A Manhattan federal jury deliberated for four days before reaching its decision Wednesday in the closely watched case, which gave fans the equivalent of a backstage pass to a business that dominates live entertainment in the U.S. and beyond.

“Live Nation is a monopolist and has abused its monopoly power to squeeze out competition, jack up ticket prices, stifle artists and make it harder for fans to see their favorite artists,” Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said in a statement.

The judge overseeing the trial told lawyers on both sides to meet with one another “and the United States” to provide a joint letter proposing a schedule for motions and how the remedies phase of the case would occur. He told them to deliver it by late next week.

The trial brought Live Nation , where he was questioned about matters including the company’s  in 2022. Rapino blamed a cyberattack.

The proceedings also aired a Live Nation employee’s  to another employee declaring some prices “outrageous,” calling customers “so stupid” and boasting that the company was “robbing them blind, baby.” The employee, Benjamin Baker, who has since been promoted to a position as a ticketing executive,  that the messages were “very immature and unacceptable.”

Live Nation Entertainment owns, operates, controls booking for or has an equity interest in hundreds of venues. Its subsidiary Ticketmaster is widely considered to be the world’s largest ticket-seller for live events. Its lawyers did not immediately comment as they left the courthouse, but said a statement would be issued shortly.

The verdict could cost Live Nation and Ticketmaster hundreds of millions of dollars, just for the $1.72 per ticket that the jury found Ticketmaster had overcharged consumers in 22 states. The companies could also be assessed penalties. In addition, sanctions could result in court orders that they divest themselves of some entities, including venues such as amphitheaters that they own.

The civil case, , accused Live Nation of using its reach to smother competition — by blocking venues from using multiple ticket sellers, for example.

“It is time to hold them accountable,” Jeffrey Kessler, an attorney for the states, said in a closing argument, calling Live Nation a “monopolistic bully” that drove up prices for ticket buyers.

Live Nation insisted it����ap not a monopoly, saying that artists, sports teams and venues decide prices and ticketing practices. A company lawyer insisted its size was simply a function of excellence and effort.

“Success is not against the antitrust laws in the United States,” attorney David Marriott said in his summation.

Ticketmaster was established in 1976 and merged with Live Nation in 2010. The company now controls of 86% of the market for concerts and 73% of the overall market when sports events are included, according to Kessler.

Ticketmaster has long drawn ire from fans and some artists. Grunge rock titans Pearl Jam battled the business in the 1990s, even filing an anti-monopoly complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice, which declined to bring a case then.

Decades later, the Justice Department, joined by Colorado and dozens of states, brought the current lawsuit during Democratic former President Joe Biden’s administration. Days into the trial, Republican President Donald Trump’s administration announced it was settling its claims against Live Nation.

The a cap on service fees at some amphitheaters, plus some new ticket-selling options for promoters and venues — potentially allowing, but not requiring, them to open doors to Ticketmaster competitors such as SeatGeek or AXS. But the settlement doesn’t force Live Nation to split from Ticketmaster.

A handful of the states . But more than 30 pressed ahead with the trial, saying the federal government hadn’t gotten enough concessions from Live Nation.

“State attorneys general stood strong and continued this case without the federal government because we believed that concertgoers deserved a fair trial and a fair deal,” Weiser said. “Live Nation is being held to account for violating state and federal antitrust laws, and I’ll continue to fight to break up their monopoly, restore competition and get money back for concertgoers.”

New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport said in a release that the “landmark jury verdict in our case against Live Nation confirms what we have said since the start of our case: For far too long, Live Nation has illegally profited from its monopoly at the expense of hardworking New Jerseyans.”

“Live Nation’s illegal, anti-competitive practices have caused immense damage in our state, exploiting consumers by driving up the price of tickets and making it harder for fans to see their favorite artists,” she added.

New York Attorney General Letitia James called the verdict “a landmark victory in our ongoing work to protect our economy and New Yorkers’ wallets from harmful monopolies.”

After the victory, Kessler would not say specifically what the states will seek in the next phase of the litigation, which was expected to involve another lengthy proceeding with witnesses before penalties are decided on.

But he celebrated the moment.

“It����ap a great day for consumers. This case is a tribute to the 34 states and the District of Columbia who carried this case forward,” he said.

The data provides detailed insights into the dramatic effects of the Trump administration’s mass arrest and deportation efforts in the state and across the country — what one immigration attorney previously described as the federal government’s “deportation machine.”

The share of arrestees who have criminal convictions has plummeted, the data shows, while deportations of those with no criminal history have surged, despite federal officials’ claims that they’re pursuing the The Denver Post analyzed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement data . It included arrests in the full year ending Jan. 20, the anniversary of the start of Trump’s second term.

Of the thousands arrested in the state, 78% had a listed date of departure — indicating that they’d already been removed from the United States.

The people arrested in Colorado came from more than 80 countries spread across five continents. Two thousand and one came from Mexico and 782 from Venezuela. Among others, 316 were from Guatemala, 22 from China, a dozen from Afghanistan and four from the United Kingdom.

They ranged in age from a 91-year-old Mexican man deported last year to two children who were, at most, a  year old; one of them has also been deported, the data shows. At least 121 people were younger than 18. Ten of the arrestees were Iranians, all arrested within days of the in June.

Five Venezuelans were removed under the statute created by the Alien Enemies Act, the 18th-century law that . All five were transferred to a Texas facility and then were removed on March 15, 2025, the data set shows. The men then disappear from the data. On that same day, nearly 300 people were sent to the prison in El Salvador from the same Texas detention center, .

In the 12 months prior to Trump’s inauguration in January 2025, 1,202 immigrants without legal status were arrested in Colorado. More than 58% of them had prior criminal convictions, while nearly 24% more had pending charges. Only 17.7% had no criminal history.

Looking at the Trump-era arrests, those trends flipped. Of the 4,750 people arrested over the ensuing 12 months, the largest group — 38% — had no criminal history, compared to nearly 35% with prior convictions and 26% with pending charges.

Surge in ICE presence, arrests

The Post analyzed ICE arrest and detention data obtained and released in full by the , which is composed of researchers and lawyers based primarily at the University of California, Berkeley.

For the purposes of its analysis, The Post examined arrests that occurred in Colorado during the 12-month period that began when Trump returned to office on Jan. 20, 2025, and compared it to arrests made during President Joe Biden’s final year in office.

The Deportation Data Project, using data obtained from public records requests, has released four broad batches of ICE data detailing arrests and detentions since Trump’s return to office. ICE has released far more limited information on its operations, often focusing on arrests of immigrants with criminal backgrounds.

Using unique identifiers attached to each arrestee, The Post excluded a number of apparent duplicate arrests from its analysis. In both 2024 and 2025, The Post examined only the arrests that the data identified as occurring in Colorado or at a specific location within the state.

The Post used publicly available information and multiple datasets to match more than a dozen specific arrests — of a Colombian family from Durango; of a Brazilian-born college student on I-70; of a Peruvian school teacher and her family; of a who later died in a Mississippi detention center — to corresponding entries in the Berkeley data.

The surge in arrests came as ICE has significantly ramped up its presence in the state. Gregory Davies, a senior ICE official in Denver, testified in court last month that the number of deportation officers in the area has more than doubled — to roughly 200 — since Trump’s return to office. The Denver field office also has responsibility for Wyoming.

A recent of internal ICE data identified more than 5,200 ICE arrests in Colorado and Wyoming between Trump’s inauguration and mid-December. In the Denver area, the Times found, arrests peaked last summer and have declined since.

The Post’s analysis found a similar trend in Colorado: There were more than 500 arrests in both June and July, averaging more than 17 per day. Over the fall and winter, they dropped, averaging between 12 and 14 per day.

The ICE detention center in Aurora has flexed its capacity to the maximum possible and can now hold more than 1,500 detainees, according to federal contracting records. When Trump was inaugurated, the facility held just over 1,000 people. By the end of the year, its daily population regularly topped 1,400, the Berkeley data shows.

Federal officials have also pursued plans to open one or more additional detention facilities in Colorado.

In an unsigned statement Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security said the data — which was obtained by the data project through public records requests — “is not accurate.” An unidentified media office representative did not say what part of the data was incorrect and did not directly address questions about The Post’s findings.

“The facts are: ICE is targeting criminal illegal aliens including murderers, rapists, criminals, gang members and more,” the DHS representative wrote in an email to The Post. “Nearly 70% of ICE arrests nationwide are of illegal aliens charged or convicted of a crime in the U.S.”

Numbers are ‘not at all surprising’

In October, attorneys suing ICE for its arrest practices questioned the now-former head of ICE’s Denver field office about a prior Post analysis of the Berkeley data. That official, Robert Guadian, said he didn’t know exact numbers but didn’t dispute The Post’s findings.

Davies, the other senior official, testified last month that the agency now averages between 15 and 25 arrests per day. The Post’s analysis shows ICE has arrested just under 15 people per day on average since late January of this year and 13 per day since the start of Trump’s term.

The findings also align with what immigrant-rights advocates and immigration attorneys are seeing in real time.

“They’re not at all surprising,” Laura Lunn, an immigration attorney with the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network, said of the numbers. “They’re (emotionally) deflating, but not surprising.”

“Obviously, so much has happened since this administration took over, but I think a lot of folks don’t necessarily remember that Trump announced Operation Aurora shortly (before) he took office,” she continued. “Communities in Denver and Aurora were targeted for mass enforcement actions. We saw military-grade vehicles rolling down the streets of Denver before we saw the same thing happening in L.A., Chicago, Minneapolis.”

The surge in arrests has led to an accompanying growth in deportations, particularly as federal officials have moved to keep immigrants detained indefinitely by, among other things, granting bail far less often to longtime residents of the United States.

Over the past year, according to earlier Post reporting, an unprecedented number of Aurora detainees have been granted voluntary departures — essentially deportations without a more punitive court order. More than 1,700 people have requested voluntary removals from the facility since the start of 2025, according to — a level unparalleled by any period since the researchers began tracking it nearly 30 years ago.

Of the 4,750 people arrested in Colorado during Trump’s first year back in office, 3,710 have already left the United States, the Berkeley data shows.

More than 62% of those arrested and removed last year had never been convicted of a crime, while more than a third had no criminal history.

U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly ruled late Wednesday that the government cannot send the former death row inmates to the “Supermax” federal prison in Florence, Colorado, because it likely would violate their Fifth Amendment rights to due process.

Kelly cited evidence that officials from the Republican administration “made it clear” to the federal Bureau of Prisons that the inmates had to be sent to ADX Florence — “administrative maximum” — to punish them because Democratic President Joe Biden had commuted their death sentences.

“At least for now, they will remain serving life sentences for their heinous crimes where they are currently imprisoned,” wrote Kelly, who was nominated to the bench by President Donald Trump.

In December 2024, less than a month before Trump returned to the White House, Biden on federal death row, converting their punishments to life imprisonment.

On his first day back in office, Trump issued an executive order directing Attorney General Pam Bondi to house the 37 inmates “in conditions consistent with the monstrosity of their crimes and the threats they pose.”

Twenty of the 37 inmates are plaintiffs in the lawsuit before Kelly, who issued a preliminary injunction blocking their transfers to Florence while the lawsuit proceeds. All were incarcerated in Terre Haute, Indiana, when Biden commuted their death sentences.

Government lawyers argued that the bureau has broad authority to decide what facilities the inmates should be redesignated for after their commutations.

“BOP’s designation decisions are within its exclusive purview and are intended to preserve the safety of inmates, employees, and surrounding communities,” .

The judge concluded that the inmates have not had a meaningful opportunity to challenge their redesignations because it appears the outcome of the review process was predetermined.

“But the Constitution requires that whenever the government seeks to deprive a person of a liberty or property interest that the Due Process Clause protects — whether that person is a notorious prisoner or a law-abiding citizen — the process it provides cannot be a sham,” Kelly wrote.

The Florence prison has housed some of the most notorious criminals in federal custody, including Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. The prison is “unmatched in its draconian conditions,” the inmates’ attorneys argued.

“The categorical redesignations challenged here deprived Plaintiffs of an opportunity to show why they should not be condemned to a life bereft of human contact, in a cell the size of a parking spot, where they will see nothing out the window but a strip of sky,” .

Government attorneys said other courts have held that the conditions are not objectively cruel and unusual.

“Plaintiffs fail to show that conditions at ADX are atypical for them,” they wrote.

WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — A Delaware man who was once married to former first lady Jill Biden decades ago remains in jail on  as authorities investigate the death of his wife, who was found unresponsive in their home late last year.

William Stevenson, 77, of Wilmington was charged Monday in a grand jury indictment with killing his wife, Linda Stevenson, 64, on Dec. 28. He has remained in jail after failing to post $500,000 bail, authorities said. Investigators have not disclosed a motive.

Police say they were called to the couple’s home shortly after 11 p.m. for a reported domestic dispute and found a woman unresponsive in the living room, according to a previous news release. Life-saving measures were unsuccessful.

Stevenson was charged following a weekslong investigation by detectives in the Delaware Department of Justice. It was not immediately clear whether Stevenson has an attorney. The Associated Press left a voicemail at a phone number and sent emails to addresses associated with him seeking comment. Court records made public so far do not list a defense lawyer, and charging documents detailing the allegations have not been released.

Linda Stevenson ran a bookkeeping business and was described in her obituary as a family-oriented mother and grandmother and a Philadelphia Eagles fan. The obituary does not mention her husband.

In a statement posted on Facebook, Linda Stevenson’s daughter Christine Mae described her mother as an avid reader and a dedicated runner. The mother-daughter duo would participate in a monthly 5k to support local charities, she wrote.

“One hug from her and all your worries would disappear,” Mae wrote. “The pain of losing her is paralyzing and the emptiness in my heart is an abyss.”

In her post, Mae also expressed frustration that coverage of the case has focused on Stevenson’s past marriage to Jill Biden rather than on her mother’s life. She said Linda Stevenson “deserves her own story” and should not be reduced to being described in relation to her husband’s former spouse.

Mae was not available for further comment.

Stevenson was married to Jill Biden from 1970 to 1975. Jill Biden married U.S. Sen. Joe Biden in 1977. He served as U.S. president from January 2021 to January 2025. A spokesperson for former U.S. President Joe Biden and first lady said Jill Biden declined to comment on Monday.

William Stevenson founded the Stone Balloon, a popular music venue in Newark, Delaware, in the early 1970s.

In her 2019 memoir, Jill Biden wrote about meeting Stevenson while she was a student at the University of Delaware and marrying him at age 18.

Jill Biden said she fell in love with a “tall ex-football player” who drove a yellow Camaro and who her parents “loved.” She described him as charismatic and entrepreneurial and wrote that she believed she had found a partnership “built on loyalty and devotion.”

“Looking back, it may seem like that relationship was a mistake of youth,” she wrote, adding that there was a time when she truly believed they were “destined for each other.”

Jill Biden wrote that the marriage later unraveled as they grew in different directions, calling its collapse “the biggest disappointment of my young life.”

She wrote that she ultimately decided not to “settle for a counterfeit love.” She said that the divorce underscored for her the importance of financial independence, a lesson she said she later passed on to her daughters and to young women she taught.

In the memoir, Jill Biden wrote that she had “absolutely no interest in politics” at the time she married her first husband, but that Stevenson became increasingly engaged in the long-shot 1972 U.S. Senate campaign of Joe Biden. She wrote that she began seeing campaign materials at their home and attended the election-night celebration, where she met Biden’s first wife, Neilia.

In a 2024 interview with the conservative outlet Newsmax, Stevenson criticized Jill Biden and described their divorce as contentious, calling her “bitter” and “nasty.”

Dale reported from Philadelphia. Willingham reported from Boston.

Joe Oltmann, who filed his candidacy paperwork Monday night, now seeks to participate in an electoral system that he has repeatedly tried to undermine.

He is the 22nd Republican actively seeking to earn the party’s nomination in June. It’s the largest gubernatorial primary field for a major party in Colorado this century, surpassing the GOP’s previous records set first in 2018, and then again in 2022 — and it comes as the party hopes to break Democrats’ electoral dominance in the state.

That field will almost certainly narrow in the coming months; four Republicans who’d filed have already dropped out. No more than four are likely to make it onto the ballot — either through the state assembly or by gathering signatures — for the summer primary, said Dick Wadhams, the Colorado GOP’s former chairman.

The size of the primary field doesn’t really matter, he said, because few candidates will actually end up in front of voters. Eighteen candidates filed ahead of the 2022 race, for instance, but .

On the Democratic side, a smaller field of seven active candidates is headlined by Attorney General Phil Weiser and U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet. Polis is term-limited from running again.

For 2026, Wadhams counted only a half-dozen or so Republican candidates whom he considered “credible,” a qualifier that Wadhams said he used “very, very loosely”: Oltmann, state Sens. Barbara Kirkmeyer and Mark Baisley, state Rep. Scott Bottoms, ministry leader Victor Marx, Teller County Sheriff Jason Mikesell and former Congressman Greg Lopez.

Wadhams said that other than Kirkmeyer, all of those candidates had either supported election conspiracies or a pardon for Tina Peters, the former Mesa County clerk now serving a nine-year sentence for convictions related to providing unauthorized access to voting equipment.

Oltmann, of Castle Rock, has repeatedly — and falsely — claimed that the 2020 presidential election was not won by Democrat Joe Biden, while calling for the hanging of political opponents. He previously said he wanted to dismember some opponents to send a message, , before adding that he was joking.

In his Dec. 26 announcement video, Oltmann baselessly claimed that Democrats, who have won control of the state amid demographic shifts and anti-Trump sentiment, were in power in Colorado only because of election fraud.

He said Polis and Secretary of State Jena Griswold, along with 9News anchor Kyle Clark, were part of a “synagogue of Satan.” Polis and Griswold are both Jewish.

In his announcement, Oltmann painted an apocalyptic picture of the state and said he hoped that three of its elected leaders — Polis, Griswold and Weiser — would all be imprisoned. He pledged to eliminate property taxes, to focus on the “have-nots” and to pardon Peters, whom President Donald Trump has also sought to release by issuing a federal pardon that legal experts say can’t clear Peters of state convictions.

Oltmann’s decision to join the field is an example of “extreme candidates” from either major party “who file to run but will go nowhere,” predicted Kristi Burton Brown, another former state GOP chair. She now sits on .

She said the size of the Republican primary field was a consequence of Republicans’ difficulties winning statewide races in Colorado. Democrats have won all four constitutional elected offices for two straight election cycles.

Burton Brown said it “might be a good idea moving forward” to require candidates to do more than just submit paperwork to run for office. That might include a monetary requirement: She said she didn’t support charging candidates significant sums but thought that “requiring some skin in the game” could prevent “unreasonable primaries.”

The 2026 election comes as state and national Democrats search for a path forward after Trump’s reelection last year.

Approval polling for leading Colorado Democrats has sagged this year, and voters here hold unfavorable views of both the Democratic and Republican parties that are roughly equal, .

Wadhams said that the odds were “very difficult” for any Republican gubernatorial candidate next year. While approval for Polis and other Democrats has declined, support for the Republican standard-bearer — Trump — is far lower in the state. In last year’s election, Colorado was a largely blue island in a broader national red wave.

To have a real shot of winning in 2026, Wadhams argued, the GOP needed to nominate someone for governor who could sidestep anti-Trump sentiment and press on the issues driving voter discontent. Running more divisive candidates in a blue state, he warned, would risk harming Republicans’ chances in down-ballot races the statehouse or in races for Congress.

“There seems to be an opening for Republicans we haven’t seen for a while,” he said. “But that opening will only exist if we have candidates who won’t get pulled into this conspiracy stuff and this Tina Peters stuff. Because those are nonstarters. They’re sure losers.”

Polis asked the federal government to reconsider the decision — disclosed to states last month — in sent Wednesday to U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. The program, known as IRS Direct File, allowed users to file their taxes with pre-filled tax forms, such as W-2s, free of cost.

It’s had a limited rollout since 2024, with Colorado slated to join the program this coming year.

In his letter, Polis highlighted that found 94% of users said the experience with the federal tool was “above average” or “excellent.” In Colorado, it was expected to save taxpayers $140 million per year while helping them to secure $80 million in federal tax credits, according to a report by the progressive nonprofit , while saving individuals hours of work.

“Direct File offered a free, efficient alternative that saved taxpayers both time and money, making government more efficient and reducing taxpayer errors,” Polis wrote in his letter to Bessent. “… There is no substitute for Direct File and we urge Treasury to look again at the results and reconsider their decision, given how successful direct file was.”

The Direct File program was created as part of the Inflation Reduction Act signed into law by former President Joe Biden in 2022. The program immediately faced intense blowback from Republican lawmakers and commercial tax preparation companies, who complained that it wasted taxpayer money by replicating existing private-sector services.

Several companies offer free filing services, though they make billions from complicated tax-filing services.

The program has been put on hold in the first year of President Donald Trump’s return to office.

In 2024, the program’s first year, about 141,000 taxpayers across eight states filed their taxes through the program, out of about 423,000 who logged in. This year, the number of filers increased to about 297,000 taxpayers in 25 states, out of 751,000 who logged into the services, though Polis noted that that happened despite uncertainty over the program and no marketing budget for it.

The federal decision won’t affect Colorado’s that allows individuals to file their state income tax returns for free.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

“This issue absolutely transcends politics,” the official, Boulder County Clerk Molly Fitzpatrick, said during a press call. “It is about right and wrong, lawfulness and accountability, and not creating further damage to the integrity of our elections or escalating opportunities for threats against election officials.”

The call from the Colorado County Clerks Association, delivered in an online news conference Tuesday morning, joins letters from the state’s attorney general, Phil Weiser, and secretary of state, Jena Griswold, who similarly asked that Peters remain in Colorado for the remainder of her nine-year sentence.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons requested the former clerk’s transfer earlier this month. Weiser warned late last week that the transfer request may be a pretext to illegally release Peters.

The governor has not yet indicated how the state would respond to the request. His office did not answer specific questions about it last week, nor did his staff address them when asked again Tuesday.

In a new statement largely focused on the state’s election system, Polis spokeswoman Shelby Wieman said Polis “welcomes an opportunity to meet with the clerks to hear from them directly.”

“Governor Polis takes his responsibilities seriously and has been clear that he will take threats from the federal government head-on — especially when they undermine our democracy — which is why we have vigorously defended Colorado’s values during this turbulent time,” Wieman wrote.

A spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Corrections, which received the letter, has said only that the request was under review.

A former Mesa County clerk, Peters was convicted last year on several charges related to providing unauthorized access to voting equipment. She became a prominent supporter of President Donald Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election, which Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden.

Since his return to office, Trump, a Republican, has repeatedly called for Peters’ release and promised “harsh measures” against Colorado if the state didn’t comply. Ed Martin, the Justice Department’s pardon attorney, recently said that while the federal government has “to work with Colorado” to secure Peters’ release, the federal government was putting “the right kind of pressure” on the state, which is led by Democratic officials.

Wieman did not respond to questions about Martin’s remarks.

In his letter to the Corrections Department, William K. Marshall III, the director of the federal prisons bureau, wrote that the request would “allow Ms. Peters to serve her existing state sentence within BOP custody as the conditions that she is currently confined in … are not conducive to the factors involved in her case.”

A full copy of the letter was obtained by The Denver Post. Separately, in response to a records request, the state DOC provided a redacted copy this week, with Marshall’s brief explanation for the request blacked out. The DOC said it had withheld the information because it was “contrary to public interest,” citing a related exemption in state law.

The clerks first sent a letter to Polis last week, asking him for a meeting and to reject the request. The governor has not yet responded to that letter, Fitzpatrick said, prompting Tuesday’s call.

The clerks from Denver, Jackson, Mesa, Routt and Kiowa counties also spoke. Several from the group warned about increased threats to election workers.

“I am asking you directly, Gov. Polis: Do not release her to federal custody,” Routt County Clerk Jenny Thomas said. “She has shown no remorse and will likely push others to act illegally if given the opportunity. Doing the right thing still matters. Uphold the justice that was earned under Colorado law. Keep her in Colorado custody. If you don’t, you are telling every clerk from this state that the threats we face don’t matter, that accountability is negotiable.”

Matt Crane, the executive director of the clerks association, said in an interview that clerks had “heard some smoke” that Peters may be transferred. He declined to describe what specifically prompted that concern.

“There was a lot of pressure coming from the (Trump) administration and from the right, and the governor was being silent on it,” Crane said. “And the silence is deafening. And it’s even more deafening now.”

Peters, who is incarcerated at the La Vista Correctional Facility in Pueblo, was placed in solitary confinement last week after she raised concerns about her safety, according to a notice her attorney filed with a federal judge on Nov. 21.

Her lawyers had earlier claimed that her health was deteriorating, and Peters underwent blood tests and a chest X-ray to check for lung cancer earlier this month. The results of those tests had not been returned as of last week, her attorney, John Case, wrote.

Led by the  the new organization wants to strengthen the state’s position as a national leader in the industry. The foundation is the nonprofit, educational arm of the Colorado Chamber of Commerce.

The Aerospace & Defense Alliance is an initiative of the chamber’s “Vision 2033: Blueprint for Colorado’s Future.” The plan grew out of talking to chambers of commerce around the state over two years and an analysis by economists of Colorado’s economy and business climate.

The blueprint looks at challenges and areas where Colorado is competitive, said Rachel Beck, executive director of the chamber foundation. “We have some tailwinds and one of those was aerospace.”

Colorado’s aerospace industry is the country’s second-largest, behind only California. The state has the most aerospace employees per capita in the nation. Approximately 2,000 aerospace businesses employ 55,000 people directly and another 184,000 directly, according to the

Nearly $23 billion in federal contracts went to Colorado aerospace and defense companies from July 1, 2023, to June 30, 2024.

Beck said the aim of the new space alliance is to ensure that Colorado’s aerospace and defense industries continue to be strong and grow. The group, which includes industry representatives, wants to make sure Colorado’s interests are known in Washington, D.C.

“We want to make sure that those companies stay here, they come here, they grow here and they don’t go to other states instead,” she said.

U.S. Space Command is one that’s getting away. President Donald Trump announced in September that he will move the command to Huntsville, Ala., the spot he chose during his first term as president. Joe Biden had reversed Trump’s decision and declared Colorado Springs as the command’s permanent home.

Losing Space Command “was a bit of a red flag,” Beck said.

The Air Force cited cost and other factors in 2021 when it identified Army Redstone Arsenal in Alabama as the preferred location for the new U.S. Space Command.

But Trump also raised politics when he said one of the factors in his decision was that voters in Colorado mostly vote by mail. He has said he wants to calling them “corrupt.”

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser is suing over the Trump administration’s decision.

“We think the data showed that Colorado was the best place for Space Command,” Beck said. “I think that the business community and the state did a great job of pulling together to advocate for that. It’s clear to me that the industry does have a lot of advocates and a lot of allies who understand how important the industry is here.”

Beck said the Colorado Chamber Foundation doesn’t intend to duplicate the work being done by other advocates, including the and the. She said folks in the industry expressed the need to communicate more with people at the federal level about “what����ap happening in Colorado and what we bring to the table.”

The alliance will be headed by Christie Lee, director of state and local affairs at United Launch Alliance, and Chad Vorthmann, government relations representative at Lockheed Martin Space.

One of the first plans is to work with economists on a comprehensive analysis of Colorado’s aerospace and defense industries.

Colorado will distribute $54 million to fund rebates over the next few years as part of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which was passed by Congress and signed by then-President Joe Biden.

Although President Donald Trump has moved to retract federal money from many Biden administration programs, especially in Democrat-controlled states like Colorado, this funding remains intact, and Colorado is one of about a dozen states that have announced it will spend the money in the coming year, said Will Toor, executive director of the , which will oversee the grant money.

“We think this is going to be a really significant rebate to help a lot of people across this state make upgrades that will make their homes healthier and more comfortable while reducing our emissions,” Toor said.

A 2022 study led by found that the methane leaking from stoves that burn natural gas inside American homes released a comparable amount of carbon dioxide emissions as 500,000 gasoline-powered cars on the roads. The researchers estimated that natural gas stoves emit up to 1.3% of the gas they use as unburned methane, according to the study published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology.

Home methane leaks from gas stoves and water heaters expose people to pollutants that can cause various respiratory diseases. In 2023, another Stanford study determined cooking with a gas stove in your kitchen can emit as much benzene into a home as second-hand tobacco smoke, depending on ventilation and the size of the house.

The rebates are part of Colorado’s overall strategy to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050, cutting the state’s role in and climate change.

Program participants in Colorado can receive up to $14,000 in rebates to offset the costs of electric kitchen ranges, heat pumps, heat-pump water heaters and the electrical wiring necessary to install those items. Participants must be low- to middle-income earners, based on their area media income.

To participate, Coloradans must first submit an online application to verify their income, said Raine Queenan, the energy office’s senior program manager for home electrification and appliance rebates.

Once residents receives approval, they can contact a registered contractor, who will conduct a home assessment and submit a plan for approval. The contractor will then subtract the approved rebate amount from the homeowner’s total cost for a project, and the money will be paid to the contractor, Queenan said. So far, 45 contractors have been certified to participate.

The energy office has measures in place to eliminate price inflation from contractors, including two routine audits throughout the application process, Queenan said.

And Toor said consumers will notice if contractors are inflating prices because not every customer will qualify for a rebate, and people will discover it if some are being quoted different prices, he said.

“Consumers will notice if one contractor is jacking up their prices,” he said. “It’s a little harder to jack up prices if you’re only jacking them up for some of your customers.”

To learn more about the rebates, visit .

The informed the academy, located north of Colorado Springs, in mid-October that it would conduct a review of its academic programs after an alumnus filed a complaint. The commission said it would give the school 30 days to respond to the complaint, according to a copy of the Oct. 14 letter shared with The Denver Post.

“Upon initial review of your complaint, HLC determined that the matter regarding United States Air Force Academy raises potential concerns regarding the institution’s compliance with the Criteria for Accreditation,” associate general counsel Robert Rucker wrote.

Retired Col. Kent Murphy, who filed the complaint, and other concerned alumni and former faculty told The Post they believe the academy is losing too many civilian Ph.D.-level instructors without the ability to fully replace them with military members who hold doctoral degrees and have the same teaching experience.

That means larger class sizes with professors and instructors taking higher class loads each semester, they said. And they fear the reductions could eventually lead the academy to reduce the number of courses it offers and eventually eliminate some academic majors.

Murphy, a 1980 academy graduate who served 25 years as an Air Force surgeon and a volunteer adviser to cadets studying pre-med, filed the complaint in October after hearing reports of civilian faculty members being let go or voluntarily leaving because of a constant threat of losing their jobs. Murphy said he fears the quality of education, particularly in the STEM fields, is suffering due to the departures.

Murphy said he hopes the Higher Learning Commission’s inquiry will get the attention of , the academy’s superintendent.

“They’re serious about this. They’re concerned. We are concerned,” Murphy said of the commission’s inquiry. “The superintendent thinks he can operate with impunity because of the current situation in the United States.”

Losing accreditation would not force the Air Force Academy to close, but it would deliver a serious blow to an institution that is widely regarded as one of the best universities in the United States. The academy already competes with the other military academies as well as Ivy League schools for the nation’s brightest students.

Bauernfeind declined The Post’s request for an interview, and Capt. Megan Morrissey, an academy spokeswoman, said officials were not able to answer a list of questions submitted by the newspaper, citing the government shutdown.

Morrissey acknowledged the Air Force Academy had received communication from the commission and intended to respond. The academy is complying with the commission’s “assumed practices for higher education,” she wrote in an email. “We welcome the opportunity to work collaboratively with HLC, addressing any concerns and demonstrating our commitment to excellence in education.”

It is unclear how many faculty members have left since President Donald Trump returned to office in January and how many have been replaced.

However, in , the academy reported that, as part of the civilian workforce reduction, it would defund 140 positions, and 104 of them were already vacant or set to be vacated through the federal , which offered buyouts to federal employees. The news release did not explain whether the 140 positions marked for elimination would come from the faculty, administrative roles or both. Eleven of the 36 remaining people whose positions were to be cut were reassigned to new jobs on campus.

In addition, 25 faculty members left the academy before the school year began, and 19 military faculty members were added, the news release said. It did not clarify whether the 25 faculty who left were civilian or military, or whether they were part of the 140 positions eliminated through federal cuts.

“I can confidently attest we are maintaining the academic rigor, accreditation and high standards expected at the U.S. Air Force Academy,” Bauernfeind said in the news release. “Our faculty and staff are providing a world-class education to our cadets, and our institution will continue to produce officers ready to meet the challenges of a rapidly evolving security environment.”

Bauernfeind, who was appointed in 2024 under President Joe Biden’s administration, ruffled some feathers when he arrived on campus, according to faculty, former faculty and alumni with close ties to the school who were interviewed by The Post. But civilian faculty began leaving in the Spring 2025 semester after Trump appointed Hegseth, a former Fox News television host, to serve as secretary of defense.

Hegseth quickly moved to ban affirmative action in admissions at the three service academies that fall under the Department of Defense and ordered them to pull books focusing on diversity from their shelves. He also vowed to eliminate so-called “woke ideology” and any programs that promoted diversity, equity and inclusion on the campuses.

Critics of the civilian cuts at the Air Force Academy say this political ideology has seeped into the campus culture, and leaders are mistakenly driving away civilian faculty by implying they are weakening military education.

“To think of them as left-wing, tree-hugging hippie freaks is not the way to think of them,” said Thomas Bewley, a mechanical and aerospace engineering professor at the , who served as distinguished visiting professor at the academy during the 2024-2025 academic year. “They provide a lot of context to what engineering is in the military.”

One professor who left

For one engineering professor, the decision to leave the Air Force Academy became clear after he repeatedly was told he could lose his job any day.

Brian Johns left his professorship at in Iowa in 2023 to teach systems engineering at the academy. Johns holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering and a doctorate in industrial engineering. He specializes in melding complex mechanical and electrical systems so that they work together, and his latest research involves integrating artificial intelligence with software systems.

“It was a great new adventure and a new challenge to take on,” Johns said of giving up his tenured faculty position for an assistant professor position at the Air Force Academy. “It was my way of using the skills I have in the classroom to improve our national security, improve our nation.”

But in late February — in the spring semester of his second year on campus — Johns, who never served in the military, was pulled into an office by a supervisor and told that he would be fired the next day because of the federal government’s job cuts. Johns did not understand why he would be among the first to lose his job, as he was no longer on probation as a new hire and his performance reviews had been excellent.

A federal judge intervened and the government firings, including Johns’, were put on hold.

Still, talk of layoffs and firings continued.

“We had meetings where the superintendent told us a lot of departments were going to look like Swiss cheese when it was over,” Johns said. “It was not very reassuring, to be honest.

“From then on, it was, ‘Is this the Friday? Is next Friday going to be the day?’ It was creating a lot of anxiety,” he said. “The not knowing was worse than the firing. What am I going to do to my family?”

In late spring, Johns found an opening in the engineering department at . He applied and accepted a job as a teaching professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, where he started this fall.

As far as Johns knows, he is the only civilian faculty member to leave the academy’s mechanical engineering department, but he also knows that he was not replaced, which means the current faculty had to pick up his 300- and 400-level courses, teaching juniors and seniors how to design complex warfighting systems.

Those courses need to be taught by someone with a doctorate degree, he said.

“It����ap just messy,” Johns said. “Everybody’s trying to do their best there, but a lot of these decisions are made outside of their control, whether it’s coming from the secretary of defense — or the secretary of war, as we are calling him now — or the superintendent. We don’t know who’s making these decisions.”

Johns said people on the faculty now live in fear of retaliation and are afraid to speak out. Academic freedom is gone, he said. And the instructors who are not in the military are not getting paid because of the government shutdown.

“I’m thanking my lucky stars I got out of there,” he said.

The importance of accreditation

The Higher Learning Commission’s accreditation is important because it assures students and prospective students that they will receive a quality education.

The commission does not comment on inquiries into any academic programs, spokeswoman Laura Janota said. If the commission were to take any action against the academy, it would be posted online.

The commission has accredited the Air Force Academy since 1959, and the accreditation was reaffirmed during the 2018-2019 school year, according to the . The academy is due for its next formal review during the 2028-2029 academic year.

The academy needs accreditation to attract top-notch students, said Anthony Aretz, who graduated from there in 1980 and later served as president at two universities. The Air Force often sends its officers to law school, medical school or to earn master’s and doctoral degrees, but their credits from the academy would no longer transfer to another university if it lost accreditation, he said.

“If the cadet is a graduate but the academy is not accredited, the other college wouldn’t accept their degree,” he said. “The academies hold a unique position in our country. They’re valued for their quality and how they prepare leaders for our Department of Defense and the rest of our country. You don’t want to lose that prestige that attracts those types of students.”

Accreditation organizations like the Higher Learning Commission operate independently of the federal government, so its investigators should be immune to political influence, Aretz said.

The departure of civilian faculty and a shortage of military replacements have led to larger class sizes, Aretz said. And instructors are teaching more courses than usual. If the cuts continue, the academy could be forced to drop some courses from its curriculum, and eventually, some majors, he said.

The academy’s August news release said all majors remained intact for the 2025-2026 school year, and that it had added four new classes to a list of 750 offered, plus three new minors.

The Air Force Academy’s website said the student-to-faculty ratio is eight to one for the more than 4,100 cadets on campus. The Higher Learning Commission’s latest data, which is from 2023, shows 234 faculty members.

Janota said the commission does not have a specific formula for the number of Ph.D.-holding instructors a campus needs in order to provide an adequate education to its students.

Accreditation inquiries typically are tight-lipped, and if the commission determines the academy has a sufficient number of faculty members, the review never will become public, Aretz said.

The first step is what the commission is doing now, which is asking the academy’s leadership to respond to the complaint. The commission could follow up with more questions and could eventually send a team of inspectors to the campus to question the administration, faculty and students, Aretz said.

“They’re there to help institutions maintain their academic quality,” he said.

The role of civilian instructors

At the Air Force Academy, the majority of the faculty are in the Air Force.

Their experiences at bases around the world and in warfighting are valued in the classroom. To teach there, they must hold at least a master’s degree and a rank of captain or higher. Most rotate in for a three-year assignment before they return to the fighting force. Some go on to earn doctorate degrees and return to teach at the academy throughout their careers.

The academy also hires non-military faculty, who bring expertise from years of classroom experience, scholarship and research. Those faculty often are the glue that holds a department together, helping new uniformed instructors learn how to run a classroom and keep the course curriculum on track, Bewley said.

“The civilian professors there really anchor the programs,” Bewley said. “They are really the backbone.”

Many of those civilian faculty members served in the Air Force and then, after retiring, brought their doctorate degrees back to teach the military branch’s future officers.

But Hegseth has vowed to oust anyone with “woke ideology” and has mistakenly determined that civilian faculty are a problem, Bewley said. Engineers do not weave diversity, equity and inclusion into lesson plans about aircraft mechanics, missile designs and satellite technology, he said.

“The fish is rotting from the head down,” said retired Brig. Gen. Martin France, a 1981 academy graduate who previously served as chairman of the school’s astronautical engineering program. “Obviously, none of the changes that would revert the academy back to a higher-quality academic program are going to be allowed or endorsed, given who we have as the secretary of defense and the president. A lot of this is part of the anti-woke agenda. Unfortunately, I don’t have any great hope of anything changing under this administration.”

France, who rotated in and out of the academy’s faculty during his 37-year career, said he agrees with the idea of having more Air Force officers with doctoral degrees on faculty. But the method used by Bauernfeind and the Trump administration has cut people with little planning or strategy, he said.

“Replacing established civilian professors with active duty, in my mind, is that����ap not in itself a bad thing to do,” France said. “But it takes many years to produce qualified people within the active duty force. You can’t turn a faucet on and have enough Ph.D. professors.”

Air Force officers specialize in highly technical areas ranging from flying fighter jets to operating satellites to designing rockets.

For example, the Space Force needs astrophysicists who know how to interfere with a foreign government’s satellites, just like the academy needs experts who teach cadets how to do that. But it is not easy to call up the chain of command and request a lieutenant colonel with a Ph.D. in astrophysics to leave Space Command for a teaching job, said Murphy, the academy graduate and adviser who filed the complaint.

“What we found out is there is no pool of military educators out there buzzing around waiting for a phone call. They don’t exist,” Murphy said. “You’re not going to get 35 fighter pilots to get a pass to go teach at the military academy.”

France added that the shortage of people qualified and available to teach at the academy does not stop in the technical fields. The entire service does not have enough Chinese, Russian or Arabic speakers, and those instructors are needed, too.

One current instructor, who agreed to speak to The Post on the condition of anonymity because he fears retaliation, said his department is losing multiple people because of government cuts, the shutdown and the general feeling of uncertainty on campus.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to teach the upper-level courses because of the lack of instructors with doctorate degrees, he said.

“You don’t have the right players for the team,” he said. “You don’t switch half your team and still have the same flow.”

Bauernfeind started making the cuts within the non-military faculty with no real plan for how to replace them from within the military ranks, the instructor said. It’s impossible to replace a professor with 20 years of experience with a younger captain with a master’s degree, he said. Even someone fresh from a doctoral program needs time to gain experience in the classroom.

“It����ap a terrible shame to see this institution we’ve built over the last 60 years just be deconstructed without any real plan,” the instructor said.

Multiple people interviewed by The Post said Bauernfeind removed the word “educate” from the academy’s mission statement, and they believe that move reflects his disdain for the intellectual class on campus.

“We are degrading the value of education and it really is a step toward an anti-intellectual bias in our military that we can’t afford,” France said.

‘A distraction’

The departure of civilian faculty came up during the August meeting of the , a body of political appointees charged with monitoring and advising the institution’s operations, including its curriculum, instruction and academic methods.

During that meeting, board members and members of the general public raised questions about the faculty departures as well as changes to the curriculum, according to minutes from the meeting and accounts from two people in attendance.

Four people, including Bewley and Murphy, asked the superintendent to pause cuts to the faculty until academy leaders created a plan to replace those who had left.

Another four people expressed concerns about world history no longer being a mandatory class for cadets.

“Lt. Gen. Bauernfeind expressed that they are still in the planning process for this potential change to make sure that USAFA understands the value of American history in establishing a common ground with all cadets,” the meeting minutes stated.

Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist and founder of who was shot to death in September while speaking on a Utah college campus, was on the Board of Visitors at the time.

During the August meeting, Kirk questioned the superintendent on how he was making sure the faculty complied with Trump’s directives to eliminate critical race theory and diversity, equity and inclusion from the classrooms. He asked, “How the Academy is ensuring compliance with the faculty to ensure USAFA doesn’t push the worldview of oppression, oppressor/oppressed dynamics, anti-western, anti-American and gender ideology,” according to meeting minutes.

That injection of political ideology is part of the problem at the academy, Bewley said. Instead of focusing on the actual problem at the Board of Visitors meeting, the conversation turned into “a political sham,” he said.

Kirk talked about DEI and critical race theory and “some MAGA drumming points to rouse up the base, but there was nothing really relevant to the challenges of how we are going to train our officers to develop the weapons systems to win the next war,” Bewley said. “It was a distraction.”

Concerns over cuts to the Air Force Academy faculty and the Higher Learning Commission have gotten the attention of politicians.

Spokespeople for Democratic U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper and U.S. Rep. Jeff Crank, R-Colorado Springs, both of whom sit on the Board of Visitors, said they were aware of the commission’s inquiry. Both said they want to work with the Trump administration to make sure the academy offers a world-class education, although neither offered specifics about how to respond to the commission’s review or how to prevent more faculty from leaving.

The alumni and former instructors who are speaking out said they want the superintendent to pause staffing cuts and for the Defense Department to fund the positions that still exist, Murphy said.

They also want the secretary of the Air Force to form a “blue ribbon panel” of stakeholders with an interest in the academy’s success, including the superintendent, faculty, distinguished alumni, leaders within the Air Force and Space Force, and politicians, he said.

Murphy said he did not relish his complaint to the Higher Learning Commission, but he wanted to get leadership’s attention. Speaking at meetings and writing letters has not been working.

“I love the academy,” Murphy said. “I want the reputation to be pristine.”