May 06, 2025 10:44 AM UTC

Get More Smarter Roundup for Tuesday (May 6)

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• by: Colorado Pols

If you like rain and snow, then boy do we have the day(s) for you! Mountain areas could see 20 inches of snow, while lower elevations might get as much as four inches of rain today. 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.

Warm Up Those Brains…

► The Colorado legislature is scheduled to conclude this year’s session on Wednesday. On Monday, one of the most heavily-discussed pieces of legislation advanced forward despite concerns from Gov. Jared Polis. As Seth Klamann explains for The Denver Post:

Negotiations over a pro-union bill in the Colorado House collapsed over the weekend after labor officials rejected Gov. Jared Polis’ attempt to expand talks to include other deeply contentious pieces of legislation.

Democratic lawmakers on Monday instead pushed forward to pass the bill, potentially setting up a veto showdown.

The policies that the governor tried to reopen included cuts to restaurant workers’ wages, an expansion of charter schools, and privatizing the state’s last-resort insurer for workers’ compensation. The details of the discussions were confirmed by five people with direct knowledge of them, including House Speaker Julie McCluskie and bill sponsor Rep. Jennifer Bacon.

Polis raised the issues with unions after business groups rejected Polis’ most recent attempt to resolve negotiations over Senate Bill 5, which would undo a unique provision of Colorado’s labor law that labor and Democrats argue is anti-union. Labor groups had previously agreed to Polis’ last proposal…

…The governor has privately told legislators he will veto the bill unless they secure the support of business groups like the Colorado Chamber of Commerce and Colorado Concern. [Pols emphasis]

Senate Bill 5 will likely advance to the Governor’s desk before the end of the 2025 legislative session. It would be a shame if Polis did veto the legislation, which seeks to remove an antiquated requirement that labor unions hold two separate elections in order to create a new bargaining unit.

► One high-profile effort that will not advance out of the legislature this session involves a proposed challenge to TABOR, which hamstrings lawmakers in adequately funding necessary public services.

Marianne Goodland of the publication formerly known as the Colorado Statesman has more on the 128 bills still outstanding with one day left in the session.

► The Trump administration’s ham-handed federal job cuts have come to Colorado again. As Michael Booth writes for The Colorado Sun:

The National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden fired 114 of its thousands of staffers and contractors Monday, as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to sharply trim research spending across nearly all fields supported by federal agencies in the past.

The laboratory staff laid off includes employees and subcontractors in both research and operations, NREL said in a statement. “We appreciate their meaningful contributions to the laboratory. NREL’s mission continues to be critical to achieve an affordable and secure energy future,” the statement said.

But the layoffs could just be the start of slashes to the 3,675 employees NREL most recently listed on its website, if President Trump’s fiscal 2026 budget proposal survives at all intact through Congress. The White House is pitching $19.3 billion in cuts to the Department of Energy’s allotted 2025 spending, according to the website utilitydive.com.

The White House budget request goes out of its way to ridicule renewable energy research and subsidies promoted heavily by the Biden and Obama administrations: “The Budget cancels over $15 billion in Green New Scam funds committed to build unreliable renewable energy, removing carbon dioxide from the air, and other costly technologies burdensome to ratepayers and consumers,” the budget proposal says.

The Trump administration also announced significant cuts to the National Endowment for the Arts and a plan to eliminate the popular Energy Star home appliance program overseen by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

► President Trump is trying to bust former Mesa County Clerk and Recorder Tina Peters out of prison:

NEW: President Donald Trump directs the DOJ “to take all necessary action to help secure the release” of Tina Peters, calling her a “hostage.” The former GOP elections clerk serving a nine-year sentence in Colorado for tampering with voting systems. #copolitics

[image or embed]

— Kyle Clark (@kylec.bsky.social) May 5, 2025 at 7:16 PM

This is a good time to remind you that Peters was prosecuted by a REPUBLICAN district attorney and convicted after a trial of her peers in a heavily-Republican county. Colorado Public Radio has more on this story:

In August, Peters was found guilty by a jury of Mesa County residents on seven counts, including four felonies, after she helped facilitate unauthorized access to county voting equipment that she was supposed to safeguard in search of voter fraud. Despite years of investigation and attention from election conspiracy groups, neither her supporters nor her legal defense have ever shown that the machines were involved in any sort of election manipulation.

Trump’s online proclamation is the latest step in a growing federal effort to free Peters. In March, the Department of Justice went to court in a bid to help Peters and potentially free her from custody. Attorneys for the state of Colorado have asked a federal judge to reject the Justice Department’s filings. The judge said at the hearing that he will rule after determining whether he has jurisdiction. Peters is serving nine years at La Vista Correctional Facility in Pueblo…

…Peters continues to argue she did nothing wrong when she helped an unauthorized person use someone else’s identity to access her office’s election equipment and attend a secure software update. And she remains a cause celeb for those on the right who believe election equipment makers conspired with Democrats to sway elections — claims that have never been upheld in any court.

“Radical Left Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser ignores Illegals committing Violent Crimes like Rape and Murder in his State and, instead, jailed Tina Peters, a 69-year-old Gold Star mother who worked to expose and document Democrat Election Fraud. Tina is an innocent Political Prisoner being horribly and unjustly punished in the form of Cruel and Unusual Punishment,” said Trump, referring to her case as a “Communist persecution by the Radical Left Democrats to cover up their Election crimes and misdeeds in 2020.”

Republican Congressperson Lauren Boebert (R-Weld County) says she had sent a formal request to the FBI to investigate the prosecution of Peters.

Click below to keep learning things…

Get Extra Smarter…

► Farmers in Southwestern Colorado are hoping that this week’s wet weather will be a sign of more to come. From The Colorado Sun:

Across Colorado, the snowpack peaked lower in major river basins than the 30-year median, according to federal data from 1991 to 2020. The peaks were often earlier than usual, and the snowpack is melting quickly — several weeks earlier than the norm in some areas.

Water managers and climatologists are hoping for a rainy May and active summer thunderstorm season. In dry years, farmers and ranchers can be short on irrigation water in late summer. Reservoirs can have less extra water to carry over into the next year. Fish and aquatic ecosystems can suffer with less water in warmer rivers…

…This year, the forecasted flow of water into Lake Powell has dropped repeatedly, which has many water managers on edge. The Colorado River Basin provides water to 40 million people and the farms that grow most of the country’s winter vegetables.

In January, staff at the Colorado Basin River Forecast Center calculated about 5.5 million acre-feet of water would flow into Powell. One acre-foot roughly equals the annual water use of two to three households.

As of Monday, the forecast center expected 3.5 million acre-feet of water to reach the reservoir. That’s 55% of the annual average from 1991 to 2020, said Paul Miller, a meteorologist for the center.

► Congresswoman Brittany Pettersen (D-Lakewood) is getting a lot of press for calling on Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to refrain from making massive cuts to drug treatment programs. Pettersen sent a letter (HERE) to Kennedy that referenced her own mother’s struggles with opioid addiction. The Denver Post; Denver7; and the Gazette newspapers are among the local outlets that have covered this story.

Colorado is also one of 19 states that have filed a lawsuit to prevent other drastic cuts to food safety programs in HHS.

► As The New York Times reports, Europe is trying to take advantage of the Trump administration’s decimation of scientific research funding in the United States:

As the Trump administration slashes support to research institutions and threatens to freeze federal funding to universities like Harvard and Columbia, European leaders are offering financial help to U.S.-based researchers and hoping to benefit from what they are calling a “gigantic miscalculation.”

“Nobody could imagine a few years ago that one of the great democracies of the world would eliminate research programs on the pretext that the word ‘diversity’ appeared in its program,” President Emmanuel Macron of France said on Monday.

He was speaking at the Sorbonne University in Paris during an event called Choose Europe for Science that was organized by the French government and the European Union.

It was unthinkable, Mr. Macron said, alluding also to the withdrawal of researchers’ visas in the United States, that a nation whose “economy depends so heavily on free science” would “commit such an error.”

► Republican efforts to deny Democrats a victory in a State Supreme Court race in North Carolina have hit a snag. From The Associated Press:

Disputed ballots in the still unresolved 2024 race for a North Carolina Supreme Court seat must remain in the final count, a federal judge ruled late Monday, a decision that if upheld would result in an electoral victory for Democratic incumbent Allison Riggs.

U.S. District Judge Richard Myers agreed with Riggs and others who argued it would be a violation of the U.S. Constitution to carry out recent decisions by state appeals courts that directed the removal of potentially thousands of voter ballots they deemed ineligible. Myers wrote that votes couldn’t be removed six months after Election Day without damaging due process or equal protection rights of the affected residents.

Myers also ordered the State Board of Elections to certify results that after two recounts showed Riggs the winner — by just 734 votes — over Republican challenger Jefferson Griffin. But the judge delayed his order for seven days in case Griffin wants to appeal the ruling to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals…

…More than 5.5 million ballots were cast in what has been the nation’s last undecided race from November’s general election. Griffin, himself a state Court of Appeals judge, filed formal protests after the election in hopes that removing ballots he said were unlawfully cast would flip the outcome to him.

► The Republican-controlled Aurora City Council continues to find new ways to silence public comments. 

► A new report from the Leeds Business Research Division at CU Boulder says Colorado’s economy is doing well…but the Trump Tariffs mean trouble is on the horizon. 

► Georgia Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff is considered to be the top target for Senate Republicans in 2026, but the GOP lost its best potential challenger when Governor Brian Kemp announced that he would not run against Ossoff.

► There are growing concerns that Congressional Republicans could tank the American economy by pushing ahead with tax cuts for rich people that would cost some $5 trillion and add a huge chunk of new debt to the federal ledgers. 

► There’s an interesting discussion at Talking Points Memo about what Democrats should (and should not) be doing to push back against the Trump administration.

► Germany finally has a new leader, as The Washington Post reports:

Friedrich Merz was elected chancellor by the German parliament Tuesday in a second round of voting, after failing to secure an absolute majority in an earlier round. His appointment ends six months of political deadlock in the country, but Merz’s initial defeat cast doubt on the stability of his governing coalition.

Merz, the leader of the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), will be sworn in to office Tuesday evening.

In the initial round of voting, Merz had been expected to easily win enough votes in Germany’s lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, to be named chancellor, but he fell six votes short. It was the first time in Germany’s postwar history that a chancellor-designate did not win an absolute majority.

Ah, the trouble with parliamentary systems of government, amirite?

► Democrat Trisha Calvarese is running again in 2026 in the fourth congressional district. Calvarese lost to Republican Lauren Boebertin 2024 by about 12 points. John Padora, whom Calvarese beat for the Democratic nomination in 2024, is also running again. 

► We’d say it’s a good thing that Republican Darcy Schoening did not end up becoming the new head of the Colorado Republican Party:

► The Denver School Board is always a political circus of competing egos.

Say What, Now?

Yeah, THAT’S what happened.

Your Daily Dose Of ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

► Oy:

► Democracy sausage? Democracy sausage.

ICYMI

► Former Sen. Cory Gardner has had a MAGA makeover:

► News outlets are finally realizing that the Republican-funded “Common Sense Institute” is full of shit.