This story will be updated throughout the day.

7:26 p.m. update: The House adjourned about 7:15 p.m., with the Senate joining soon after. The 2026 session has come to an end. Read more about the final day in this fresh story.

Colorado legislature ends session with action on transportation and abortion pills — while notable measures die

5:48 p.m. update: The Senate passed a bill that would undercut a proposed constitutional amendment concerning road funding after the bill sponsors amended the measure in what one called a show of "good faith" to backers of the amendment.

Initiative 175, which is out for signature gathering to qualify for the November ballot, would amend the state constitution to require the state to spend hundreds of millions of dollars more on road funding. Democrats in control of the legislature warn that would hamstring other state priorities, like education and healthcare, by sapping money from the general fund.

would rework some state funding and cut the gasoline tax to neutralize Initiative 175's effect on the state budget, supporters of the bill said.

Sen. William Lindstedt, a Broomfield Democrat, introduced an amendment creating a new bucket of money in the state, specifically to go toward road maintenance, by sequestering some permit fees for oversized vehicles. He called it a show of "good faith" to supporters of the amendment that the legislature wants to prioritize road funding -- and, Lindstedt and other Democrats hope, it might spur backers of the amendment to drop their push.

Republicans, however, continued their opposition to the measure. Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, a Brighton Republican, said she saw the bill as the legislature trying to impede people's ability to petition their government. Sen. Byron Pelton, a Sterling Republican, urged supporters of the initiative to keep pushing the measure.

"The people of Colorado need to make a statement to make roads a priority," Pelton said, comparing it to a constitutional amendment requiring a baseline of education funding that voters passed in 2000.

2:58 p.m. update: Colorado lawmakers have given final approval to a bill that would limit the number of daily deposits a gambler can make in a sports-betting app, and it will now go to Gov. Jared Polis. The state would be the first with such a deposit limit. Read more about it in this story.

2:53 p.m. update: The Senate gave formal approval to bills that would require the collection of data on temperature-related work injuries, spur new security measures for lawmakers, require college health centers to provide abortion medication and close the state-level equivalents of some tax cuts made through the federal tax bill last year.

The tax measure bills ( and ) and the extreme temperature bill () all need to return to the House for consideration of Senate amendments later today. The security measure bill () and college abortion medication bill () will head to Gov. Jared Polis.

1:39 p.m. update: The Senate killed a bill that would mimic federal workplace protections at the state level when six Democrats joined Republicans in opposition.

would have enshrined federal standards from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in state law. Worker safety advocates said it was necessary in the face of likely rollbacks of worker protections under the Trump administration.

The bill died a rare death on the formal third-reading vote. None of the Democrats who voted against the bill -- Sens. Judy Amabile, Matt Ball, Jeff Bridges, Lindsey Daugherty, Kyle Mullica and Marc Snyder -- spoke from the floor about their opposition either before the formal vote or during debate last week.

1:32 p.m. update: After weeks of languishing on the House's calendar, a bill that would regulate the sale of gun barrels is officially dead.

House Majority Leader Monica Duran today moved to delay a final vote on until Thursday -- effectively a death sentence, given that the legislature will not be in session then. The bill's sponsor, Rep. Meg Froelich, had said she hoped for a final vote on the measure before adjourment, and when Duran announced SB-43's death, Froelich sat back in her chair in disappointment.

Had it passed, the bill would've required people who buy or sell detachable gun barrels to do so in person, and sales could generally only be conducted by a licensed firearms dealer.

The Senate passed the measure in early March and it cleared initial votes in the House shortly after. But it rolled along on the House calendar for weeks. Its initial vote was delayed because key supporters were absent, Froelich said. The vote was then further delayed, in part, because Republican opposition meant it would take hours to debate -- and in part because Gov. Jared Polis intended to veto the measure, Froelich said.

Later in today's session, the House rejected Senate amendments to . The measure would've allowed organizations that receive grants from the state to receive advance payments. But the Senate amended the bill Tuesday to block nonprofits that are led by legislators from receiving any advance payments.

That amendment was brought by Republican Sen. Byron Pelton, who said he wanted to curb the "appearance of impropriety."

The move prompted Rep. Lorena Garcia, one of the bill's sponsors, to pull her name from the bill -- and the bill's remaining supporters to reject the Senate's amendments, putting the bill on the precipice of failure. An Adams County Democrat, Garcia is the CEO of the Colorado Statewide Parent Coalition, which has received grant funding from the state.

She said the Senate's amendment was a "direct and personal attack on me."

"The accusations that came on the floor from the Senate are a desperate attempt to find someone to blame, for who knows what," she said.

Garcia said her nonprofit group applied for an early childhood teaching grant in June 2022. She said the state gave her group initial approval in October of that year. Garcia was appointed to the legislature through a vacancy committee in January 2023, and the grant contract was formally signed two months later.

Heading into the legislative session this January, Democratic lawmakers were lauding a new tax credit that cut child poverty by more than a third, and worrying about its future amid a sour budget outlook. When it became clear the state would not have enough revenue to continue the credit this upcoming year, lawmakers unveiled a package of bills to close corporate tax cuts made at the federal level last year and reflected in the state tax code.

That money would go toward creating a separate tax program that would mirror the Family Affordability Tax Credit. The new credit would give low-income families a bridge of support while the state budget bounced back, supporters said.

On Monday, with just over two days left before lawmakers must adjourn, backers killed two of the three bills to fund the new credit for lack of support, leaving just a modified version of a third still in play.

And sponsors of the biggest of the bills, , laid the blame squarely on one man: Polis, the term-limited Democrat who the tax credit¶¶Òőap effectiveness in his final State of the State. The governor threatened to veto the measures if lawmakers did not include income tax cuts, sponsors said.

“What this means is now that the 30% of families that were lifted out of poverty because of Colorado’s most aggressive anti-poverty tax credits are now going to be plunged back into poverty,” Rep. Lorena Garcia, an Adams County Democrat, said in an interview. “I wonder if the governor feels good about that.”

Tax credit helped reduce childhood poverty rate

In 2024, Colorado lawmakers created the Family Affordability Tax Credit. The credit sends money collected over the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights revenue cap to low-income families. Families with more kids and lower incomes receive more money under the credit. More than 330,000 tax filers qualified for the credit when they filed their taxes in 2025, for an average credit of $2,700 per filer.

A backed by Denver-based Gary Community Ventures released in February found the credit, along with two other smaller credits, cut Colorado’s child poverty rate by 37%. That drop, from 11.6% to 7.3%, gave Colorado one of the lowest, if not the lowest, childhood poverty rates in the country. Researchers from St. Louis’s Washington University and North Carolina’s Appalachian State University called it “the most effective child poverty impacts” in the country.

Polis even name-checked the program and Colorado’s best-in-the-nation childhood poverty rate in his final State of the State address — albeit, lumped in with a celebration of cuts to property taxes and income taxes. The governor has long championed income tax cuts. When lawmakers debated the tax credit in 2024, Polis conditioned the credit on an income tax cut of .15 percentage points, or $450 million.

by nonpartisan legislative staff in 2025 found that nearly half of income tax cuts go to Colorado taxpayers with $200,000 or more in annual income, despite comprising only 8.3% of the population. Tax filers reporting less than $100,000, who make up more than 75% of the population, receive about a quarter of the total savings from income tax cuts.

Garcia and Sen. Cathy Kipp, a Fort Collins Democrat and the Senate sponsor of HB-1222, said Polis conditioned signing their measure into law on additional cuts to the income tax. He would otherwise veto the measure, they said. Kipp voluntarily killed the bill in a Monday afternoon Senate committee after acknowledging she did not have the support.

“It is clear that this bill will be vetoed unless we agree to reducing the state income tax, something that I believe is irresponsible,” Kipp, a Fort Collins Democrat, said shortly before killing her bill Monday afternoon.

In a statement, Polis’ spokesman, Eric Maruyama, didn’t address a question about whether Polis wanted an income tax cut as part of the package.

“The governor has long supported providing tax relief, including income tax relief for Colorado families,” Maruyama said in a statement after the bills were killed. “Colorado’s Family Affordability Tax Credit helped cut child poverty rates 
 and the governor supported strengthening this credit to help families while saving every Coloradan money on taxes.”Ìę

Businesses line up against bills

HB-1222 would have raised $330 million by limiting several business deductions that were created or expanded under the federal tax bill H.R.1, commonly known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill.” , which was also killed by sponsors Monday afternoon, sought to limit deductions for executive compensation and operating losses.

Sen. Judy Amabile, a Boulder Democrat and sponsor of HB-1221, said that bill also faced a veto threat and flagging support among other legislators. The bills were an attempt to rein in increasing income inequality and lift people out of poverty.

“We are giving preferential treatment to CEOs and corporations who are doing fine, and we are giving not-preferential treatment to people who are really struggling, who are working and contributing to our society,” Amabile said.

A third measure, , would send an estimated $77 million to the mirror credit by ending a sales tax exemption for digital software sales. That bill still lives, but it was amended to expand a utility bill write-off for restaurants.

The measures faced a barrage of opposition from business groups.

The business community supports policies to help every Coloradan “fully participate” in the state economy, Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce Vice President Leslie Oliver said in a statement. But these measures would have sapped nearly $500 million from businesses that could have otherwise been reinvested in employees, research, products, and more, Oliver said.

”While these bills were framed as targeted revenue measures, the reality is they would have imposed significant new tax burdens on employers — particularly small and growing businesses — at a time when businesses are already navigating rising operational costs and economic uncertainty,” Oliver said.

passed on a near-party-line , with nearly all of the chamber’s Democrats in support against their Republican colleagues and a lone Democratic dissenter. After it passed the abortion measure, the House then passed , which would require inspections of immigrant detention centers and direct the state to publicly disclose when it receives federal immigration subpoenas.

Both bills now go to the Senate, with just over two weeks remaining in this year’s legislative session.

If passed, the abortion measure would require both public and private colleges and universities with health centers to provide students access to abortion medications that end pregnancies. Any campus with an on-site pharmacy would be required to stock the medication. At colleges without pharmacies, health center providers would directly dispense the pills or write prescriptions that could be filled elsewhere.

The bill would go into effect Aug. 1, 2027. It would not apply if a college says that providing the medication would violate its religious principles. Colleges would also be exempted if they could lose grant funding for stocking the pills; if federal regulators should later pull approval for an abortion medication, the measure would direct colleges to follow that federal guidance.

The standard abortion prescription typically involves two medications, typically mifepristone and misoprostol, taken within a day or two of each other, .

Rep. Lorena Garcia, an Adams County Democrat who sponsored the bill, said Monday that the measure came from students. The bill strengthens Colorado’s already robust abortion protections, with both state law and the state constitution protecting abortion access.

“This bill is nothing more than making sure that the constitutional right — that our voters put in place — is made accessible when people have gone through the challenging and difficult process of making the decision to have an abortion; that the abortion pill is accessible if they are on campus,” she told colleagues.

In the bill’s fiscal impact note, legislative analysts projected zero direct expense to the state from the bill, since it doesn’t require the state to cover the cost of the medication unless a student already qualifies otherwise.

Students who testified at a committee hearing earlier this month said providing access at health centers would help provide students with reliable and nearby access to abortion care.

One student from the University of Colorado’s Colorado Springs campus — whose testimony was read by an organizer from the advocacy group New Era — said she didn’t know where to go when she decided to end her pregnancy. She nearly went to a “fake abortion clinic,” she said.

Another student, Paola Ordoñez Sanchez at Colorado State University, said she had an unexpected pregnancy in October. When she sought an abortion, she said, she had to coordinate transportation, miss classes and figure out how to pay for her treatment off-campus.

She tearfully said she “fell through the cracks” of CSU’s health system.

Republicans consistently have opposed Democrats’ efforts to expand abortion access, and they did so again with HB-1335, arguing that the abortion pills could have negative side effects on the women who take them. House leadership limited debate on an initial vote Friday.

“Adoption is also a choice. If we’re going to provide information, we should provide it all,” said Rep. Rebecca Keltie, a Colorado Springs Republican. She was supporting an amendment that would’ve blocked colleges from using various revenue sources to promote the availability of the pills.

“We should make it fair and equitable and then let that person decide for themselves,” she said.

The lone Democrat who opposed the bill was Rep. Bob Marshall, who represents Highlands Ranch. He said he’d committed not to support further expansions of abortion rights. He also said he didn’t understand the need for the bill because abortion pills can be dispensed in myriad other ways.

House passes immigration bill

Also Monday, the chamber cleared HB-1276 on a straight 42-21 party-line vote.

The bill would tweak several parts of state law, largely in response to events from the first year of the immigration crackdown under President Donald Trump. After Gov. Jared Polis has repeatedly tried to comply with a federal immigration subpoena, HB-1276 would generally require the state to publicly disclose when it receives those types of requests.

It would direct the state to notify people whose information is about to be released.

The measure would also prohibit U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from entering nonpublic areas of jails. That comes after an advocacy group in the high country has warned that immigrants are being arrested inside the facilities after posting bail or otherwise being released. Lawmakers had initially blocked ICE from entering those areas in legislation debated last year, but they struck that provision before the bill passed.

The new measure would require regular inspections of immigration detention centers, stepping up state regulators’ current ability to visit at will. That comes amid ongoing concerns about the conditions inside Colorado’s only active detention center in Aurora — and amid ICE’s plans to open more facilities here.

Finally, the bill would tighten penalties for state and local agencies when their employees illegally share information with ICE. Lawmakers enacted a penalty of up to $50,000 last year for any employee who illegally collaborates with federal immigration authorities; this year’s bill would apply that fine to agencies that either directed their employees to break the law or intentionally failed to mitigate that risk.

That provision comes after a Mesa County deputy appeared to violate state law last year, when he alerted ICE to a Brazilian college student’s presence on Interstate 70.

The bill still needs approval by the Senate before it goes to the governor. On Thursday, Polis declined to take a position and indicated he wasn’t aware of what the measure would do.

“There’s one thing … which we are generally supportive of, which is inspection of detention facilities,” he said after a reporter listed the bill’s contents. “There are other things that we might not be, so we’re always happy to provide feedback to legislators about where we are. When the bill passes, I weigh the good and the bad and make a conclusion about what’s in the best interest of the state.”

The House State, Civic, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee voted unanimously Monday afternoon to advance the bill. was introduced Friday, days after into ChĂĄvez that accused the late Mexican-American civil rights icon of sexually abusing and assaulting women involved in the agricultural labor movement.

His victims allegedly included underaged girls and his fellow organizer Dolores Huerta, who described ChĂĄvez’s abuse to the Times.

HB-1339 would change Colorado’s March 31 voluntary legal holiday — which falls on ChĂĄvez’s birthday — from CĂ©sar ChĂĄvez Day to “Farm Workers Day.”

“When we talk about removing a name from statute, we’re not just talking about policy. We are talking about history. We are talking about identity, and we are talking about people’s experiences,” said House Majoriy Leader Monica Duran, a Wheat Ridge Democrat. “This conversation didn’t start here. It started with survivors. It started with members of our communities, who came forward with painful stories of sexual abuse and rape. And (they) asked something very simple of us: to listen, and to not look away.”

Duran is co-sponsoring the bill with Rep. Lorena Garcia and Sen. Jessie Danielson, both also Democrats.

Duran and Garcia said renaming the voluntary holiday — which doesn’t require state government offices to close — would emphasize the broader farm labor movement and the workers who filled its ranks, rather than the man who led it decades ago.

Garcia quoted a comment by one of ChĂĄvez’s victims to the Times: “The movement — that¶¶Òőap the hero.”

The bill passed the committee 11-0. It now heads to the full House for the first of two votes. Garcia says lawmakers intend to pass the bill before March 31 so that the new holiday can take effect.

If the legislature works at its maximum speed, the bill could be passed by the end of this week.

The Times’ revelations about ChĂĄvez have prompted a wave of similarly swift recriminations nationwide. Lawmakers in California, where March 31 is also named for ChĂĄvez, have similarly discussed stripping him from the holiday. Annual marches in ChĂĄvez’s honor were canceled in Denver and in several other cities, and officials in multiple states said they would consider renaming the scores of streets and schools that bore his moniker, according to the Times.

Last week, Denver Mayor Mike Johnston announced that the city would change a full municipal holiday named for ChĂĄvez that’s set to be observed next Monday. The city also planned to strip his name from a city park.

In another vote, the House’s narrowly advanced during the meeting, which stretched into Tuesday night. That bill would broadly seek more transparency and oversight of some federal activities in the state.

The defeat of came after several hours of testimony on both measures. HB-1275 was backed by progressive and immigrant-rights organizations, but it was opposed by law enforcement groups.

It died on a 5-6 vote, with two Democrats joining the committee’s four Republicans in voting no.

“In the age of fascism, where our government is snatching people off the street into unmarked vehicles, without due process and (while) violating multiple constitutional rights, this was a modest step that we could have taken to keep our community safe — and I am extremely disappointed that we were not able to,” Rep. Yara Zokaie, a Fort Collins Democrat and one of the bill’s sponsors, said Wednesday morning.

The bill — which was significantly amended before it was voted down — would’ve generally required local enforcement officers to identify themselves, though it would not have applied to federal immigration agents, who are frequently masked and unidentified.

Zokaie and fellow sponsor Rep. Meg Froelich, an Englewood Democrat, said that though they couldn’t regulate federal authorities’ conduct, they wanted to distinguish local police from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

Local law enforcement also would have had to receive training on the state’s immigration laws, which generally prohibit cooperation with federal officials on civil immigration enforcement. The bill would’ve given local Colorado-based police the explicit authority to intervene if federal agents use excessive force. The bill also underscored that local law enforcement can arrest federal agents who break state law.

ICE officers who later try to work for local agencies in Colorado would have been required to turn over their internal affairs file to a state board that certifies law enforcement.

, police officers must provide their business cards to certain people with whom they interact. Officers also must intervene when other state-regulated law enforcement uses excessive force.

The bill’s death, which comes amid an intense local and national backlash to ICE’s often-militarized enforcement tactics, was a shock. Supporters said Tuesday night that they believed it would pass after it had been effectively rewritten. On Wednesday, Sen. Julie Gonzales, a Denver Democrat who’s often worked on immigration legislation, said she was “stunned and appalled” that the bill died. But she said conversations were still underway about next steps to revive some of the bill’s aims.

Zokaie said she had expected the bill to clear the committee. Rep. Chad Clifford, one of the two Democrats who voted against the bill, is also listed among the bill’s more than 20 House sponsors.

Zokaie said her disappointment in the bill’s failure was compoundedÌębecause “it was Democrats teaming up with the Republicans to do it.”

Republicans opposed the bill because it would have imposed additional regulations on local law enforcement. Clifford said the bill focused on local police even though “Colorado peace officers didn’t mess this up,” a reference to the backlash against ICE.

He and Denver Rep. Cecelia Espenoza, the other Democrat who opposed HB-1275, also questioned if the bill would have any impact, given that its identification elements would have applied only to local officers. Espenoza said she was concerned that the immigrant community would be “misled” about whom the bill applied to.

“I’m just not there (on there being) something here that¶¶Òőap going to change something,” Clifford, a Centennial Democrat, said. He added in an interview that he had agreed to co-sponsor the bill before it was fully drafted and released.

Christopher Nurse, the political director for the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, criticized Espenoza’s comments.

“If I could have responded to her in the moment, I would have disagreed with her notion because there isn’t false hope in telling Coloradans and immigrants who live in this state that if somebody has the privilege to protect and serve us, we should know exactly who the hell they are,” he said. “I don’t see where there’s false hope in that.”

The bill that did pass the judiciary committee on Wednesday, , must now clear a second legislative committee. It passed on a 6-5 vote, with Espenoza and the committee’s Republicans opposed. The bill generally would require state agencies to publicly release subpoenas sent by federal immigration authorities that the state has fulfilled.

The bill also would require additional health inspections of detention centers beyond what’s required now. It would seek to block airports from assisting ICE’s deportation efforts by providing any kind of transportation to individuals.

The bill’s sponsors, Democratic Reps. Lorena Garcia and Elizabeth Velasco, also added an amendment Tuesday prohibiting ICE agents from entering nonpublic areas of jails without a warrant. A similar provision had been stripped from an immigration bill passed by the legislature last year, and its return comes amid criticism from advocates that immigrants without proper legal status have been arrested by ICE inside local jails.

Staff writer Nick Coltrain contributed to this story.

The state’s 100 lawmakers hit 60 days of work on Saturday, with just as many to go before the legislature must adjourn on May 13. Gov. Jared Polis has so far signed two dozen of their bills into law, as hundreds more continue to move through — or stall out of — the legislative process.

Debates have already begun on some of the most prominent bills, on issues like immigration, data centers, firearm regulations and tax policy. But across the street from the GoldÌęDome, the biggest bill of the year — the annual state spending bill — is still taking shape, as the top budget-writing lawmakers try to identify program cuts on the order of $1 billion to make up for drops in revenue and skyrocketing costs elsewhere.

“We’re on track, and we’re going to utilize the time that we have,” House Majority Leader Monica Duran, a Wheat Ridge Democrat, said of the session schedule. “When we say 120 days, that’s seven days a week — if we need it — to get the work done.”

Among bills that have cleared one of the two chambers of the General Assembly already is a measure that would expand who and which types of entities can file requests for extreme risk protection orders issued by courts to require people to temporarily surrender their firearms. So have a proposed ban on 3D printed guns and a bill that would allow Colorado to look more broadly to medical professional organizations for vaccine guidance. That one came amid Democrats’ concerns about federal guidance coming from the Trump administration.

A proposal that would make it easier for entities like nonprofits and school districts to build housing on land they own, known as the HOME Act, was the first measure introduced in the House this year. passed the Senate on Thursday and is now heading to Polis’ desk.

But other Democratic priorities are still in the beginning of their legislative journeys through the Capitol.

In a statement on the session’s progress, Polis praised the imminent passage of the HOME Act and the that would set in motion the transition to a new system and state department for “postsecondary education development,” as House Democrats characterized it last week. The department will integrate higher education and workforce development programs.

“We are running through the tape, and I look forward to continued conversations with the legislature on how to deliver for Coloradans,” said Polis, who’s in his final year as governor.

That doesn’t mean he and the legislature’s Democrats — who have a nearly 2-to-1 advantage over Republicans in each chamber — have always agreed on legislation. In fact, Democrats are barrelling forward with a bill that would make state labor law more favorable to unions, despite Polis’ veto of the same bill last year.

On deck: fights on immigration, AI regs

As the back half of the session unfolds, two prominent immigration bills supported by Democratic lawmakers are set to get their first hearings and votes on Tuesday. Debate around them will likely stretch well into the session’s final weeks.

So, too, will the legislature’s third straight year of haggling over artificial intelligence regulations.

The immigration bills include , which seeks to regulate law enforcement and federal immigration authorities. It would prevent anyone who’d worked for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from becoming a certified law enforcement officer in Colorado. It would expand a state law related to impersonating officers to include law enforcement agents who conceal their identities.

After ICE’s enforcement actions in Colorado and elsewhere have sparked public outcry, the bill would also require local law enforcement officers to intervene should a federal officer use excessive force.

The second bill, , would require more inspections and regulations for immigration detention centers, and it would prohibit airports from working with airlines or government agencies to transport immigrant detainees. It would require more transparency around federal subpoenas sent to the state, after Polis’ office spent much of the past year trying to turn over certain employment records sought by ICE.

Rep. Lorena Garcia, the sponsor of HB-1276, said Thursday that Democratic lawmakers were aligned on the policies, which she said were responding to concerns from constituents about ICE’s conduct as it has carried out President Donald Trump’s mass-deportation campaign. She said the sponsors have not yet heard any concerns from Polis’ office.

Also still in process are a suite of bills that aim to reduce the impact of federal tax cuts at the state level as a way to recreate the state’s flagging family affordability tax credit. Those bills cleared their first committee on Monday. The family tax credit — which has been hailed by advocates for helping to cut childhood poverty in Colorado by more than a third last year, according to recent research — is otherwise on the ropes, a possible casualty of the state’s ongoing budget woes.

Republicans plan to fight the measures, which they see as Democratic overreach, said House Minority Leader Jarvis Caldwell, a Colorado Springs representative.

The tax bill package would separate state tax policy from some of the tax cuts put in place federally by H.R. 1, known as Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” and passed down to Colorado’s tax code. The Democratic proposals include limiting tax deductions for operating losses and executives’ salaries, eliminating a sales tax exemption for downloaded software, and limiting other tax write-offs and deductions that were expanded by the federal tax bill.

Democrats point to how their package would give low-income families almost $2,200 in credits to help raise young children. But Caldwell worries about the economic effects of what he calls a $580 million tax increase.

He predicts lengthy debates when those measures reach the floor — but with the Democratic majority being what it is, he said, Republicans would need to sway several Democrats to their point of view.

“The mindset from the majority side is that we have to try to raise revenue and not try to live within our means,” Caldwell said. “We’re going to continue fighting it and trying to make people aware of what is happening right now. But I’m pessimistic on being able to kill these really bad bills that are going to essentially increase taxes on small business.”

Caldwell is also wary about a second-half effort from Democrats to push stricter greenhouse gas emissions-reduction standards. Rumors of such a bill swirled last year, though nothing materialized then. Nothing related has been introduced yet this year, either, though late bills are always a possibility. Polis has set aggressive emission standards during his time in office, and this would be his last legislative session to hammer the issue.

Lawmakers expect another big debate to reopen soon. They’ve been waiting for a promised plan on how to regulate artificial intelligence to emerge this session.

In 2024, legislators adopted first-in-the-nation rules that sought to ensure that AI couldn’t be used in banking, hiring or housing decisions to discriminate against people. In the two years since, a wide array of lobbyists, tech and consumer protection officials, representatives from Polis’ office and a small group of lawmakers have haggled, negotiated and fought over how to rewrite those regulations.

Nothing has come of those efforts thus far, other than repeated agreements to delay the new rules from taking effect.

A task force convened last fall by Polis represents the latest effort to reach an agreement on overhauling those rules. But the group has repeatedly held off on a final vote on recommendations in recent weeks, as its members sift through lingering tensions over definitions and how to apply the regulations to the health care industry, among other sore spots.

That vote is expected to happen this week.

Still, even if a majority of the task force approves a deal, it¶¶Òőap unclear how those terms will be greeted by the rest of the legislature — let alone the broader lobbying corps or Polis’ office. As it stands, the existing — and much maligned — regulations passed two years ago take effect at the end of June.

“The Colorado AI Policy Workgroup has been hard at work for nearly six months now,” Polis said in a statement Thursday. “I’m proud of the progress they have made, and I am looking forward to reviewing their forthcoming recommendations.”

‘Not even close’ to needed budget cuts

The session’s second half also promises a flurry of activity once the budget comes out.

Bills that would cost money to implement have been waiting in the queue of a key spending committee, which in turn is waiting for the state budget to be set. Work to set the budget has been going on for months.

But it will hit a fever pitch this week, when the state economic forecast is set to be unveiled. That forecast will tell , which had been working off older projections, exactly how much money it has to spend — and how much it needs to cut. This year’s budget includes a nearly $17 billion general fund, with about 60% of it going to Medicaid and K-12 education.

Rep. Emily Sirota, a Denver Democrat who chairs the budget committee, called drafting the coming year’s spending plan “the most painful budget experience I have been a part of.”

The costs of Medicaid services and other state programs continue to rocket up faster than the amount of spending allowed by the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, or TABOR, a state constitutional amendment that limits the growth of government. And changes to federal tax policy last summer, now mirrored in the state tax code, are further squeezing the budget.

As a result, this is the third legislative session in a row, including the summer special session last year, that lawmakers have had to close a nearly $1 billion budget gap.

On Monday and Tuesday, Sirota and the committee’s five other members debated cuts to and to Medicaid services. Cuts to children’s health care programs are “particularly awful,” she said. But “there’s no way to close this budget and balance it without the cuts that we are making,” Sirota added.

In one painful example, the committee voted to cut a program that helped parents with substance use disorders access child care while the parents sought treatment, she said.

“We’re not eliminating programs that aren’t doing good, that aren’t serving an important purpose,” Sirota said. “We are making cuts and eliminating programs that have made a demonstrated impact on people’s lives, and we can’t afford to continue them.”

The economic forecast, scheduled for release Thursday, will be pivotal in determining how much more work the budget committee needs to do. The forecast projects the amount of money the state can budget for the upcoming fiscal year, which runs from July 1 to June 30, 2027.

“We aren’t even close to where we need to cut,” said Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, a Weld County Republican. And she, like others on the budget committee, was doubtful that other members of the General Assembly had truly grasped the depths of cuts needed, even if they appreciated that it was bad.

“Every time a bill comes into (the Appropriations Committee), we’ll be thinking about, ‘Do we fund this new program, or do we fund neglected and abused kids? Do we fund this new program, or do we add to this other program — or do we fund those children that have intellectual and developmental disabilities?’ ” Kirkmeyer said.Ìę“Those are the decisions that we are making.”

The state’s dire budgetary straits have also spurred Democrats to look to fundamentally reform how state budgeting works.

One such proposal, , would refer a ballot question to ask voters in November to remove state education funding from being subject to the TABOR cap. That move essentially would eliminate TABOR refunds to taxpayers for the foreseeable future, while funneling an estimated $200 million per year to K-12 education and freeing up millions more for other state spending.

Sen. Jeff Bridges, a sponsor of the bill and vice chair of the Joint Budget Committee, described it as an attempt to address what he sees as the “self-inflicted harm” of TABOR. That bill passed its first committee Thursday on a party-line vote.

Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee expressed skepticism that the proposal was necessary. Colorado’s Democratic leaders simply didn’t have education as a high-enough priority, said Sen. Scott Bright, a Platteville Republican.

In response, Bridges tied the proposal to the state budget, and he pleaded for suggestions of what else to cut instead of the choices facing him in the budget committee. He was about to head to another meeting for the state Medicaid program — “the worst part of my day.”

“I have spent this week cutting health care for kids. I don’t like doing that. If you can bring me something that lets me not do that, amazing,” Bridges said during the committee meeting. “Last year, we cut all of the fat that we could find. It was the easy cuts last year.

“This year, it is the heartbreaking, painful cuts that keep me up at night.”

In Tuesday night, Polis — who has also faced months of pressure from President Donald Trump to release Peters — compared the disgraced former Mesa County clerk’s punishment to the penalty for a state senator recently convicted on the same charges.

Polis wrote on the social platform X that the former lawmaker, Sonya Jaquez Lewis, was sentenced to probation and community service last week after being convicted of attempting to influence a public servant earlier this year. The former senator, a Democrat, was charged last year with that crime as well as forgery after falsifying letters of support in an effort to fight a legislative ethics probe.

Peters, a Republican clerk who collaborated with discredited election conspiracy theorists and provided access to secure voting equipment, was also convicted of attempting to influence a public servant, along with other charges. Now 70, she is serving a sentence of nine years in jail and prison.

Polis said it was “not lost on me” that one of the two women’s felony charges was the same.

“Justice in Colorado and America needs to be applied evenly, you never know when you might need to depend on the rule of law,” Polis wrote. “This is the context I am using as I consider cases like this that have sentencing disparities, which is why I have extended the deadline for clemency applications until April 3rd.”

The comments, which Polis’ office defended Wednesday morning, attracted national media attention and drew a caustic response from Democratic lawmakers.

“Without discounting at all what Sen. Jaquez Lewis did, there is a material difference between submitting false documents to a tribunal and aiding in the attempted insurrection and overthrow of the duly elected president of the United States,” said Rep. Steven Woodrow, a Denver Democrat. “Tina Peters fanned the flames of Trump’s big lie. And that is materially different than anything even approaching what Sen. Jaquez Lewis did. I hope the governor thinks long and hard about that material difference before he decides to do (anything).”

“I am astonished that one would make such a comparison,” added Rep. Emily Sirota, also of Denver.

Secretary of State Jena Griswold and Dan Rubinstein, the Republican Mesa County district attorney who led Peters’ prosecution, both similarly drew a distinction between Jaquez Lewis’ conduct and that of Peters. Rubinstein wrote in a statement that there was a reason the legislature had given judges a range of sentencing options, even for people convicted of the same crime.

He acknowledged that Polis had the authority to reduce Peters’ sentence but wrote that doing so “would be a gross injustice to the affected citizens I represent.”

“Peters’ … actions are still being used to try to undermine the 2026 election. She should get no special treatment by the governor, and his statement is shocking and worrisome,” Griswold said in a separate statement.

For his part, Denver District Attorney John Walsh, whose office prosecuted Jaquez Lewis, that the two cases “were not even in the same solar system in terms of the severity of their conduct.”

Critics cite Peters’ lack of remorse

At the state Capitol on Wednesday, several other Democratic lawmakers expressed disappointment or concern with Polis’ comments. Sen. Robert Rodriguez, the Senate’s majority leader, said he didn’t think Polis should intervene, and he noted that Peters has shown no remorse for trying to undermine the state’s election systems.

Asked if she thought Polis should alter Peters’ sentence, Northglenn Rep. Jenny WillfordÌęstopped in her tracks.

“Are you (expletive) kidding me?” she said.

The X post was the latest signal that Polis may commute Peters’ sentence, which he earlier called “harsh” and “unusual.” Though his post leaned on Jaquez Lewis’ recent conviction, Polis’ interest in reducing Peter’s sentence predates the former lawmaker’s January trial.

A number of public officials — Griswold, Rubinstein, Attorney General Phil Weiser and a coalition of county clerks — have repeatedly urged the governor not to reduce Peters’ sentence, and similar efforts have been made behind the scenes.

The Colorado Court of Appeals is weighing the length of Peters’ sentence, and its judges have indicated they may reduce it.

In a statement Wednesday, Polis spokeswoman Shelby Wieman said he was not considering a pardon for Peters but was weighing clemency.

“The governor has expressed skepticism around this inmate’s sentence and was noting the difference in sentencing for two people, both public officials, with the same charge,” she wrote.

The governor did find support from one federal lawmaker.

“So a former Democrat State Senator here in Colorado was charged and convicted of the SAME THING as Tina Peters,” U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, a Republican, . “She was given PROBATION. Tina Peters was sentenced to 9 YEARS in prison. FREE TINA PETERS.”

Peter Ticktin, a Florida-based attorney for Peters, told the Times that he believed a commutation of her sentence could come out as soon as this week.

“It will be a victory as soon as the eggs are hatched,” he said of Polis’ potential action. “If it ends up happening, her regaining her freedom will be a step toward righting a wrong.”

Lawmakers weigh responses to Polis

Lawmakers have already weighed how to voice their displeasure with the Democratic governor’s position. Senate Democrats have discussed sending the governor a letter opposing any change to Peters’ sentence (though no letter has been sent). Democrats in the House have discussed a legislative response.

While lawmakers are still discussing how to proceed, the available options also include an effort to censure Polis.

“I’d be surprised if there were not (a response from the legislature),” Woodrow said. “Everything’s on the table. There are ongoing conversations amongst colleagues. We are taking a wait-and-see approach.”

The former Mesa County clerk’s prison term has become a cause celebre among election-deniers allied with Trump. The president has repeatedly blasted Polis for not releasing Peters, and he issued a pardon for her late last year. But the move was essentially symbolic — because Peters was convicted of state charges, only Polis can reduce or end her sentence.

Pressed by reporters earlier this year, Polis refused to say if he’d had conversations with the Trump administration about Peters. He denied that he’d discussed releasing her as part of a trade for restored federal funding or other benefits from the federal government.

But that hasn’t slowed criticism from lawmakers.

Rodriguez said he didn’t know if Polis’ interest was driven by legitimate policy concerns or by “outside pressures.” Rep. Lorena Garcia, an Adams County Democrat, argued that Polis’ interest in Peters’ sentence was evidence that the governor was “trying to continue to do favors for the administration.”

In a statement Wednesday morning, Weiser noted the president’s “pressure campaign” to release Peters. Commuting her sentence after that campaign, he said, “would be a serious injustice and send the wrong message to those who would attempt to tamper with our elections — if you are wealthy or politically connected, you can escape justice. Worst of all, releasing her early would erode confidence in our system of justice as based on fairness, equity, and the law.”

House Speaker Julie McCluskie declined to comment on Polis’ latest Peters post. But a spokesman said her position on Peters has not changed.

In her opening day speech in January, McCluskie argued that “this administration will target Colorado no matter what we do,” and state officials should “do what’s right.”

Those comments, she later told The Denver Post, were in reference to Peters.

Colorado lawmakers advanced legislation Wednesday that would seal name-change records for minors but only after they removed a more contentious section of the bill because of objections from Gov. Jared Polis.

As it passed the Senate Judiciary Committee, would require the automatic suppression of most children’s name-change petitions. Supporters say that is necessary to protect the privacy of transgender youths and their families.

But when the day began, the measure also would have directed family court judges to take into account a parent’s acceptance of a child’s gender identity when determining parenting time. That section had revived a provision that was stripped from a , and the bill’s sponsors said before the hearing Wednesday that they’d garnered support from various LGBTQ+ advocacy groups to support the language this year.

The provision was pulled from SB-18 after Polis threatened to veto the bill otherwise, according to Rep. Lorena Garcia, one of the bill’s sponsors, and Z Williams, one of the activists supporting the measure.

Garcia said Polis issued the veto threat earlier this month. Williams said the governor told the bill’s supporters that he didn’t want to make any changes to family law.

“It pains us to remove this provision, as it was a title pulled by the late Sen. (Faith) Winter before her death,” Sen. Katie Wallace, a Longmont Democrat, told committee members. Winter, who died in a car crash in November, sponsored last year’s bill, from which lawmakers dropped the same family court provision amid disagreements among LGBTQ+ groups.

In a statement Wednesday evening, Polis spokeswoman Ally Sullivan said the governor “opposed the contradictory and troublesome family law provisions in the legislation, which were substantially the same as those he opposed last year.” She added that LGBTQ+ activists and attorneys specializing in family law had “warned against potential adverse and detrimental impacts on the very children the bill was intended to help.”

Polis’ statement also seemed to suggest that the governor was still not on board with SB-18, even with the family court provision stripped from the proposal.

“The governor would be open to new legislation regarding record suppression for name changes for all people and appreciates the ongoing conversations with bill sponsors,” Sullivan wrote.

On Thursday, Wallace and Williams both disputed the governor’s claim that advocacy groups had concerns about the family court provision. Both said that the bill’s backers had successfully negotiated a more modest amendment to assuage concerns from LGBTQ+ groups. The family court provision was also significantly changed from the version that died in 2025, Williams said, rather than “substantially the same,” as the statement from Polis’ office claimed.

Wallace said the sponsors wouldn’t kill the bill and replace it with a new one, as Polis seemed to desire.

In a followup statement Thursday, the governor’s office struck a conciliatory tone.

Williams, who runs a nonprofit law firm, said those remaining provisions were still important to protect the privacy of children who, through their parents, petition to change their names. The bill doesn’t apply to people younger than 18 who have been convicted of crimes.

“This bill will protect children from AI data-scraping of those public records, the potential of bullying if they should be found and from hostile individuals in the wider world,” Wallace said during the committee hearing Wednesday.

The removal of the bill’s family court provision did not stanch the opposition from conservatives and critics of the measure. More than 70 people signed up to testify on the bill, and opponents criticized the family court language and gender-affirming care generally.

The committee voted 5-2 to advance the bill. It will next head to the Senate floor.

The legislative package sponsored by a dozen lawmakers would repeal a variety of state tax exemptions that mirror tax breaks in the federal code. It puts a particular focus on splitting the state tax code from changes made by the tax cut bill passed last year by Congress and championed by President Donald Trump.

The targeted cuts would include a cap on how much corporations can write off from operating losses, how much depreciation businesses can write off for things like buildings and equipment, and how much interest a business can deduct from its taxes. Filers who use those tax breaks would no longer get the full benefit for state tax purposes.

The new bills build off state Democrats’ work during last summer’s special session to close a slew of tax exemptions and update the state tax code in response to H.R. 1. That is commonly known as Trump’s “big beautiful bill.”

Lawmakers hope to use the money the state pockets from ending the exemptions to extend or expand some state tax credits, such as those for rehabbing mostly vacant buildings in enterprise zones and for wildfire mitigation. Supporters also hope to steer some of the money to recipients of the state’s new — and on the ropes — Family Affordability Tax Credit, or the FATC.

That new program has given direct payments to low- and middle-income families to help with child-rearing costs, starting with the tax-filing season a year ago. Researchers credited the program with helping to cut Colorado’s child poverty by more than a third last year.

“Seldom have we seen any piece of tax policy be that effective, that quickly,” Sen. Mike Weissman, an Aurora Democrat sponsoring some of the proposals, said at a news conference. “That has been our North Star in assembling this whole package.”

During the event, supporters framed the reforms as shifting tax cuts away from wealthy corporations and toward everyday Coloradans who could use the help to pay for car repairs or for clothes or extracurricular activities for their children.

But in the business community, people worry about the proposals hamstringing Colorado’s competitiveness with other states, Colorado Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Loren Furman said Tuesday. The chamber hasn’t taken a formal position yet, but Furman said it has “deep concerns” about the overall package.

“Together, these proposals shift the burden of Colorado’s budget shortfall on the backs of employers of all sizes via procedural changes to the tax code, reviving several problematic concepts from bills that we’ve repeatedly fought, negotiated or killed in prior years,” Furman said in a statement. “At the end of the day, these bills will increase taxes on businesses at a time when Colorado’s competitiveness rankings continue to decline, further driving companies and families out of the state due to sky-high costs.”

The changes to the federal tax code last summer plunged Colorado’s tax collections below a threshold that would allow for the family tax credit in the current fiscal year, meaning parents won’t receive the money when they file their taxes in 2027.

The tax package proposed Tuesday wouldn’t funnel money directly into that credit, but it would create a new Family Affordability Credit mirroring .

The current family credit gives money directly to joint filers with incomes below $96,000 or single filers with incomes below $85,000. The credit provides more money to lower-income families and those with younger children, and then scales the credit down as the incomes and ages of tax filers rise.

Rep. Yara Zokaie, a Fort Collins Democrat, said it is “crucial” to pass the tax reform package this year because of how effective the FATC has been.

“The progress we made is not something I’m willing to walk back,” Zokaie said in an interview previewing the package.

Three of the four bills were introduced Tuesday afternoon as House Bills , and . A nonpartisan fiscal analysis showing their effect on state tax collections and spending was not yet available.

In addition to Zokaie and Weissman, the bills are being sponsored by Democratic Reps. Andrew Boesenecker, Kyle Brown, Lorena Garcia, Karen McCormick, Emily Sirota and Steven Woodrow, plus Sens. Judy Amabile, Matt Ball, Cathy Kipp, Dylan Roberts and Katie Wallace.

The party has a nearly 2-to-1Ìęmajority in the Capitol. But Gov. Jared Polis, also a Democrat, said in an interview at the start of the legislative session in January that he’d want broad-based tax cuts as part of any tax package. He won an income tax cut as part of negotiations to pass the original FATC bill in 2024.

This year, however, Garcia said that “never in a million years” would she consider a broad-based tax cut when the caucus’s goal is direct support to working families.

“At the end of the day, the governor is going to see that this is absolutely necessary,” said Garcia, from Adams County. “He’s trying to say that he wants to put money back in the hands of hardworking families. This is how we do it.”

But Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce President and CEO J. J. Ament echoed Furman’s concerns about the package. The proposals would particularly hurt small businesses, he said.

“You simply cannot make things more expensive and more affordable at the same time,” Ament said in a statement. “The legislature would be better served by focusing on increasing Colorado’s competitiveness and attractiveness for business investment and great jobs.”

The new package is part of a broader push on the left to remake Colorado’s tax system. The state has long been governed by the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, or TABOR, which mandates a flat income tax and caps state revenue collection.

The Colorado Education Association is backing a proposed ballot measure that would exempt education spending from the cap — in effect, giving the state an additional buffer of billions of dollars before it would have to refund money to taxpayers. It would earmark some of the cash for education. Sen. Jeff Bridges, a Greenwood Village Democrat, is planning to introduce a bill to refer that measure to the ballot.

The progressive Bell Policy Center recently won preliminary approval to solicit signatures through the initiative process for another measure that would institute a graduated income tax, in which wealthier Coloradans would pay a higher percentage of their incomes in taxes.

The proposals wouldn’t necessarily compete with each other, but they would upend the foundation of Colorado’s tax code.

For one, the education proposal would, in effect, erase the state’s TABOR surplus, or the money collected over the revenue cap. That money is generally used to pay for a slew of Colorado tax credits, including the FATC, before issuing general taxpayer refunds.

The tax package unveiled Tuesday would sidestep that issue by dedicatingÌęmoney from the closed write-offs and other exemptions to fund the new, similar-but-separate Family Affordability Credit.

The gathering was small, and it seemed dwarfed by the large room where the bill’s supporters had assembled. They’d repeatedly delayed the proposal, and tweaked its scope, amid lingering concerns from Gov. Jared Polis — who months earlier welcomed immigration authorities’ presence in the state to help arrest “dangerous criminals.”

The delayed and low-key nature of that April news conference would make for a stark contrast with the unveiling of another round of immigration legislation just 10 months later.

At that rally last week, legislators gathered outside the state Capitol to launch a package of immigration bills drafted in response to President Donald Trump’s mass-deportation agenda. The group, with lawmakers flanked by dozens of supporters and advocates, filled most of the building’s west steps and spilled onto the concrete below.

The crowd chanted “Abolish ICE!” as legislators described plans to prevent anyone who’d worked for the agency from joining a Colorado police department, while tightening rules around detention centers and allowing Coloradans injured by federal authorities to sue them.

The events’ contrasts are emblematic of the shift on immigration — in rhetoric and, to some degree, in policy — among Colorado’s majority Democrats after a year of unprecedented enforcement. While Colorado has not been visited by the quasi-militarized surges of Minneapolis or Los Angeles, the state saw more than 3,500 immigration arrests over the course of Trump’s first nine months in the White House.

Graphic footage of federal agents’ killings of people in Minneapolis and high-profile operations in Denver, Aurora, Colorado Springs, Durango and affluent parts of the high country brought the Trump administration’s immigration agenda to the doorsteps of lawmakers and the Democratic base that elected them.

Some state legislators likened the current moment to the weeks after the 2020 police killing of George Floyd, which helped unify Democratic lawmakers and spurred the passage of a marquee police oversight bill in Colorado.

Identifying a problem and agreeing on a solution is rarely a straight line in politics, and whether Democratic lawmakers’ comfort with criticizing ICE translates into full agreement on policy changes remains to be seen. Democrats nationwide are just starting to probe the scale of growing anti-ICE sentiment, and Polis, in a statement to The Denver Post, was lukewarm and “skeptical” about additional immigration measures.

Though he said he was open to the discussions, “I think we have to be mindful of what we already have on the books.”

But lawmakers here, particularly those who have long worked on immigration legislation, are preparing far-reaching measures as a response to what they’ve seen in the past 12 months. While last year they waited on negotiations with the governor, they’ve moved more swiftly this time around.

Less than three weeks before the rally, on the first day of the 2026 legislative session, the lawmakers had already introduced , which would allow Coloradans injured by immigration authorities to file lawsuits against those agents. And they were publicly describing plans for two more, both tabbed for introduction later in February, that would, among other things, further tighten laws around ICE cooperation and remind local police that they can detain federal agents during an investigation.

“Because Trump is so unpredictable, (Democratic) leadership, in general, really were wanting to take a more reserved measure on immigration” last year, said Rep. Lorena Garcia, an Adams County Democrat who sponsored the 2025 bill and is involved in this year’s package. “But we were still able to get a pretty bold bill out of here. And yet still it’s not enough.

“I would say the legislature (this year) is actually saying we have to be more aggressive in protecting Coloradans. And the community’s been calling for it.”

‘They’re not scared,’ advocate says of lawmakers

After Trump won reelection in 2024 with a campaign focused on immigration and pledges to deport millions of people without proper legal status, Democrats across the country wondered whether the party needed to toughen its position on immigration.

Spring showed majority support for ICE raids, the use of military personnel at the U.S.-Mexico border and the banning of so-called “sanctuary” policies in cities that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities.

In Colorado at the time, some state lawmakers had privately worried that passing a bill strengthening the state’s sanctuary-like laws would only draw the ire of Trump, said Alex SĂĄnchez, the head of the high country-based Voces Unidas, an immigrant-rights group.

Those conversations are different this year, he and others said.

While Colorado Republicans have generally defended immigration enforcement — if not fully embracing how it’s being carried out — a different breeze is blowing among Democrats, from those who control the state Capitol to the candidates vying to unseat a Republican congressman in the suburbs north of Denver.

“The biggest change I’ve seen is they’re actually talking about (immigration), and they’re not scared,” Gladis Ibarra, the co-executive director of the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, said of federal and state lawmakers. “It’s not across the board. But it’s been a clear shift.”

The intensive surge of immigration authorities into several blue states, and the killing of RenĂ©e Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minneapolis last month, helped swing public opinion against Trump’s immigration agenda. In his statement to The Post, Polis said the “images from the last year, especially the last few weeks, are incredibly disturbing.”

Some Colorado lawmakers pointed to public polling that has shown increasing opposition to ICE’s practices. A new nationwide found that 34% of nearly 1,200 voters interviewed in late January and early February supported how ICE was enforcing immigration laws — a 6-percentage-point drop from two weeks prior. Sixty percent said Trump’s treatment of undocumented immigrants had been too harsh.

Latinos are the largest ethic minority group in Colorado, and 40% of those polled last year said they or their communities feared being arrested by ICE. All of the poll’s respondents were U.S. citizens.

Every month has seemed to bring news of a new and controversial arrest, from a father and two children in Durango or a prominent activist in Denver to a schoolteacher in Douglas CountyÌęor drivers headed to work in the high country. Nearly two-thirds of the 3,500 immigrants arrested in the state last year had no prior criminal convictions, according to ICE records obtained by .

Local advocates said they had documented ICE arrests and then broadcast what they’d found, including to lawmakers, to move the immigration crackdown from rhetoric to reality.

“Coming out of 2024, a lot of Democrats were convinced that they were just on the losing side of immigration as an issue,” said Seth Masket, a political scientist at the University of Denver. “And it was definitely the top issue mentioned by the Trump campaign, it was the main thing they ran on and he won with it.

“I think what we’ve seen — particularly over the last month, but somewhat more broadly over the last year — is just some of the consequences of the Trump administration’s crackdown, which looks more brutal than a lot of people expected.”

Facing public demands for action

The proximity of those arrests — coupled with the violent intensity of immigration authorities’ efforts in Minneapolis and elsewhere — has galvanized Democratic lawmakers.

Protests have erupted, too, further pressing elected officials to respond. Days before last week’s rally on the Capitol steps, hundreds of protesters gathered near the same spot to protest ICE.

“There is now evidence in our midst of what the federal administration is doing,” said House Speaker Julie McCluskie, a Dillon Democrat.

After an ICE operation in nearby Frisco last year, local school attendance dropped by 35%.

“What we’ve seen in this state, and what we’re seeing on a national stage, has really caused our public to step up and demand that we take action,” she said.

The Colorado Democratic Party recently released a “Know Your Rights” toolkit on its social media accounts to provide immigrants with guidance on how to interact with ICE. Masket said he couldn’t have imagined the party doing that even six months ago.

U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, Denver’s longtime congresswoman, has called for the “dismantling” of the agency. A newly progressive-leaning Aurora City Council passed a resolution opposing ICE’s “lawlessness and overreach,” less than two years after one of that council’s members helped ignite a national firestorm over a transnational Venezuelan gang.

In Denver, City Council members soon will consider a local measure that would attempt to ban ICE agents (and other officers) from wearing face coverings.

U.S. Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper — both of whom are facing contested primary elections in June, with Bennet seeking the governor’s office and Hickenlooper running for reelection — have increasingly criticized ICE. They’ve also supported Democrats’ decision to shut down the government over funding for the agency. Hickenlooper later voted for for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE.

Still, it’s unclear to what extent broad anger will help produce a coherent policy response, in Colorado and across the country. Nationally, have fretted over the calls — like those echoing from the Colorado Capitol’s stairs — to abolish ICE outright.

Two of the three expected measures in the Colorado legislature have yet to be introduced. One of them would prohibit state law enforcement officers from wearing masks and prevent any former ICE agents from becoming certified to work for Colorado agencies, said Reps. Yara Zokaie and Meg Froelich, who are set to sponsor the proposal.

The other would further expand last year’s cooperation restrictions bill — including with provisions aimed at Polis, who sought to sidestep the law last year and comply with an ICE subpoena. The measure would require the state to report ICE subpoenas it receives and state officials to alert anyone whose data may be included in the request.

The governor, also a Democrat, has taken a more neutral tone against Trump since the president returned to office last year.

But Polis has become more critical of the president’s immigration enforcement efforts: A year after he welcomed ICE to the state, Polis spent part of his final annual address to the legislature last month noting how many immigrant detainees had no criminal records, as well as listing the names of people killed and arrested by immigration authorities.

His office has also encouraged clemency applications by people convicted of nonviolent or minor crimes and who “are experiencing or fear being seized by the federal government and torn away from their families.”

Polis’ office declined an interview request for this story. In response to an emailed list of questions, Polis said his position on immigration enforcement had not changed. He told The Post that “when anyone is being investigated for a crime, whether they are here legally or illegally, we will work with anyone to apprehend and prosecute them. But unfortunately the federal government has not been targeted or transparent in how they are pursuing their enforcement activities.”

As for legislators’ plans this session, Polis said he hadn’t seen language on all of the proposals.

But he said he “would be skeptical of legislation that raises constitutional concerns or departs from the agreements reached last year.”

“I have been clear (that) I am willing to work with legislators on any issue to deliver the best policy for the state,” Polis said. “However, Colorado has some of the strongest protections across the country and I want to ensure that recent laws are being followed and fully understood and (that) new laws do not create confusion.”

Immigration a top issue in CD8 race

The changing politics of immigration have also slipped into one of the state’s most high-profile races this year.

Republican U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans won the 8th Congressional District seat in November 2024 in part by running on immigration enforcement and for supporting past legislation limiting state cooperation with ICE. Then-U.S. Rep. Yadira Caraveo on an issue that was seen then as a vulnerability for Democrats.

Last April, as the state legislature considered the bill further limiting ICE cooperation, then-Rep. Shannon Bird, a Democrat, was preparing to run against Evans. Later that month, she voted against the bill in committee and was absent for its final vote on the House floor.

Her campaign said last week that she’d missed the vote because of an ill family member. She’d voted no in committee, the campaign said, over concerns with proposed penalties that would be assessed to state or local officials who worked with ICE. Her campaign said Bird would’ve voted for the final version of the bill.

The penalty provision remained in the legislation when it passed the House and was later signed into law. Garcia and Rep. Elizabeth Velasco, the lawmakers who sponsored the bill, said Bird had not raised concerns to them last year.

“I don’t want to make assumptions about why she dodged the vote,” Garcia said last week.

Bird’s no vote and absence may have spared her attack ads from Evans. But, in another sign of how the political realities around immigration have shifted in the past year, that vote drew a caustic statement from one of her Democratic primary opponents in the 8th District, Evan Munsing.

In a statement, Bird’s campaign manager, Eve Zhurbinskiy, wrote that Bird “believes ICE is murdering people in our streets. Having violent, untrained and masked agents terrorizing our communities is unacceptable and un-American. Unlike Gabe Evans, who has voted for the Trump agenda every step of the way and enabled these attacks on law-abiding citizens, Shannon will always represent the needs of our community first — not the president.”

Evans has had to navigate his own immigration position in the swing district, which takes in northern Denver suburbs and Greeley.

He has said he wants the Trump administration to focus on immigrants with criminal records, but he also supported a Republican bill directing tens of billions of dollars in additional funding to ICE, even as more .

, Evans said he was worried about ICE officials’ assertion that the agency’s personnel can search homes with just an administrative warrant, rather than obtaining one signed by a judge. He said he looked forward to questioning Homeland Security officials during an upcoming House hearing.

But he blamed Democrats for the Minneapolis standoff and the broader impression that ICE was out of control.

“One side wants to fan the flames and equivocate in this space because they want an issue to run on in November,” he said.

He noted that ICE had stepped lightly in his district, with narrowly tailored operations aimed at criminals rather than the local industries that rely on immigrant workers.

“We have big meatpacking plants, we have big dairies, we have places where, if ICE was trying to meet a quota, you would see ICE going to them,” Evans said.

‘A failed system for decades’

Other Republicans have offered similarly mixed views on the crackdown, primarily expressing reservations with how it¶¶Òőap being carried out.

During a debate last week in the state Capitol over a resolution calling for support for the immigrant community, two Republican lawmakers addressed their constituents in Spanish and spoke of the value of immigrants. Rep. Ryan Gonzalez, of Greeley, said he supported a humane immigration system — but, echoing Evans, he said the resolution was divisive and polarizing, and he and every other Republican voted against it.

Rep. Matt Soper, a Delta Republican whose wife became a U.S. citizen last week, said in an interview that he was troubled that asylum-seekers and others without full legal status were being deported, in some instances, to countries other than those where they’re from.

But he wanted the federal government to enforce the country’s immigration laws, he said. He supported what Trump was doing, he said, even if he wished “he could be nicer about it.” He saw little chance that his caucus would support Democrats’ immigration proposals.

Senate Minority Leader Cleave Simpson said he was concerned by the October arrests of a father and two children in Durango, which was followed by an ICE agent throwing a protester to the ground. He said he’d reached out to Republican U.S. Rep. Jeff Hurd, whose district includes Durango.

“It’s just has caused me to think more deeply about federal immigration and the recognition that it¶¶Òőap been largely a failed system for decades,” he said, adding that he didn’t think mass deportations were the answer to that failure.

Still, he said, he wanted Democrats to acknowledge that there are “bad actors” who’ve entered the country without legal status. In his view, the state should cooperate with ICE, which in turn would help the agency focus on arresting people with criminal histories while reducing the likelihood of violent encounters between federal officers and the public.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.