May 13, 2025 11:42 AM UTC

Get More Smarter Roundup for Tuesday (May 13)

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• by: Colorado Pols

Enjoy the sun today before it cools off a bit later in the week. Although, with so many federal job cuts at NOAA and the National Weather Service, who the hell knows? 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…

► Congresswoman Diana DeGette (D-Denver) — who sits on the House Energy and Commerce Committee along with Rep. Gabe Evans (R-Adams County) has had enough of Republicans pretending they are just going to make a few Medicaid cuts here and there. As CBS4 Denver reports:

DeGette said initial analysis by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office shows more than 8 million people will lose coverage.

“It’s kind of an alternative reality if Republicans are going to say, ‘We’re going to cut more than $700 billion from Medicaid but we’re not going to cut anybody off of Medicaid.’ That’s not true and if they really think that, then they’re lying to themselves,” said DeGette. “But what’s worse is that they’re lying to their constituents who are going to lose their Medicaid coverage.”

The Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Finance, which administers Medicaid, says the work requirements could impact nearly 380,000 Coloradans and the administrative costs could run more than $57 million.

As for Evans, he’s continuing to parrot the nonsense line that Republicans can find $880 billion in cost reductions but not completely destroy Medicaid.

Denver7 and Colorado Newsline have more on the Medicaid talks.

► Congressional Republicans aren’t just interested in throwing millions of people off of Medicaid — they’re aiming to cut food stamps, too. As POLITICO reports:

The House Agriculture Committee’s reconciliation proposal would save up to $300 billion over the next decade largely through cuts to the nation’s largest anti-hunger program, according to long-awaited Congressional Budget Office estimates viewed by POLITICO.

The savings from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program would be well over the committee’s instructed target of $230 billion in spending cuts, giving House Republicans just enough wiggle room to include a $60 billion farm bill package in their megabill.

The committee will meet Tuesday night to mark up its portion of the bill.

This would be a MASSIVE problem for Colorado’s budget. Lawmakers had to make $1.2 billion in cuts in the recent legislative session and were already expecting 2026 to be worse.

► President Trump is taking corruption to a new level as he begins a trip to the Middle East. One of the big topics of discussion is his apparent preference to accept a $400 million luxury jet from Qatar as a replacement for Air Force One. But as David A. Graham writes for The Atlantic, “There’s No Such Thing as a Free Plane”:

The most astonishing thing is that Trump is doing this out in the open. One secret to his impunity thus far has been that rather than try to hide his misdeeds—that’s what amateurs such as Nixon and Harding did—he calculates that if he makes no pretense, he can get away with them. This worked when he called on foreign countries to interfere in U.S. elections, when he declined to divest from his companies in his first term, and when he tried to subvert the 2020 presidential election. Now he is daring the courts, Congress, and Americans to either stop him or else declare graft legal—at least for him.

Underscoring the crookedness, the plane would ultimately belong not to the U.S. government but to Trump: Once he leaves office, it would reportedly “be transferred to the Trump Presidential Library Foundation no later than Jan. 1, 2029, and any costs relating to its transfer will be paid for by the U.S. Air Force,” per ABC. In short, a foreign government might give the president of the United States a $400 million personal gift. [Pols emphasis] Not a bad haul at a time when Trump is asking American children to do with fewer dolls and pencils. (Federal law allows officials to accept personal gifts below a certain amount, currently set at $480. That’s 0.0001 percent the estimated value of the plane.)…

…If there’s no such thing as a free lunch, there’s certainly no such thing as a free plane. The Qataris would presumably not give Trump such a plane out of the goodness and generosity of their hearts. There’s a simple term for this: bribery. The fact that we don’t know what Qatar might want from Trump doesn’t change that. In fact, it’s arguably scarier, because rather than consider the exchange a quid pro quo for something specific, Trump could slant any number of policy choices to benefit Doha. The Supreme Court has, in a series of recent decisions, made prosecuting politicians for corruption harder and harder, but that doesn’t preclude the rest of us from using plain language.

► Don’t miss the latest episode of the Get More Smarter Podcast for an in-depth rundown of the 2025 Colorado legislative session with Denver Post Statehouse Reporter Seth Klamann: 

Click below to keep learning things…

Get Extra Smarter…

► The Washington Post reports on the giant tax cut and immigration bill proposed by Congressional Republicans:

New tax cuts. Massive spending on border security. Cuts to social safety net programs. Pullbacks on investments to fight climate change. New limits on student loans. If it becomes law, President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans’ massive bill will reshape much of the federal government — and the U.S. economy.

GOP majorities in the House and Senate are attempting to move swiftly to reverse many of President Joe Biden’s legislative accomplishments and cement Trump’s legacy in the tax code, on the southern border and in generations-old anti-poverty benefits.

The House’s bill would devote hundreds of billions of dollars to finishing Trump’s border wall, fortifying maritime border crossings, outfitting the Defense Department and more. It would extend the tax cuts that were one of the signature legislative achievements of Trump’s first term, create new savings accounts for newborns and fulfill some — but not all — of the president’s campaign promises.

As The New York Times explains, this package — if it passes — would place enormous financial burdens on individual states.

Across the country, state leaders are beginning to express alarm about the budgetary fallout from President Trump’s economic agenda, warning that they will not be able to pick up the bill if the federal government reduces its funding for major public services. To governors and other officials, many of whom are Democrats, the fear is that Washington could sharply curtail federal programs that help states improve their infrastructure, respond to natural disasters, expand education and provide a suite of health, housing and nutrition benefits to the poor.

Republicans have framed their thinking as a matter of fiscal necessity and federalism, arguing that states should shoulder more of the financial burden for their citizens at a time when the national debt exceeds $36 trillion. But Mr. Trump has made no secret about the fact that many of his preferred budget cuts are meant to help offset his costly and ever-expanding legislative ambitions, including his desire to cut taxes…..

…For states like Colorado, which recently shrank its spending to close a roughly $1 billion deficit, a sharp decrease in federal funding could result in even more staggering cuts. Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, pointed to the example of Medicaid, the federally backed program managed by the states that provides health insurance to low-income families.

If congressional Republicans sharply reduce the amount they reimburse states for Medicaid, as some lawmakers have proposed, then Colorado is unlikely to be able to pick up the entire bill, Mr. Polis said. The result, he added, likely would be “hundreds of thousands of Coloradans losing the health care they have today.” [Pols emphasis] 

► Federal rule changes have made child care inaccessible for thousands of low-income Colorado families. As Erica Breunlin reports for The Colorado Sun:

More than 5,700 children from low-income families have been shut out of child care programs across Colorado, where 23 counties have, as of May 1, frozen enrollment or set up waitlists for the Colorado Child Care Assistance Program, according to data from the Colorado Department of Early Childhood.

It’s a kind of gridlock with far-reaching impacts for kids, families and child care providers — and a crisis, some early childhood education officials say, that is stranding families, raising alarm about where children stay during the workday and straining some community providers until they may have no choice but to close their doors…

…Funding challenges began affecting the Colorado Child Care Assistance Program last year and have escalated in recent months, putting both families who rely on the government subsidized child care program and providers whose seats are mostly filled with the program’s students on an uncertain track. The halt in enrollment, which could last three to five years, stems mostly from a slew of federal rule changes adopted under the Biden administration in March 2024. The federal government is mandating that parents whose children benefit from the program pay a smaller fee out of pocket — 7% of the family’s income, down from 10%. The new rules also dictate that counties pay providers in advance and dole out funding based on enrollment rather than attendance.

Additionally, Colorado must compensate child care providers at a higher rate than a few years ago after a routine federal review determined that Colorado was falling short in how much it paid providers.

► The City of Aurora continues to put new restrictions on public comment periods. From The Denver Post:

Burning outrage. Disruption of public meetings. Officials’ attempts to clamp down.

As that pattern has played out in Aurora over the last year, the City Council has struggled at times to maintain decorum inside — and occasionally outside — its chamber. Last week brought the latest attempt in Colorado’s third-largest city to tighten its rules for public participation as it tries to manage what has become a highly combustible and disruptive atmosphere, spurred by the 2024 police killing of an unarmed Black man.

The council voted 6-4 on May 5 to limit speakers at the lectern to one at a time, with exceptions for children, those needing interpretive help and people with physical disabilities. A second — and more legally dubious — proposal to forbid photography or the recording of videos in an area close to the dais was withdrawn at the last moment.

Last week’s rule change comes after Aurora’s council already did away with call-in comments last fall. Earlier this year, it moved the general public comment period to a 40-minute window before each meeting’s official start.

In related news, the Aurora Police Community Advisory Council will hold a virtual town hall meeting on Saturday to discuss concerns about the police department’s excessive use of force.

► President Trump’s on again, off again Tariff War and its economic uncertainty has killed off a Colorado Springs bicycle company.

► Colorado Newsline looks at three gun-related bills that passed through the Colorado legislature in 2025.

► Governor Jared Polis signed the new Colorado Voting Rights Act into law, as well as new legislation around “construction defects.”  

► Attorney David Seligman has entered the Democratic Primary for Attorney General. 

► Two-time federal candidate (and two-time loser) Deborah Flora has joined the national board of the wacko right-wing group “Moms for Liberty.” Because of course she has. 

► As Colorado Public Radio reports, a judge has cleared the way for a potential blockbuster lawsuit against Suncor and Exxon Mobil:

The Boulder lawsuit claims taxpayers shouldn’t bear the full cost of disasters like floods and wildfires. It argues both companies should share the financial burden after knowingly contributing to climate change and misleading consumers about the risks of burning fossil fuels.

Boulder County Commissioner Ashley Stolzmann said the ruling recognized the ballooning costs local governments face due to global warming. In 2021, the Marshall fire, the most destructive fire in Colorado history, burned more than 1,000 homes in Boulder County and caused more than $2 billion in damages. Scientists have linked the disaster to climate change.

“We’ve known for a long time that corporations have had a disproportionate impact on the climate, and we’re finally going to see them pay their fair share,” Stolzmann said.

► The Denver City Council approved two big projects: A Park Hill Golf Course land swap and a site purchase for a new soccer stadium for an NWSL professional women’s soccer team. 

► Colorado Republicans may need a new talking point after news that violent crime and vehicle thefts are on the decline in Colorado. 

► POLITICO reports on a new effort to stop President Trump’s Tariff War:

► Vox.com reports on the rise of the regretful Trump voter. 

Say What, Now?

Um…no.

As MSNBC reports, President Trump’s recent executive order on prescription drug prices is largely meaningless.

Your Daily Dose Of ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

► It is your “patriotic duty” to be as healthy as possible. 

► The 2025 Colorado Rockies might be the worst team in the history of professional baseball.

ICYMI

► Colorado Springs Republican Rep. Rebecca Keltie is doubling down on her belief that Colorado needs to burn to the ground because of heathen Democrats, or whatever. 

► Check out our “Winners” and “Losers” from the 2025 Colorado legislative session. You can probably guess where the aforementioned Keltie ended up.