The new glut of spending in state legislative races had already soared past $1.4 million as of early June and will almost certainly increase in dramatic fashion before voting ends in the June 30 primary. The arms race — and spending race — is the latest in an ongoing conflict between outside groups backed primarily by business interests, who prefer more moderate Democrats, and the state’s largest unions, which have spent to support more progressive candidates.

The money battle follows a 2024 primary in which outside groups spent $5 million to influence the Democratic races. It’s part of a broader tug-of-war for control over Colorado’s dominant political party, which has grown into near-supermajority control of the state legislature.

This year’s spending is likely to focus on a handful of safe Democratic seats in and around metro Denver. As outside spending has grown in recent years, it has turned some of the safest blue seats in Colorado — like those in Denver — into some of the most expensive contests in the state.

As of Friday, a labor coalition had spent more than $570,000 since May 1 to help more-liberal candidates, while several competing interconnected spending committees had spent nearly double that to help moderates. Six PACS on the moderate side had already raised $769,000, all from two outside dark money groups that disclose few, if any, of their donors.

Most of the money, nearly $500,000, has come from a group called “Fair Economy for Coloradans,” which has no publicly disclosed donors. It was created in January by Scott Martinez, Denver’s former city attorney. Martinez did not return an email seeking comment.

The rest of the cash comes directly from One Main Street, a prominent financial player in Democratic primaries that favors business-friendly candidates over more progressive challengers.

All six political action committees were registered by Jimmy Dickson, who previously managed two state lawmakers’ campaigns, including that of then-Rep. Shannon Bird, who’s now running for Congress. Bird co-founded the Colorado Opportunity Caucus, a group of business-friendly Democratic lawmakers that’s been financially supported by One Main Street. Dickson, who lives in Durango, did not return a message seeking comment.

Martinez is also the registered agent for the Opportunity Caucus and has served as the caucus’s attorney. An email sent to Sen. Lindsey Daugherty, the co-chair of the caucus, and a caucus spokeswoman was not returned.

The six groups backed by One Main Street and Fair Economy — which, despite their financial backers, often seized on the term progressive — are:

• Denver Progressives United, which has run ads backing Denver Rep. Sean Camacho, of Denver, and attacking his challenger, Iris Halpern.
• Adams County United, which is backing Rep. Jacque Phillips, of Thornton, against Gabriel Cervantes.
• Colorado Mountain Progressives, which has directed attack ads against Rep. Mandy Lindsay, of Aurora, and has also spent money backing Chris Floyd for a vacant House seat in the high country, .
• Fighting For A Better Aurora, which is running ads against Rep. Jamie Jackson, also of Aurora.
• Promoting Progressive Women, which has also run ads against Lindsay.
• Progressive Leadership Fund, which has run ads backing Andrés Carrera against Chela Garcia Irlando for a soon-to-be vacant state Senate seat in Denver.

One of Denver Progressives United’s ads accuses Halpern, an attorney, of illegally lobbying, based on a complaint filed against her earlier this year. But that complaint was dismissed by the secretary of state’s office, as first reported by the Colorado Sun.

Halpern told The Denver Post that she’d sent Denver Progressives United a cease-and-desist letter to stop running the ads and had not received a response.

Just like in 2024, opposing the One Main Street-aligned groups is Colorado Labor Action, which discloses its donors and is financed by the state’s AFL-CIO and the Colorado Education Association. It’s spent more than $500,000 thus far to back Jackson, Garcia Irlando and Halpern, along with Rep. Kenny Nguyen of Broomfield, who found himself in One Main Street’s crosshairs after .

Colorado Labor Action has run ads attacking Camacho and Carrera, as well Anne Keke, who is running against Jackson, and Heidi Henkel, who’s running against Nguyen.

One Main Street has largely refused to reveal its donors, other than several minority donations from trade unions that it publicly reports. In 2022, it received $25,000 from the Apartment Association of Metro Denver. More recently, federal tax records show One Main Street has received donations from a group funded by the oil and gas industry.

During the 2024 round of well-moneyed primaries, One Main Street received $1 million from “.” That group, in turn, received $2.2 million from Chevron and $1.1 million from Coloradans for Responsible Energy Development, another oil and gas group. Tax filings show that One Main Street was the largest recipient of Coloradans for Progress’ funding that year.

Andrew Short, One Main Street’s executive director, did not return a message seeking comment about the primary campaigns. During the 2024 primary campaign, he denied to The Denver Post that One Main Street was funded by oil and gas interests.

Just like the 2024 primaries, statehouse primary spending is spread out and tangled between multiple groups: Fair Economy has also given $50,000 to the “Colorado Affordability Project,” which has been primarily funded by groups representing charter schools, real estate agents and hospitals. Millionaire Kent Thiry, who spent significant sums in the 2024 primaries to support more-moderate candidates, also donated $35,000 to the affordability project group.

Thus far, that committee has launched ads backing Camacho, Henkel, Carrera and Sarah Woodson, who is challenging Lindsay.

A third prisoner was injured and taken to a hospital for treatment, said Alondra Gonzalez, spokeswoman for the .

Gonzalez offered no details about what happened in the incident and did not respond to follow-up questions Monday.

Coroner Jason Nichols declined to comment on the causes or manners of the two men’s deaths, citing the ongoing investigation.

Fisher was convicted of first-degree murder and was serving life without parole in a 1996 killing, according to court and prison records.

On Sept. 19, 1996, Fisher and a second person planned to steal drugs from a woman in Adams County. The person Fisher was working with shot and killed the woman when she refused to hand over the drugs, according to a Colorado Court of Appeals that upheld Fisher’s convictions for felony murder, aggravated robbery and conspiracy.

Gates was serving time on five different cases; his longest sentence was a nine-year term for a 2023 motor vehicle theft in Douglas County. He was also serving time for drug possession, assault, theft, vehicular eluding, obstructing a police officer and burglary, according to court records.

The was called to the prison at about 11:22 p.m. Saturday for a report of “missed count,” which meant prisoners were missing from where they were supposed to be, Sheriff Jake Six said Monday.

“They believed the inmates were still in the facility but weren’t 100% sure,” Six said, adding that it is standard procedure for the sheriff’s office to respond to missed counts.

Sheriff’s deputies checked that the facility’s fences were intact and secured the perimeter of the prison, which is one of two private prisons in Colorado run by . Deputies were on scene for a couple of hours before the missing prisoners were discovered, Six said.

He declined to comment on how they were found, directing inquiries to the Department of Corrections.

Ryan Gustin, a spokesman for CoreCivic, also directed a request for more information to the state agency.

The two deaths on Saturday prompted the Department of Corrections to shut down visitation at all prisons statewide. The agency lifted those restrictions at all prisons except the Bent facility on Monday, officials said in a .

Jerod Zaczkowski threatened to sue, alleging that the agency had violated his First Amendment rights by deleting several of his comments, including one in which he called the the patrol’s members “tyrant Nazi(s),” and for blocking his ability to post additional comments in early 2025. To stop the potential litigation, the patrol will pay him a settlement and its public affairs staff will undergo annual training on Department of Public Safety’s social media policy, according to a settlement agreement provided by Zaczkowski’s attorney.

“What happened to Jerod Zaczkowski is intolerable in a democratic society,” the attorney, Andy McNulty, said in a statement. “The State Patrol censored a critic online because it didn’t like what he was saying.”

Zaczkowski had been unbanned, and the agency had earlier conceded that his First Amendment rights had been violated, McNulty wrote, but Zaczkowski’s comments were not restored.

In a separate statement Friday morning, patrol spokeswoman Sherri Mendez said the agency had “made mistakes in the handling of our social media page and have taken steps to ensure these mistakes don’t happen again.”

This story will be updated throughout the day.

5:26 p.m. update: Colorado lawmakers are embarking on their third attempt in the past 12 months to rewrite the state’s beleaguered artificial intelligence regulations, with the latest go-round introduced Friday after months of closed-door negotiations.

Senate Bill 189 would overhaul the antidiscrimination protections that were passed in 2024 but have never been implemented. The proposal would require companies to disclose to people that AI is being used to make a consequential decision about them — like in hiring or financial lending. The bill would also give consumers the ability to request additional information about the technology and the decision it was used in, and to request corrections to data involved in the decision.

“This bill strikes an appropriate balance of protecting consumers while not being onerous on developers or the businesses who use AI technology,” Senate Majority Leader Robert Rodriguez, the Denver Democrat who wrote the initial regulations and is sponsoring SB-189, said in a statement.

The initial law — which sought to curb discrimination by AI systems that are used to influence hiring, banking and other “consequential” decisions — has been consistently criticized as unworkable by just about every group with an interest in the rules’ existence.

The law’s effective date was most recently delayed until June to allow the legislature to make another attempt at overhauling it.

Previous efforts to do so have been bitterly unsuccessful: Lawmakers first attempted a rewrite last session, only for Rodriguez to suddenly and voluntarily kill it. Another effort, launched during a special session in August, collapsed after lawmakers reached a deal that was quickly opposed and scuttled by business and tech groups.

That collapse was partially fueled by disagreements over who should bear liability if an AI system is used to discriminate against someone. Under SB-189, liability would be assigned to either the AI’s developer or the tech’s deployer — companies or agencies that use the technology — depending on the circumstances.

This latest — and potentially final — swing is the product of a Gov. Jared Polis-created task force that brought together tech groups, industries and agencies that use AI, and progressive and consumer protection organizations. While those groups have repeatedly been at odds in previous AI debates, SB-189 represents their attempt at a unified rewrite.

Whether that truce — and the bill itself — holds for the remainder of the session remains to be seen. If lawmakers don’t rewrite regulations before the session ends on May 13, then the pending regulations will kick in next month — and they’re already under challenge in court by Elon Musk’s xAI and the U.S. Department of Justice.

1:33 p.m. update: Veto watch begins.

The Colorado Senate passed on a party-line vote today, sending it to a governor who has made clear he won’t sign it into law. The bill would remove a unique provision of Colorado labor law that requires that newly organized workers pass a second election before they can negotiate the provision of union contracts that describes dues collection.

“We’ve heard from the opponents of the measure that this is a balanced system that works so well for the state of Colorado,” Sen. Jessie Danielson, one of the bill’s sponsors, said from the Senate floor. “Well, they’re right — in part. It works very, very, very well for the billionaires, for the corporations, for the elite, for the wealthy. It does not work for the workers.”

Colorado lawmakers launch bid to undercut ‘irresponsible’ road funding mandate in Initiative 175

A nearly identical bill passed last year, and Gov. Jared Polis vetoed it. The governor has said he wants labor unions to strike a deal with opposed business groups. Those negotiations failed last year, and they didn't even get off the ground this time around. The governor told reporters last week that, to his knowledge, no negotiations were underway.

That means another veto is likely imminent. Theoretically, lawmakers would have enough time to override that veto -- but only Democrats supported the bill, and they're one vote shy of the threshold needed to stiff-arm Polis in both the House and the Senate.

The coming veto won't be a surprise to Democratic lawmakers or to the labor groups backing the measure.

This year's effort served two intertwined purposes: to push the candidates vying to be Polis' (likely) Democratic successor to take a position on a priority labor bill, and to put that next governor on notice that the proposal will keep coming until it's signed into law.

"We've been told a lie that it has to be (economically) hard to survive in Colorado," Dennis Dougherty, the executive director of the Colorado AFL-CIO, said in a statement, "and workers, our members, aren't buying it. If we want a strong middle class, we need strong worker protections."

12:12 p.m. update: Colorado lawmakers’ attempt to shrink the lots of single-family homes died a second, quiet death Thursday night. The Senate Local Government and Housing Committee killed as its sponsors asked for the bill to be put down and acknowledged that they didn’t have the votes to advance it.

The bill would have allowed homeowners to split and sell off parts of their lots, largely without having to get approval from local officials. The proposal was part of a now yearslong effort by Gov. Jared Polis and a coalition of legislative Democrats to rewrite local zoning rules in a bid to make it easier to build housing, including on smaller lots.

While that broader reform push has scored more victories than losses in recent years, it's also created some amount of land-use fatigue in the state legislature. Just last week, another bill that would’ve put a limit on local governments’ ability to set minimum lot sizes was also voluntarily shelved in the same Senate committee.

“We have done a lot in this space, and I think in some ways, there’s some fatigue around that,” Sen. Judy Amabile, who sponsored HB-1308 and has backed prior zoning reform bills, said Friday morning. “Maybe we need to see how all of the bills that we’ve passed are going to play out and how they’re going to interact with each other."

In 2024 alone, the legislature kneecapped local parking requirements, required denser zoning in urban areas and gave many homeowners the right to build accessory dwelling units on their properties. Those reforms were all brand new to the state, and they upended the traditional power of local governments -- and, more acutely, of local groups opposed to development -- to control their own zoning.

It will take years for the impact of those changes to be felt.

Amabile said supporters of those reforms “got a message that we need a little bit of a pause.” That message, she said, came “from my colleagues, and from the (Colorado Municipal League) and from the cities. Even the city of Boulder, which has been leading the charge on land-use reforms, was resistant to this bill."

11:44 a.m. update: Despite well over $500,000 spent on digital ads in opposition, the Colorado Senate has passed a measure that would generally prohibit credit card companies from charging certain kinds of fees on businesses.

passed in a narrow 18-17 vote Friday morning and now heads to the House. The bill seeks to limit "swipe fees," which are a small, flat-percentage fee charged on retailers by financial services companies when you use a credit card to buy something at a store. That fee is based on your total bill -- including the sales tax you're ultimately paying to the state.

SB-134 would prohibit companies from factoring sales taxes in the swipe-fee charge.

It's a small amount of money per transaction, but over the course of a year, carving out sales taxes from the fees would amount to thousands of dollars saved by small businesses -- and far, far more for giants like Target.

"This is real money, and right now, every dollar of it is leaving Colorado and landing on the balance sheets of the most profitable financial institutions in human history," Sen. William Lindstedt, a Broomfield Democrat and the bill's sponsor, said ahead of an earlier vote this week.

The legislation, then, is essentially a fight between two large business interests, pitting financial companies -- including Visa, Mastercard, airlines and banks -- against retailers, from Target and Home Depot to local restaurants and smaller businesses.

The lobbying on the bill has been intense. The Electronic Payments Coalition, a lobbying group whose governing board includes national banking officials and a senior vice president from Visa, has papered Instagram with advertisements alleging that the bill would cause "chaos" and force people to pay sales tax in cash or by check.

According to Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, the EPC has since late January, and that total doesn't include the lobbyists the opponents have hired. The Colorado Restaurant Association, which supports the bill, has also spent several thousand dollars on digital ads backing SB-134.

Friday's vote was technically the second time the bill had passed the upper chamber after it cleared on a similarly tight 18-16 vote Wednesday. But Sen. Robert Rodriguez -- the chamber's majority leader -- moved for a revote Friday, essentially to give Sen. Julie Gonzales an opportunity to talk more about it.

One Senate Democrat, Sen. Jessie Danielson, was absent for the first vote but was present -- and supported the bill -- on Friday. Rodriguez, however, changed his vote to no.

In her speech on the bill, Gonzales told her colleagues that it was "important that y'all show up and take this vote today." Most of Gonzales' comments, though, were focused on the lobbying. She said she'd been "threatened that if I vote a certain way, I'll get blown up about it and my other bills will suffer as a result."

"When this policy was first introduced, I had to get my head wrapped around how this bill might save everyday Coloradans money," Gonzales, a Denver Democrat, said. "The simple fact is it doesn't. This bill has unfolded as a proxy battle that has taken place here in Colorado and across the country, between the financial services industry ... and business."

As she did in the earlier vote this week, Gonzales supported the bill, which now heads to the House. In that chamber, it's sponsored by both House Speaker Julie McCluskie and Majority Leader Monica Duran, giving it solid odds of passing before the legislature wraps for the year on May 13.

THORNTON — A Colorado woman whose son died from a fentanyl-laced pill he bought through social media celebrated a this week against Meta and YouTube that she said opened the door for companies to be held responsible for harms to children using their platforms.

“The truth is out, and it����ap time that they are held accountable for the design of the platforms,” said Kimberly Osterman, whose son Max died in 2021 at age 18. “They put profits over safety.”

Flipping through photo albums Thursday at her home in Colorado, Osterman reflected on “the days before social media. The days before the infinite scrolling lured him in.” Photos of him in frames with hearts and angel’s wings dotted the shelves.

Osterman said Max arranged to meet a drug dealer he connected with on Snapchat and purchased what he thought was Percocet. The pill was laced with a deadly dose of fentanyl, and he was dead the next morning. Osterman is pursuing a wrongful death lawsuit that is separate from cases decided this week.

In Los Angeles on Wednesday, both YouTube and Meta, which owns and operates platforms including Instagram and Facebook, liable for harms to children for designing their platforms to hook young users. The companies said they disagreed with the verdicts and may appeal.

And in a jury determined that Meta knowingly and concealed what it knew about child sexual exploitation on its platforms. Meta said it would appeal.

Snapchat����ap parent company, Snap Inc., in January just before the Los Angeles trial began. TikTok also agreed to settle, and details were not disclosed.

Osterman is part of Parents for Safe Online Spaces, or ParentsSOS, a group that includes parents who have lost children to online harm and advocate for more regulation. It has campaigned for the , pending federal legislation that would require social media platforms to take reasonable steps to prevent harm on platforms minors are likely to use.

She hopes to see social media companies enact strict guardrails, such as age verification technology, to prevent anyone under 18 from accessing the platforms.

“You think your kids are safe in their home, in their bedroom, but that����ap not the way it is with the current status of social media,” she said.

Osterman knew Max used Snapchat to communicate with friends but did not realize the danger he was in. She said he loved lacrosse and wrestling and was academically brilliant.

The man who sold the pill to him, Sergio Guerra-Carrillo, was sentenced to six years in prison on two distribution charges in 2023.

Snapchat did not immediately comment Thursday when asked about Osterman’s case. The company has said previously that it uses cutting-edge technology to proactively find and shut down drug dealers’ accounts and blocks search results for drug-related terms.

It is not yet clear whether the recent verdicts against the social platforms will . But the verdicts demonstrate a growing willingness to hold major social media companies responsible and demand meaningful change. Tech watchdogs expect they will open the door for more lawsuits and regulations.

Jered Morgan took to Facebook late last year to criticize the and its chief of police, Jonathan Lange, after drivers started receiving hefty fines for speeding along a nearby Weld County road, according to a federal lawsuit filed in the District of Colorado.

Fake profiles he believed belonged to Lange and his wife started about the legality of the fines, Morgan told The Denver Post. When he commented on the town of Kersey’s Facebook page directly in December 2025, his comments were removed and he was blocked, the lawsuit alleged.

“I was just kinda shocked,” Morgan said. “It was pretty blatant that they were trying to censor me.”

The tickets, generated by radar equipment, charged drivers $340 for speeding 25 mph or more over the posted speed limit, . But caps the fines municipalities can charge for photo speeding tickets at $40 on regular roads and $80 in school or construction zones.

“In response to the firestorm caused by these actions, Kersey actively sought to silence its critics online. Morgan was among those critics,” the lawsuit stated.

The town’s posted social media policy allowed officials to delete all comments “deemed crude, inappropriate, misleading, or hostile” and to block any users who repeatedly posted comments that were removed for those reasons, according to the lawsuit. Morgan’s attorneys alleged in the lawsuit that the policy discriminated against content and viewpoints, violating the First Amendment.

“These actions were not taken with malice or with the intent of limiting public discourse,” Kersey Mayor Nathan Roth and Town Manager Stacy Brown said in a joint statement. “Rather, Town staff acted in accordance with the Town’s social media guidelines and with a focus on maintaining a safe and respectful online environment.”

Morgan’s account “could not clearly be identified and was believed to potentially be an individual who had previously been subject to a restraining order for the harassment of a Town employee,” the statement continued.

The town settled the lawsuit outside of court, agreeing to pay Morgan $45,000 and revise its social media policy, according to a document provided to The Denver Post by Morgan’s attorneys. Kersey officials will only delete comments or block users who “post true threats or fighting words, post obscenities, or violate any state or federal law through their posting,” the document stated. The town will also add annual training on First Amendment principles for Kersey employees.

Town officials agreed to the settlement to dismiss the case and deny any liability or wrongdoing, the document states. The case was dismissed on Thursday, court records show.

Frayer Contreras-Gafaro, 24, was convicted in December on 11 felony charges, including several counts each of second-degree kidnapping, aggravated robbery and burglary, Arapahoe County court records show. He was sentenced last Monday to 75 years in prison.

The jury acquitted Contreras-Gafaro of nine additional charges, including theft in a range of $20,000 to $100,000, felony menacing, third-degree assault, child abuse, false imprisonment and criminal mischief, according to court records.

Contreras-Gafaro and another man, who officials did not identify, pulled out guns inside an Aurora apartment in the 1300 block of North Laredo Street on June 12, 2024, according to a .

The men had reached out to the apartment resident, a 33-year-old woman, on Facebook after she listed jewelry on the social media platform, the news release stated.

“The victim’s two children were inside the apartment at the time and were ordered into a nearby room,” prosecutors stated in the release. The children were told that she would be killed if they screamed, the woman told police, according to the release.

The men stole dozens of jewelry pieces, valued at approximately $20,000, according to the DA’s office.

Contreras-Gafaro blocked the victim on Facebook after the incident, but she was able to use her husband’s account to find the man, officials said in the release.

“This decades-long sentence ensures this defendant will no longer have the opportunity to terrorize another family,” Assistant Chief Deputy District Attorney Johnny Lombardi said in a statement. “This was a calculated and violent crime carried out inside a home where a mother and her children should have felt safe. We hope this sentence brings the victim and her family a sense of justice and closure.”

The 24-year-old man will not be eligible for parole until he’s 84, according to the DA’s office.

That review could result in new data center-specific regulations and zoning focused on “responsible land, energy and water use,” along with affordability for utility ratepayers, about the proposed moratorium.

“Data centers power the technology we depend upon and strengthen our economy,” Johnston said in the release. “But as this industry evolves, so must our policies. This pause allows us to put clear and consistent guardrails in place while protecting our most precious resources and preserving our quality of life.”

New data center in north Denver sparks calls for accountability from concerned neighbors

Data centers are the buildings where companies, including tech giants like Google and Meta, store their infrastructure, such as servers and storage systems. The centers make commonplace services like email, online banking, telehealth, Netflix and Facebook possible for Denverites. They can also suck up massive amounts of water and energy.

The moratorium, which is intended to last “several months,” will take effect only if a majority of the council first approves an ordinance.

Two of the 13 council members, Paul Kashmann and Darrell Watson, are quoted in the mayor’s news release as being generally supportive of the initiative.

Kashmann noted in his statement that there is still “distance between the mayor’s view and mine … as well as some other council colleagues.”

“I look forward to working with the administration, the community at large and industry voices to see if regulations -- as have been instituted in sister cities around the country -- will or will not make additional data center development possible in the City and County of Denver,” he said.

Watson said he planned to introduce the proposal and emphasized that he sees Denver as a city that wants to be both welcoming to innovation and committed to protecting the environment.

"Data centers use significant energy and water. We have a responsibility to manage their growth in our communities wisely and sustainably,” he said. “We can protect the health of Denver communities, strengthen our climate commitments and continue to keep our city moving forward responsibly.”

City officials plan to work with residents, climate experts and industry leaders to develop the new regulations.

The pause, which city spokesman Jon Ewing says will be filed in the council in the "coming weeks," wouldn’t impact existing data centers, those already under construction or projects the city has already permitted. But those projects could “be expected to follow new guidelines once announced.”

A controversial data center under construction in northern Denver's Elyria-Swansea neighborhood wouldn't immediately be affected.

Johnston's action comes as state lawmakers are having their own wrestling match over data centers.

Last year, the legislature killed a bill that would've given tax exemptions to data centers. This year, the proposal is back. would provide 20 years' worth of full sales and use tax exemptions to data center builders who invest a certain amount of money and provide a set amount of jobs, among other requirements.

On the other side, another group of legislators has filed , which would generally require data centers to match 100% of their energy output with renewable sources. Neither bill has yet been heard in committee, and HB-1030's first committee meeting was delayed amid negotiations between the two camps.

Staff writer Seth Klamann contributed to this story.

Denver International Airport and Denver Animal Shelter will host the 10th DEN Puppy Bowl in the Jeppesen Terminal on Friday, Feb. 6, organizers said in a statement. The photo-friendly event usually snares travelers and passersby who aren’t in a hurry — and who just might be looking for a new canine friend.

“Get ready for an adorable showdown as puppies play in the spotlight in a friendly and entertaining competition,” airport officials said.

The DEN Puppy Bowl dogs will be available for adoption at 9 a.m. on Sunday, Feb. 8, at Denver Animal Shelter, 1241 W. Bayaud Ave. in Denver.  Puppies will be available on a first-come, first-served basis, organizers added. Visit for more information about Denver Animal Shelter and adoption guidelines.

The event will also be streamed live on Denver International Airport’s Facebook page at . Viewers can search social media using #DENPuppyBowl. And the Animal Planet Puppy Bowl, from which the DIA event takes its name, will air starting at noon on Super Bowl Sunday with simulcasts on Animal Planet, Discovery, TBS, truTV, HBO Max and Discovery+.

The second result — — is the legitimate news site run by dozens of CU Boulder student journalists who take photographs and write articles about local sports, student government, arts and culture, and campus goings-on.

Their website warns that the news organization is “not affiliated with cuindependent.com,” the web address the CU Independent had used since 2009.

The imposter site is confusing readers with articles that appear to be generated by artificial intelligence and is siphoning pageviews from real student reporting, the CUI’s journalists say. They’ve spent hundreds of dollars of their own money to try to fix the problem, enlisted lawyers and even tried to get the Colorado Bureau of Investigation involved.

Students built an entirely new website — the version now found at cuindependent.org — over the summer in hopes of disentangling themselves from the old one.

“In my time as editor-in-chief, I would love to spend more time working on our reporting than trying to fix this website that’s impersonating us,” said Greta Kerkhoff, who is serving as the CUI’s editor-in-chief this academic year.

The CUI has no official connection to the university’s journalism program, but department chair Patrick Ferrucci said the faculty wishes the student publication’s editorial staff success as it works to resolve this “unfortunate situation.”

“Online AI-generated content can be inauthentic and misleading and should not be confused with high-quality community journalism, professional ethics and editorial standards, and the skills of dedicated student journalists honing their craft at CU Boulder and at other colleges and universities,” Ferrucci said in a statement.

When a reporter from The Denver Post messaged the imposter site asking who was behind it, the emailed response ignored the question entirely, instead offering prices from $149 to $299 that could be paid for articles with “quick link integration into content that����ap already resonating with our audience.”

‘It feels incredibly malicious’

Nobody knows who is running the knock-off site, which claims to be an evolution of CU Boulder’s student-run campus news outlet with roots dating back to 1978. The site purports to still be the CUI, but “a little bit different.”

“Our team believes in the freedom to speak, feel and explore who we are,” the imposter website says on its “about” page. “We still honor what CU Independent stood for: strong voices, independent thought and stories that matter. You’ll see new faces and new sections, but the heart stays the same.”

The website lists seemingly fictitious writers and advisers alongside what appear to be AI-generated photos and author biographies. Some of those bios claim the site’s journalists — who are supposed to be college students gaining experience — are “seasoned reporters” with more than a dozen years of experience in the journalism industry. A Google search of those reporters’ names did not turn up results elsewhere.

In at least one case, the image of a real journalist is used. The imposter CUI website features a bio of a writer named that includes a photo of , an

As the site located at their longtime web address keeps posting new AI-generated articles that have nothing to do with CU, the student journalists say they are at their wits’ end. Above all, they worry about their journalistic reputation being tarnished.

“It is clearly being done by someone who knows every legal loophole,” said Jessica Sachs, the CUI’s editor-in-chief during the 2024-2025 academic year and a current CU Boulder journalism student. “It feels incredibly malicious.”

How did a rogue website become the bane of these students’ existence?

The answer isn’t entirely clear, but years of unorganized cybersecurity management likely contributed to the situation, Sachs said.

‘Kind of a security nightmare’

Since the CUI website’s inception — the publication, then still named the Campus Press, became online-only in 2006 — a revolving door of college students had access to the various passwords and permissions for the publication’s WordPress content-management system without much organization or documentation.

“It was kind of a security nightmare,” Sachs said. “I made it my mission to fix everything as much as I could.”

Last year, during Sachs’ tenure as editor-in-chief, she said the cuindependent.com domain registration was about to expire, but nobody knew who the original account-holder was or had the password needed to renew the account. Sachs said she went back five or six generations of editors-in-chief, but could not find the keeper of the domain.

For years, she said, the entire website went down — sometimes for just 24 to 48 hours — whenever the registration lapsed, only to come back online after the unknown account holder paid the bill.

“That was way too stressful,” Sachs said.

To avoid that drama, Sachs enlisted the help of a computer science freshman who spent last summer building a replica of the CUI website, along with its archives, at the cuindependent.org address.

The students thought they had solved their problems. The new website was up and running. The old site vanished for about nine months.

But when Kerkhoff took over as CUI editor-in-chief this academic year, the old .com address came roaring back. Someone had apparently bought up the expired web address. (The current site, like many webpages, is registered anonymously through GoDaddy.)

The old domain featured what appeared to be AI-generated content on a website posting as the student news outlet. Articles on the impersonator site range from “How many albums does Drake have?” to “Why does my hair hurt when I move it another direction?” to “Is Freddie Highmore actually autistic?”

The fake site initially used the real CUI’s trademarked logo and linked to the news organization’s social media pages, but whoever was behind it eventually made their own logo and created fake CUI Instagram and Facebook pages, rendering Kerkhoff’s attempt to report trademark abuse moot.

“Whoever is doing this seems to have a good understanding of media law because they narrowly scrape by with what they can get away with,” Kerkhoff said.

Kerkhoff said she spent her own money hiring a domain broker to try to buy back the .com site to no avail. Out of options, she contacted the , which connected her with a lawyer.

Protecting students’ intellectual property

Attorney Alexandra Bass, who is representing the student newsroom, said copycat websites are becoming increasingly common and the rise of AI further contributes to “the chaos.”

“This can be particularly harmful to student newsrooms whose staff often changes from year to year,” Bass said in a statement. “…Student newsrooms should consider designating a person responsible for domain maintenance and implementing a documented process to manage their domains amid transitions.”

Copycat news sites use AI to mass-produce content quickly, generating revenue from ads and affiliate links, Bass said. It’s not easy to prove the imposter site is generating money, which is why Kerkhoff said the Colorado Bureau of Investigation’s business fraud unit couldn’t take on the case.

Bass advised the student journalists to document instances of public confusion and file a Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy complaint to have the copycat site taken down and, ideally, get the domain transferred back to them.

The CUI is in the process of filing such a complaint (), the student editors said, and they’ve reported the fraudulent website to nearly every entity they can imagine.

The fight, though, has even impacted the CUI’s new .org site. The student reporters’ new site has experienced intermittent problems with security pop-ups and blocked access for some visitors. When Kerkhoff brought the issue to WordPress, she said employees with the content management system told her the CUI’s site was secure.

She believes the repeated reports made by CUI staff against the imposter website are being misattributed to the .org address, triggering those error messages.

Jonathan Gaston-Falk, an attorney with the Student Press Law Center, said the CU Boulder students’ case and others involving AI are difficult to pursue because it’s hard to find an actual human or legal entity against whom to lodge grievances like copyright infringement.

“That����ap increasingly difficult when the lines are blurred as to who is actually running or managing some of these websites,” Gaston-Falk said. “We’re very proud of these student journalists who are stepping up not only to report it but to protect their intellectual property. This student leader (Kerkhoff ) has been absolutely dogged in trying to protect her and her newsroom’s rights here, so we’re very happy about that.”