Enjoy your last Trump-free weekend…just, maybe don’t go outside. Let’s Get More Smarter! If you think we missed something important, please include the link in the comments below (here’s a good example). If you are more of an audio learner, check out The Get More Smarter Podcast.
► Did we mention it’s going to be cold this weekend in the Denver Metro Area? Because it’s going to be cold…for awhile. As The Denver Post reports:
Metro Denver is forecast to see more than 100 straight hours of below-freezing temperatures amid this weekend’s arctic cold snap, according to the National Weather Service.
The blast of frigid, below-freezing temperatures will start around 5 p.m. Friday and, currently, is forecast to go through roughly 1 p.m. Wednesday, according to NWS meteorologist David Barjenbruch. That’s 115 hours.
Parts of the Metro Area could also get several inches of snow between today and tomorrow.
► President Biden is using his final weekend in the White House to wrap up a bunch of things. Some of them are more relevant than others.
As POLITICO explains:
President Joe Biden on Friday declared that the Equal Rights Amendment is the law of the land, attempting to ratify a 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in a last-ditch effort to protect women’s reproductive rights.
But Biden’s assertion may amount to little more than an expression of his opinion, with the White House acknowledging that it has no immediate force of law — and the National Archives telling POLITICO it has no plans to formally add it to the Constitution…
…The move, which states that Biden personally believes the ERA has cleared all the hurdles to ratification, would be unlikely to carry weight unless courts agree with him, a hurdle even White House officials conceded as they made the announcement.
Of course, Republicans could always ratify the ERA…
Theoretically, anyway.
► President-elect Donald Trump will inherit a fairly strong economy when he is inaugurated on Monday. But as The New York Times reports, things are already going south thanks to worries about Trump’s asinine obsession with tariffs. First, the good news:
The U.S. economy is on track to grow faster this year than previously expected, the International Monetary Fund said on Friday, citing strength in the labor market and an acceleration in investment.
The I.M.F. projects 2.7 percent U.S. economic growth in 2025 in its latest World Economic Outlook report, up from an estimate of 2.2 percent. That stands in stark contrast to reduced growth projections for the euro area, which the fund attributed in large part to weakness in the manufacturing sector and heightened political uncertainty.
Now, the bad news:
But newly elected governments around the world are elevating economic policy uncertainty, posing risks that could alter the trajectory of the global economy in the coming months, the I.M.F. cautioned.
Those wild cards are particularly acute in the United States, where the incoming Trump administration’s proposed tax cuts, deregulation, tariffs and curbs on immigration could ignite inflation. All of these proposals have a common element, Mr. Gourinchas said: They are poised to increase price pressures…[Pols emphasis]
…And while potential deregulation under President-elect Donald J. Trump could spur investment and short-term growth, the I.M.F. said an “excessive” rollback of regulations could eventually create “boom-bust dynamics” for the United States, with spillover effects elsewhere.
In metaphorically-related news, frigid temperatures in Washington D.C. are expected to make Monday’s inauguration the coldest in at least 40 years.
UPDATE: From a separate story in the Times:
President-elect Donald J. Trump announced that he would move his inauguration ceremony inside the Capitol Rotunda on Monday because extreme cold is forecast. The move is a break with tradition and would deny Mr. Trump some of the pomp and pageantry he wanted for his second swearing-in.
► Here’s a look at how Colorado is preparing for Trump 2.0.
► Peace out, TikTok. As The Associated Press reports:
The Supreme Court on Friday unanimously upheld the federal law banning TikTok beginning Sunday unless it’s sold by its China-based parent company, holding that the risk to national security posed by its ties to China overcomes concerns about limiting speech by the app or its 170 million users in the United States.
A sale does not appear imminent and, although experts have said the app will not disappear from existing users’ phones once the law takes effect on Jan. 19, new users won’t be able to download it and updates won’t be available. That will eventually render the app unworkable, the Justice Department has said in court filings.
President-elect Trump is still vowing to save TikTok, but as the AP notes, it’s not clear how he could do that.
Click below to keep learning things…
► Interior Secretary nominee Doug Burgum is talking up “clean coal,” which is not a real thing.
► As The Colorado Sun reports in its “Unaffiliated” newsletter, Gov. Jared Polis says he is not opposed in principle to a gun control measure that seeks to put teeth into enforcement of a 2013 magazine ban. Polis is not shy about opposing an important issue for labor unions, however:
Polis indicated that a bill that would make it easier for unions to require all employees at a company to pay for representation, whether they are in the union or not, is a nonstarter as introduced.
Senate Bill 5 would eliminate a requirement that 75% of workers at a company sign off before a union can negotiate with an employer on union security, which is when workers are forced to pay collective bargaining representation fees regardless of their union participation. The requirement is part of the Labor Peace Act, a roughly 80-year-old law…
…Bottom line: “I’m open to a better compromise if there is one out there,” the governor said. “I’m not confident. I don’t think there is.”
Polis is going to get a lot of well-deserved grief for his position here. It’s always been absurd to require workers to hold two separate votes in order to formalize a labor union.
Later in the “Unaffiliated,” the Sun points out the many, many flaws of a new poll from the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce claiming that most people oppose efforts to make it easier for labor unions to require members to pay dues.
► Democratic State Rep. Shannon Bird announced today that she will run for State Senate in SD-25 (Adams County). Incumbent Sen. Faith Winter is term-limited in 2026.
► Donald Trump’s pick for Energy Secretary, Chris Wright, acknowledged during a confirmation hearing this week that the burning of fossil fuels does indeed cause climate change. Of course, it’s not clear that the CEO of Denver-based Liberty Energy particularly cares about this connection.
Wright made a lot less sense at other points in his confirmation hearing:
► A group of more than two dozen state attorneys general are pushing to protect two Biden-era gun control laws. As The New York Times explains:
One measure would require buyers at gun shows to undergo a background check, a rule by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that is almost sure to clash with the views of Mr. Trump, who promised in a campaign speech to the National Rifle Association to “roll back every Biden attack on the Second Amendment.” The other, to ban a kind of trigger that can make a semiautomatic weapon fire like a machine gun, is similar to a policy that Mr. Trump embraced in his first term when he banned so-called bump stocks, which achieve the same purpose.
But the intervention is the first sign that partisan legal fights are likely to begin on Day 1 of the Trump White House, despite the wishes of some Democratic politicians who have called for a more cooperative stance toward the incoming administration after four years of incessant fighting in Mr. Trump’s first term.
“We know it’s a very real likelihood, based on what the president-elect has said, that his Justice Department won’t defend these rules,” Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin of New Jersey said in an interview, referring to Mr. Trump, who becomes president on Monday. “States like New Jersey will be harmed.”
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser is among the AGs who signed on to the request.
► Colorado’s aerospace industry is doing very well, thank you. Colorado-based companies pulled in a record $23 billion in federal contracts in the fiscal year that ended on June 30, 2024.
► Six STEM teachers from Colorado are among a group of educators who will receive the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching. Those teachers are:
► Legislative Democrats are proposing a state version of the federal Voting Rights Act. This year marks the 60th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
► Governor Jared Polis vetoed a bill last year that sought to increase wage theft protections in Colorado. Democratic lawmakers are trying again.
► Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman is trying to shrug off criticism after he lost his shit in public earlier this week. From The Aurora Sentinel:
Former Denver Public Schools board vice-president Auon’tai Anderson said Coffman confronted him at the end of Monday’s Aurora City Council meeting as they and dozens of other people in the audience were walking out of council chambers. Anderson has circulated a curated video depicting the heated verbal exchange between himself and Coffman.
In Anderson’s curated video, and an unedited version here, Coffman can be heard spontaneously shouting at Anderson about the 2023 death of a Denver high school student.
Kyle Clark of 9News shared the bizarre video earlier this week:
The Colorado Times Recorder looks at the Common Sense Institute, a “nonpartisan” think tank in Colorado that is most definitely built to be a right-wing influence.
► Grocery workers are hoping for a new agreement for more than 10,000 King Soopers employees across the state. If a deal is not reached soon, workers could authorize a strike.
Congressperson Lauren Boebert is still confused about the whole “advise and consent” thing:
► Hooray for small victories:
In recent years, Republicans in the State House of Representatives have used the annual Martin Luther King, Jr. resolution to demonstrate that they are complete morons with no sense of how to read a room (or a state, for that matter).
► At least your sheriff didn’t crash his patrol car because he was looking at porn on his phone.
► Republicans in the State Senate have bold ideas to save Coloradans whole dollars.
► The Colorado Springs City Council thinks voters are dumb.
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Just can't wait to hear Hair Furor and his propoganda ministers explain how that throng of 10-million cheering well wishers were all physically able to squeeze into the Capitol rotunda for his lying-in ceremony??
At this point, they're not wrong.