Patrick Miller filed the lawsuit Wednesday as a proposed class action in U.S. District Court in Denver. The lawsuit alleges UCHealth used Meta’s Pixel tool, which tracks visitor actions, to collect personal information when people clicked on the “Find a Doctor” function, and possibly when they used the patient portal.

The lawsuit didn’t include Meta as a defendant.

The complaint said Pixel collected the terms patients searched, such as specific conditions or symptoms, and combined them with identifying information to build user profiles for advertising and marketing. It then allegedly shared that information with Meta.

“The purpose and result of defendant¶¶Ňőap use of the tracking Pixel was marketing and profits,” the lawsuit said.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act prevents regulated entities, such as hospitals, from disclosing identifiable private information to third parties under most circumstances, unless the patient agrees. The lawsuit argues UCHealth didn’t tell patients it could send their information to Meta.

UCHealth said in a statement that it prioritizes patients’ privacy.

“We disagree with the plaintiffs’ argument and plan to defend ourselves if this issue moves forward,” it said.

Atrium Health, a system in North Carolina, to settle a lawsuit related to its use of Meta’s Pixel. Duke University Health System for $3.7 million.

A against Meta and a telehealth site for erectile dysfunction drugs remains ongoing.

On Saturday morning, two automated speed enforcement camera poles on Avon Road were destroyed, one speed camera was stolen, a light pole was destroyed and a Flock license plate reader camera mounted at that location was stolen.

The light pole replacement is expected to cost the town about $6,500, the speed camera poles will cost an estimated $1,000 apiece; the Flock camera will cost $2,500 and the speed camera will cost $5,000, labor not included.

Those numbers put the crimes, which the police are treating as two separate incidents, at the level of a felony, said Police Chief Greg Daly, and the town is currently investigating. In an effort to receive any information related to these crimes, the town put out a Facebook post about them, which received more than 17,000 comments in the days that followed.

Read more from our partner at .

The wins in Tuesday’s primary amounted to a clean sweep for the outside spending group funded by the state’s largest labor unions, with progressives toppling four candidates backed by a network of largely opaque PACs that spent well over $2 million on the races this year.

The liberal primary victories in races for safe seats reverse, in part, gains made by the centrist organization One Main Street two years ago. That’s when the dark-money group, which doesn’t disclose all of its donors, won nearly every race in which it engaged to support “pragmatic” Democrats.

The latest results came amid an ongoing power struggle within the state legislature’s dominant Democratic Party, which has played out in primary campaigns for several years.

“This is a warning sign to any politician who thinks their political future lies in corporate money rather than the interests of working people across the state,” Dennis Dougherty, the executive director of the Colorado AFL-CIO, which funded the labor PAC, said in a statement Wednesday.

One of the candidates who won two years ago, Rep. Sean Camacho in Denver’s House District 6, fell to progressive challenger Iris Halpern on Tuesday night. Camacho had unseated one of the Capitol’s most left-wing — and controversial — lawmakers in 2024, former Rep. Elisabeth Epps, only to fall himself in another deep-pocketed primary.

Camacho was behind by roughly 1,300 votes as of Wednesday morning, when he conceded. District 6 roughly follows the East Colfax Ave. corridor from the state Capitol to the Aurora border.

His loss will be a blow to moderate Democrats in the legislature, where Camacho was the co-chair of the One Main Street-linked Opportunity Caucus. That group is composed of more business-friendly lawmakers. The caucus has been heavily criticized by more liberal legislators and groups, and Camacho’s loss gave a win to the labor groups, which wanted to knock the caucus back on its heels.

More than $1 million in outside spending poured into the race.

Elsewhere in Denver, Chela Garcia Irlando crushed Andrés Carrera for the soon-to-be-vacant Senate District 34 seat. More than $1.5 million was spent on that race. Most of that came from the unions-versus-One Main Street conflict, though Conservation Colorado also backed Irlando while an outside group funded by sports betting companies came in for Carrera. The seat covers part of downtown and west and northwest Denver, and it attracted national attention, with Irlando endorsed by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and labor icon Dolores Huerta.

Despite the deep spending, Irlando more than doubled Carrera’s vote total as of Wednesday, beating him by nearly 10,000 votes.

In Broomfield, Rep. Kenny Nguyen held off One Main Street-backed challenger Heidi Henkel, who serves on the city’s council. Nguyen narrowly beat Henkel earlier this year for a vacancy appointment to the legislature, and he drew One Main Street’s ire after criticizing the group on Facebook.

In Aurora, Rep. Jamie Jackson — also a vacancy appointee — overcame Anne Keke, who sits on the local school board, despite similar outside spending.

Perhaps the most surprising win of the night came from Gabriel Cervantes in Thornton. He beat Democratic Rep. Jacque Phillips, another Opportunity Caucus member, by nearly 600 votes, despite little outside support and negative attacks about past social media comments.

Like Camacho, Phillips had unseated a sitting lawmaker two years ago with the backing of One Main Street-aligned groups.

In one of One Main Street’s two wins Tuesday, Sarah Woodson cruised to victory in the primary over Rep. Mandy Lindsay. Lindsay, who represents Aurora, received no outside support and fell to Woodson by a roughly 2-to-1 vote margin.

In House District 19, which stretches southeast from Longmont, Jillaire McMillan beat two Democratic opponents for the chance to take on Republican Rep. Dan Woog in November. McMillan received outside support from a group funded by One Main Street.

Outside of metro Denver, another contested Democratic primary to represent Summit County in the House was close and had offered a glimmer of hope for One Main Street. But on Wednesday, Chris Floyd, who is also backed by the group, lost to Consuelo Redhorse. The AP called the race in Redhorse’s favor, with a leading margin of 164 votes as of 4:27 p.m.

Another sitting lawmaker lost on Tuesday. Sen. Lynda Zamora Wilson, who entered the legislature on a vacancy appointment last year, lost to Terri Carver in the Republican primary for a Senate seat in El Paso County. Carver comfortably toppled Zamora Wilson, earning nearly 15,500 votes to double the incumbent’s haul.

“I am super angry about it,” Freudenthal said of her experience on Friday. “PNC is still a mess, but I am closing out my account this afternoon and switching to a different bank.”

In September, FirstBank’s employee owners accepted a $4.1 billion buyout from PNC Bank, and the clock has been ticking on a final transition.

Last weekend, operating systems were switched over, and crews rebranded 95 FirstBank locations, bringing a 63-year Colorado legacy to an end.

The Pittsburgh bank’s motto is “Brilliantly Boring since 1865.” But social media is filled with customers describing an unexpected level of angst and agitation with the transition.

Sandra Jessen and her husband have been loyal customers of Lakewood-based FirstBank since 1979.

She was willing to give PNC Bank a chance, but people within her social circle can’t stop talking about the problems they are having.

“We have friends all over taking their money out of the bank. People are having a horrible time. It is a disaster,” Jessen said. Even her hairdresser was caught up in the chaos.

The couple’s credit cards were frozen, and customer service numbers didn’t work. Cashing a $10 check at their local branch took 20 minutes and required providing two forms of ID, an additional verification via phone, and navigating long lines.

PNC changed routing and account numbers, resulting in direct deposit and bill pay having to be redone. Jessen said she worries about an expected wire transfer from out-of-state getting through, not to mention regular Social Security and pension deposits.

Freudenthal said access to her FirstBank app was blocked for weeks until she agreed to add the PNC app, which she didn’t want to do.

“I’m super angry about it, felt very forced into it, and I didn’t have time to manage finding a new bank,” she said, adding that PNC Bank didn’t provide an easy path for those who wanted to exit.

When she went to draw cash, the ATM didn’t work. She spent half an hour at a branch getting the funds she needed.

The problem wasn’t limited to retail customers. Sharon Hwang, owner of The Wellness Center in Denver, said she followed the detailed protocols PNC Bank had sent her.

Despite that, her business savings account went missing. She could see her checking account, but about $50,000 in savings seemingly disappeared into the ether.

She spent 45 minutes getting passed around a call center where reps were unable to locate her account or explain why it wasn’t visible. The final insult was getting disconnected.

She and her employees also couldn’t activate new PNC business debit cards.

On Friday, she went into a branch, bypassing a line that was eight people long as a business customer. Her savings account was still there. Her access was restored.

“Things are resolved,” she said.

Nextdoor, X, Reddit and Facebook contain multiple posts detailing a litany of problems, from long lines at branches to blocked online access to cards being cut off.

PNC Bank reaffirmed that FirstBank debit cards will function until Sept. 24 and credit cards until Sept. 30. But several customers reported that their cards had stopped working.

Some former BBVA Compass customers said they were having flashbacks from their former bank’s bumpy takeover by PNC Bank in October 2021, which also happened over a weekend.

“PNC’s method is so rapid, crude, and defective that it almost seems intentionally malicious,”

In large bank takeovers, a “flash cut” or rip-off-the-band-aid approach is common. Systems and accounts are switched over during a long weekend.

Compared to going with a phased approach that tackles one group, like commercial accounts and then consumers, or going by geography, say the mountains and then Denver, PNC chose to do everything all at once.

The approach can save money, but the downside is that even small glitches can get amplified and generate thousands of complaints.

With 780,000 accounts, the FirstBank migration was going to be complicated — more so given that FirstBank was running on proprietary technology systems developed in-house.

PNC has spent weeks notifying customers that account numbers would change and detailing what steps they needed to take. Not everyone may have read or understood the messages.

“Our teams continue to assist customers in person, by phone, and online, with additional information available on the PNC FirstBank support page,” said Heidi Hurst, a vice president of regional communications with PNC Bank, in an email.

Many of the individual account questions received “are related to previously shared customer communications that may not yet have been reviewed,” she said.

“These inquiries do not reflect a broader, systemic issue,” Hurst emphasized.

Some former FirstBank customers noted online that their personal transitions went smoothly, and urged patience given the massive scale of the migration.

PNC Bank also prepared for branches getting slammed during the week. It brought in about 600 employees from around the country to provide in-person help.

Many customers of FirstBank chose it because it was local and independent. Its motto was “the Colorado bank for you” until 2017, when it switched to “Banking for good.”

Founded in 1963, it grew to become Colorado’s second-largest bank in deposits after Wells Fargo and the state’s largest independently owned institution.

Logically speaking, PNC has a vested interest in making sure that the transition goes smoothly and that FirstBank customers are happy. And the company has tried to put a positive spin on this week.

“Behind the scenes, it started last weekend when hundreds of folks worked around the clock at PNC headquarters to execute a seamless systems conversion,” Alexander Overstrom, head of retail banking at PNC, .

As that was happening in Pennsylvania, teams across Colorado and Arizona were busy swapping signage and converting the branches.

But PNC Bank, judging by comments made on social media, had already lost support among some customers when it announced in April that it would lay off 777 FirstBank employees.

Those reductions are still coming, and likely didn’t contribute to the problems that customers described.

But cutting so many jobs ahead of the transition may have fostered a perception that a large out-of-state bank focused on the bottom line was taking over a beloved local institution focused on customer service.

For some, the disappointment and frustration were too much. Multiple posts on social media mention finding another financial institution.

Bellco Credit Union, metro Denver’s largest credit union, has seen an increase in consumer account openings. But it is hard to know precisely how much of that is linked to the FirstBank transition, said CEO Doug Ferraro.

“We do know that anecdotally, the branch staff has indicated some activity is directly related,” Ferraro said.

Monica VanBuskirk, who is running for Colorado House District 9 as a Democrat, chose FirstBank because it was one of the few large, local financial institutions that handled campaign accounts.

She heeded the almost daily warnings to switch her account over to PNC Bank. When she tried to do so last week, she found herself trapped in a loop that she couldn’t escape.

“I kept getting stuck at the verification step,” she said. A call that was supposed to provide a verification code instead told her that her account couldn’t be verified.

She received different answers when trying to resolve the problem, including that she had to wait until the transition was complete on Monday.

She held a fundraiser on June 18, a Thursday, where she received paper checks from donors. State campaign rules require those checks to be deposited within five days or by Monday, June 22.

“I went to the FirstBank in Glendale on Monday and spent over an hour waiting in line with 100 of my closest friends,” she said. “I should be out talking to voters and not standing in line.”

With the primary election only days away, she was flying financially blind, uncertain about how much she still had in her campaign account.

The teller couldn’t tell her what transactions had cleared or provide a statement of activity. The best she could do was write her total account balance on a Post-It note.

Eventually, she got to the bottom of the problem. The verification system couldn’t get past the screener on her campaign line, which she used to deal with a high call volume.

Once she got the new account open and deposited the checks, she was told that she could get access to her funds immediately by paying $5.

Or she could wait 24 hours.

For VanBuskirk, the messaging signaled that PNC Bank, despite all the talk of aligned values with FirstBank, was going to foster a different kind of relationship.

“I am closing my account after the campaign,” she said.

VanBuskirk, who is a business owner, said PNC Bank has been actively acquiring banks for a decade. It should have mastered the art of providing smooth and “boring” transitions by now.

“They know what they are doing, and they are deciding to accept a certain amount of pain and customer complaints” to stay within their budget.

If she wins her race, a bill she wants to introduce would require banks to provide uninterrupted account access to customers through any acquisition.

“I think they are going to lose a lot,” she said.

The bulk of the money — nearly $1.3 million — has been spent on Democratic primaries, with a smaller amount spent in Republican races. The Democratic spending has flowed from American Future, a vaguely named state-level political action committee that has reported just one donor — that, in turn, has been bankrolled exclusively by . That super PAC has received $43 million in donations from DraftKings, FanDuel and Fanatics.

Colorado’s gamble on sports betting

Without federal campaign finance reports, it would otherwise be unclear which interests were paying for the mailers and advertisements distributed under American Future's name.

The ads , and contains only vague allusions to Democratic-adjacent policy positions. The state PAC's description of itself provides no clarity, either, detailing its purpose as "supporting Colorado state legislative candidates who focus on pressing issues facing everyday people."

The industry's campaign spending comes barely a month after state lawmakers passed , a first-in-the-nation law that was sharply opposed by the sports-betting industry. The measure, signed into law by Gov. Jared Polis on June 1, limits the number of daily deposits a gambler can make and bans push notifications intended to solicit bets or deposits, among other new regulations.

The spending has not targeted the bill's sponsors, none of whom face primary opponents later this month, and has even supported some lawmakers who voted in favor of SB-131. The companies' PACs have donated to candidates across the political spectrum, including in some races with a clear favorite.

Other groups have been spending big in statehouse primaries this year, with much of it continuing a battle to tilt the Democratic majority in a more moderate or progressive direction.

The sports-betting-aligned state PAC reported nearly $215,000 in donations from its parent group as of June 15, along with $282,000 in spending. But in the weeks since then, it's posted hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional spending, bringing its total spending in Democratic primaries to nearly $1.3 million as of Monday afternoon, according to campaign finance records.

Final totals won't be clear until after June 30, which is primary election day.

On the GOP side, American Conservative Fund, which has also received money exclusively from Win for America, has donated $250,000 to a state-level PAC supporting Republican statehouse candidates. That PAC is funded by other outside business groups as well.

Like its Democratic counterpart, lists several Republican-sounding buzzwords among its priorities, with no additional information about its backers.

Messages sent to the three gambling companies were not returned Monday. Nathan Click, a spokesman for American Future, referred The Post to a previous statement, first sent to Axios in April. In that statement, the PAC said it was seeking candidates "who will thoughtfully approach regulation and ensure legal sports betting can continue to support communities through billions in tax revenue and jobs across America."

But the ubiquitous spread of sports betting has raised significant regulator interest amid growing fears about problem gambling, The Denver Post reported in a recent special series.

Since Colorado voters legalized the practice in 2020, residents have wagered more than $30.6 billion on games and athletes. More than $154 million has been collected in taxes, much of it for water-focused preservation and conservation projects. At the same time, more than 45,000 people in the state have called a hotline set up for gamblers who may need help, and 1,245 are now on the self-exclusion list that bans them from betting for at least five years.

Sen. Matt Ball, a Denver Democrat who sponsored SB-131 earlier this year, said he wasn't surprised the industry was getting directly involved in campaigns. He said the industry did not like SB-131 and had been active in several other states. that the federal PAC planned to spend money in as many as 15 states by November

Ball said he'd heard that lawmakers backing sports-betting regulations in other states had faced threats that the industry would back their primary opponents. But none of SB-131's sponsors has a primary challenger this year, and the Democratic primaries in which the companies' PACs are participating are in mostly safe blue seats located in the metro Denver.

"I'm not surprised that they're spending this directly," Ball said — but how they're spending has surprised him.

"Some of it is a little hard to read," he said. "I don't understand why they are spending in the races they are spending in, because they are spending in races across the political spectrum."

On the Democratic side, the money has been spent on roughly a dozen primary candidates, most of them running for soon-to-be-empty seats.

The PAC cannot coordinate with candidates' campaigns, and it's unclear why the gambling PAC chose the candidates that it did. While several Democratic hopefuls are moderates and have been backed by other outside business interests, at least two are progressives endorsed by the left-wing Working Families Party. Some are in contentious races, while others are comfortable favorites.

The two Working Families Party-endorsed candidates, Justine Sandoval and Gena Ozols, have both released statements on social media noting that the mailers came from an outside group that wasn't authorized by their campaigns.

Sandoval, who is running for a Denver-based House seat and has received more support from the sports-betting PAC than nearly any other candidate, said she was unfamiliar with the group's backers until recently.

Her campaign has raised $25,000 — more than $100,000 less than what American Future has spent to support her from the outside against primary opponent Sterling Thomas Simms. Sandoval said she was generally opposed to unrestricted outside spending.

She met with DraftKing's lobbyist in March or April, and the lobbyist was "curious" about her position on sports betting. She wasn't opposed to gambling, she said, but was concerned about it being unregulated. She didn't hear anything else from the group.

Then the mailers and advertisements started flowing.

Sandoval figured that the group was backing her because its leaders thought she'd win. She also noted that the district she hopes to represent, House District 5, will soon include all three of Denver's largest sports venues if the Broncos build a stadium in Burnham Yard.

"So, there's some kind of investment thought there," she said.

Ball speculated that the spending was a "goodwill" donation in support of candidates who are either likely to win in contested races or don't have a serious primary challenge at all. Three of the Democratic candidates that American Future is supporting are incumbents seeking a return to office. While they each have primary challengers, all are expected to comfortably win their contests later this month. And all three voted in favor of SB-131.

State Sen. Adrienne Benavidez, who has received more than $150,000 in outside support from American Future, said she wasn't familiar with the group or its funders until informed by a reporter Monday morning. She said she'd never had contact with the PAC or the companies supporting it.

She welcomed support from anyone, she said, and was pleased that the ads had been positive support for her, rather than negative against her opponent, Alex Ryckman.

"It was totally out of the blue," said Benavidez, who previously served in the House before earning a vacancy appointment to the Senate earlier this year. "I don't know anything about them. The contributions coming from those companies — I was not aware until you just told me that. I've never had any contact with them, I know nothing."

Updated at 9:56 a.m. June 21, 2026: This article was updated to include additional campaign spending by American Future.

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 AndrĂ©s 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¶¶Ňőap 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¶¶Ňőap 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¶¶Ňőap 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.