convictions for their criminal conduct, of course. Previously, our left-leaning legislature changed the maximum sentenc...
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Green: Report card for Colorado’s collapse under one-party rule—straight F’s across the board
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Approved, Commentary, PJ Media, State, Top Stories

Green: Report card for Colorado’s collapse under one-party rule—straight F’s across the board

By Stephen Green | PJ Media Colorado's economic report card is in, and my beloved home state — formerly a solid A and B student — just flunked every subject.  Once upon a time, Colorado was a devilishly weird purple state — home to moderate-to-conservative Republicans like Ben Nighthorse Campbell and Tom Tancredo, idiosyncratic Democrats like Gary Hart and Richard Lamm, and (outside the Denver-Boulder Axis) a healthy libertarian streak. It was such a swirl that one of those famous Republicans, Campbell, was originally a Democrat. That all began to change around 2008 when my purple state went deep blue for Barack Obama. By 2018, the hope'n'change was locked in. The last Republican to win statewide office was in 2016, when Heidi Ganahl was elected to the University of Colora...
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“YIGBY” bill to let churches build housing on their land fails without Senate support
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Approved, Colorado Politics, State

“YIGBY” bill to let churches build housing on their land fails without Senate support

By Marianne Goodland | Colorado Politics The campaign known as "YIGBY" - "Yes in God's Backyard" - to allow churches, school districts, colleges, and universities to build affordable housing on their land failed in the waning days of the Colorado legislative session.  House Bill 1169 would have required local governments to allow residential development on land owned by those institutions. The bill has sat in the state Senate, awaiting debate, since it cleared the Senate's Local Government and Housing Committee on March 27.  On Monday, its sponsors, Sens. Tony Exum, D-Colorado Springs, and Julie Gonzales, D-Denver, acknowledged the bill didn't have the votes to pass and asked that it be laid over to May 8, the day after the session's end, which effectively would kill ...
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“Burn it to the ground”: Rep. Keltie’s political metaphor for a Phoenix to rise from Capitol corruption
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Approved, Colorado Times Recorder, State

“Burn it to the ground”: Rep. Keltie’s political metaphor for a Phoenix to rise from Capitol corruption

By Erik Maulbetsch | Colorado Times Recorder As the legislative session comes down to its final days, one freshman Republican has harsh words for her Democratic colleagues. State Rep. Rebecca Keltie (R-Colorado Springs) in a Sunday evening interview on a libertarian podcast called her fellow legislators evil, soulless, and corrupt, before saying she thinks Colorado needs to be burned to the ground so Republicans can rise from the ashes. “I’ve never seen a group of people that are so … for lack of a better term, evil. I feel it when I come in there. I pray as soon as I enter the building. As soon as I enter that room, I pray. While I’m in there, I’m praying. I’ve never prayed so much in my life. … I went in there with an open mind of respect,” said Keltie. “I have lost — for almos...
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Backlash ignored: Senate approves HB25-1312 without parental rights protections
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Approved, Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Backlash ignored: Senate approves HB25-1312 without parental rights protections

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice Proponents hail the bill as a civil rights milestone for transgender youth. But Republicans say it strips parental rights, embeds compelled speech into law and threatens custody in future court cases. After weeks of public backlash, failed compromise efforts, and a marathon Senate floor debate, Colorado lawmakers gave final approval Tuesday to HB25-1312 – a bill that critics say severs parents from decisions about their children’s identities in school. The bill passed its final Senate vote on Tuesday with no additional debate or amendments. The House voted to concur with all Senate amendments and repassed the bill without further changes, sending it to Governor Jared Polis. The final version no longer includes the family court and out-of-s...
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“Parents Last”: Senate Democrats Advance HB25-1312 Despite Mass Opposition, Custody Concerns
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Approved, Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

“Parents Last”: Senate Democrats Advance HB25-1312 Despite Mass Opposition, Custody Concerns

By Tori Ganahl | Rocky Mountain Voice Colorado’s controversial “Kelly Loving Act” is one step away from becoming law, after the state Senate advanced HB25-1312 in a party-line vote Monday night. The bill passed 23-12 following hours of floor debate—nearing an end to a legislative saga that’s drawn over 700 would-be testifiers, more than 17,000 emails from concerned constituents, and ongoing warnings from legal experts, parents, and educators. The bill started as an expansion of the Colorado Anti-discrimination Act (CADA), aiming to add gender identity and expression as protected categories in schools, courts, and beyond. Even after key changes, Republicans say it still threatens parental rights and opens the door to new legal trouble for those who disagree with progressive gender pol...
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