June 19, 2025 10:35 AM UTC
Get More Smarter Roundup for Thursday (June 19)
- by: Colorado Pols
Happy Juneteenth! Please be careful outside with temperatures expected to reach into the mid-90s. 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…
► President Trump’s nonsensical Tariff War and the “big beautiful bullshit bill” that Senate Republicans are now debating would absolutely clobber Colorado’s state budget. As Sara Wilson and Delilah Brumer report for Colorado Newsline:
Colorado could face a budget crunch totaling in the billions of dollars if a sweeping tax and spending bill proposed by President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress becomes law, analysts warned state lawmakers on Wednesday…
…Colorado be on the hook for up to $650 million per year to offset the bill’s deep cuts to federally-funded social programs. State costs for Medicaid could increase by up to $350 million, and costs for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program could increase by up to $300 million if the federal bill passes and state policy does not change, OSPB Director Mark Ferrandino told lawmakers on Wednesday.
That is due to the provisions considered in the federal bill that reduce federal funding and create more administrative burden for the state agencies in charge of running Medicaid and SNAP, including new mandatory work requirements for some Medicaid recipients, cuts to federal matching for states that have coverage for immigrants without legal status and increased dollar matching for SNAP.
In addition to those new costs, the tax changes considered in the reconciliation bill could add up to a roughly $600 million hit to Colorado’s state tax revenue. An economic recession, the odds of which the governor’s office now estimates at 50%, could cause another $1.6 billion budget hole.
“We do have a potential of a recession and potential of reconciliation… that could really wreak havoc in where we are from a budget perspective,” Ferrandino told members of the Joint Budget Committee, who use quarterly economic forecasts like the one presented Wednesday to craft the state budget.
Both the OSPB and the nonpartisan Legislative Council Staff downgraded their economic growth predictions and General Fund revenue from March. [Pols emphasis]
The GOP’s stupid budget bill looks worse by the day, which is why polling continually shows that a majority of Americans absolutely hate the idea of cutting funding for important government programs just to give rich people a tax break that they’ll probably barely notice anyway.
This is bad policy, of course, but it’s also bad politics for Republicans like State Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer, a probable candidate for Governor in 2026.
► Democrats in Congress, joined by at least one Republican, are voicing “war powers” concerns as President Trump mulls involving the United States in the conflict between Iran and Israel. From The Washington Post:
Senate Democrats are increasingly concerned that President Donald Trump is considering striking Iran without seeking authorization from Congress — or even filling them in on his plans.
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Virginia) is mounting a last-ditch push to force a vote as soon as next week to restrain Trump from attacking Iran without Congress’s approval.
Other Senate Democrats say the White House has not briefed them on its plans for a potential strike. And some are warning that the situation reminds them of President George W. Bush’s push to invade Iraq more than two decades ago…
…The discontent comes as Trump has mused openly about aiding Israel in its conflict with Iran to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon — potentially by striking the Fordow nuclear facility, which is buried in a mountain that Israeli bombs cannot penetrate. “Nobody knows what I’m going to do,” Trump said Wednesday.
The pushback follows Trump’s encroachment on just about every congressional prerogative since launching his second term — from taking swift control of the power of the purse to threatening punishing tariffs on other nations. Lawmakers and the courts, however, have traditionally shown more deference to the executive branch on foreign policy.
And while some Democrats are supporting Kaine’s effort, only one Republican — Rep. Thomas Massie (Kentucky), who has opposed Trump on spending issues — has so far publicly backed a similar effort in the House. Outside of Congress, a roiling debate is occurring among the president’s base over the United States potentially intervening in a foreign conflict.
The New York Times has more on the uproar from Trump’s base about the President suddenly showing interest in involving the U.S. in a war.
Trump said on Wednesday that “nobody knows what I’m going to do” regarding the Iran-Israel conflict — a statement that probably sounded better in his head.
► Hey, look: Some laws still work! A conservative podcaster is being fined $1,000 a day for refusing to follow court orders. As Michael Karlik writes for the publication formerly known as the Colorado Statesman:
The Denver-based federal appeals court on Wednesday upheld a $1,000-per-day sanction against a conservative podcaster who absconded from the courthouse where he was required to sit for a deposition — and instead returned home to record a podcast and insult the judge.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit also concluded Joe Oltmann and his attorney, Randy Corporon, “crossed the line” by making at least one frivolous argument divorced from the facts of the case…
…The 10th Circuit’s decision comes days after the plaintiff, Eric Coomer, prevailed in a separate but closely related lawsuit in which Oltmann was a witness. In that case, jurors found the defendant, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, liable for making certain defamatory statements stemming from a narrative that Oltmann originated shortly after the 2020 presidential election.
Coomer, the former director of product security and strategy for voting technology supplier Dominion Voting Systems, has initiated several lawsuits based on a similar sequence of events: Days after the 2020 election, Oltmann claimed he had recently listened in on an “antifa” conference call — a reference to anti-fascist ideology.
Joe Oltmann is the same guy who regularly makes an ass of himself with wild conspiracy theories.
► Congressman Gabe Evans (R-Ft. Lupton) just can’t seem to keep his inner jackass in check:
Click below to keep learning things…
Get Extra Smarterer…
► The Denver Post looks at how President Trump’s shifting immigration policies are playing out in Colorado:
President Donald Trump’s vow to carry out mass deportations of immigrants has sparked fear and outrage among some Coloradans since he took office on Jan. 20. It’s drawn approval from others. Most of all, his pledge has brought uncertainty to many across the state.
The administration’s underlying goal, according to reporting by national media outlets: To deport 1 million people without proper legal status within a year.
But U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is not on track to meet that target thus far. In late April, the agency reported about 66,000 arrests and a similar number of deportations in the first 100 days of the president’s second term. The daily pace has been increasing, however — by early June, according to data obtained by CBS News, the number of arrests had risen to over 100,000.
An escalation in ICE enforcement tactics and rapidly changing immigration policies, along with roadblocks put up by the courts, have defined Trump’s first five months back in office. So have public protests. This month, after ICE began broader-scale actions in Los Angeles, including raids of Home Depot parking lots, the president ordered the National Guard and the Marines to the streets of that city to help respond to demonstrations there — a directive that spurred more protests nationally.
In Colorado, immigrant-rights advocates have been surprised at the administration’s fast pace as it has moved to implement Trump’s agenda. Even if the state has largely not seen the workplace raids conducted elsewhere so far — and legal roadblocks and limited resources have slowed ICE down — it’s been aggressive here in other ways.
Several advocates say they doubt the agency will be able to remove 1 million immigrants by early next year, but ICE’s recent tactics concern them. They’re preparing for enforcement activities to intensify.
► 9News has more on the immigration arrest of a 19-year-old college student whose story has been generating headlines.
► As Colorado Public Radio reports, you can thank Colorado lawmakers for having the foresight to protect people from the idiocy of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr:
Recently, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., at the helm of HHS and by extension, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, fired everyone on a federal vaccine advisory panel that makes policy and recommendations for the CDC. He also lifted recommendations for pregnant women and healthy children to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
Kennedy has said he’s restoring public trust by entirely replacing the members of the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices, commonly called the ACIP. But vaccine and public health experts are dubious.Colorado lawmakers saw this conflict coming and started preparing for the change, particularly to this critical national panel of doctors and vaccine experts, during this year’s legislative session.
So they passed a bill along party lines, later signed into law by the governor, which directs the state’s board of health to take into consideration recommendations from other high-profile doctors’ groups, not just the CDC panel.
“I think you could see the writing on the wall, that it was just becoming overly politicized rather than relying on actual science with this new HHS director,” said Sen. Kyle Mullica, a Thornton Democrat and an ER nurse.
“We decided to protect Colorado,” said Mullica, who co-sponsored the legislation. He said Democratic lawmakers wanted to ensure “that in Colorado that we were able to rely on other science-based recommendations that potentially wouldn’t be as vulnerable to political upheaval that we’re seeing right now.”
► Ryan Fish of Denver7 reports on a rally in Boulder by transgender rights activists in response to a ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court allowing states to prohibit certain forms of gender-affirming care.
► Not great!
Powell: Increases in tariffs this year are likely to push up prices and weigh on economic activity
[image or embed]
— Acyn (@acyn.bsky.social) June 18, 2025 at 12:48 PM
► The latest personal financial report from Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Rifle Windsor) is as vacant as the rest of the Congresswoman.
► Dennis Webb of the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel has concerns about a proposal by Republicans in Congress to sell off federal lands:
While the initial provision says the land would be made available for local housing and related community needs, the revised one says more specifically that the land would be used for “development of housing or to address associated infrastructure to support local housing needs.”
While a lot of acreage would be available for sale far from cities under the proposal, it says priority would be given to lands nominated by states or local governments, adjacent to existing developed areas, having access to existing infrastructure, or being suitable for residential housing.
U.S. Rep. Jeff Hurd, R-Grand Junction, had voted in a committee against the inclusion of a public-land sales provision in the House reconciliation bill. Last week, U.S. Sens. John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet, both D-Colo., and some Democratic U.S. House members from Colorado spoke out against the proposal in the Senate.
It’s worth noting, of course, that Rep. Jeff “Bread Sandwich” Hurd also voiced significant concerns about cutting Medicaid before he went ahead and voted for the bill that does just that.
► Water experts in Colorado are concerned about President Trump’s appointment of Ted Cooke to lead the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation given Cooke’s long connections to water policy in arid Arizona.
► That’s a bit of an understatement, New York Times:
► Governor Jared Polis issued pardons to four Coloradans convicted of possessing magic mushrooms. Polis announced the pardons at the Psychedelic Science 2025 conference in Denver.
► Activists are rushing to secure donations to fund this year’s Denver PRIDE Parade.
► Brandon Richard of Denver7 has the latest on proposed layoffs for workers in the City of Denver.
► If you bought Colorado lottery tickets at a Johnstown 7-Eleven store this week, you should probably check your wallet. You can thank us later.
► Helen Lewis of The Atlantic discusses the need for Democrats to start moving its older elected officials toward the door.
Say What, Now?
Why not just blame Bill Clinton?
Your Daily Dose Of ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
► Here is an absolutely perfect story about Donald Trump’s America: “The Great Egg Heist.” The Washington Post un-scrambles the story of the theft of 280,000 eggs en route from Maryland to Florida.
► President Trump has fully turned on Fox News.
ICYMI
► The Denver-based company Palantir is under fire as questions mount about what it is doing with its concerning access to federal data.
► The Governor’s office is also now updating a new “dashboard” showing all of the federal cuts impacting Colorado. As Nick Coltrain reports for The Denver Post:
Colorado has lost more than $76 million in federal funding and has another $56 million at risk, according to a new public dashboard launched by Gov. Jared Polis’ office on Tuesday.
As state officials challenge some of the cuts by President Donald Trump’s administration, Polis created the dashboard to highlight the governor’s push for Coloradans to “get a fair share” of the federal taxes they pay, according to a news release. Polis cited a study by the Rockefeller Institute of Government showing that for every $1 Colorado pays in federal taxes, the state receives only 90 cents back in federal investment, not including COVID-related spending.
Colorado has also “successfully defended” another $282 million that the federal government sought to cancel, suspend or otherwise delay, according to the dashboard. The state data does not include proposed changes under the federal budget bill that is sitting in the Senate. The Trump-backed tax-and-spending bill has already passed the House.
“The Trump administration is trying to rip away local and state funding that supports cybersecurity and public safety, helps Coloradans access or charge low-cost electric vehicles, helps people access food and more,” Polis said in a statement.
“This is federal funding that has already been allocated to states by Congress, and now the administration is working to take it away,” he continued. “We are doing everything in our power to protect this funding for Coloradans and local governments, including pursuing legal action when necessary.”
Click HERE to see the new “dashboard.”
► Tired of reading? Exercise your ears and listen to the latest episode of the Get More Smarter Podcast, featuring an interview with Jake Williams of Healthier Colorado outlining recent polling numbers in Colorado.
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