Less than a month before ballots start arriving in mailboxes , Marx this week reported having about $215,000 in the bank. Weiser, the state’s attorney general, reported about $827,000 in his campaign account.

In the most recent campaign fundraising filings, covering July 28 through Sept. 2 and due Tuesday, Weiser reported raising almost $687,000. Marx raised almost $625,000.

But Weiser spent less than half of his haul — about $229,000 — and much of that was on payroll. Marx, meanwhile, spent almost 90% of his new fundraising, or more than $551,000. More than half of the total — almost $335,000 — went to a direct-mail fundraising company.

Both major-party candidates also have independent expenditure committees supporting them, and those can spend and raise unlimited funds, albeit without any coordination with the candidates’ campaigns. Both operations appear to have gone largely dark following the June 30 primary election. Freedom IEC, the group backing Marx, reported spending about $29,000, with about $28,000 raised, over the past month. Fighting For Colorado, the group backing Weiser, reported spending about $124 and raising just over $3,000.

Labor Day historically marks the start of the sprint toward Election Day, with heavy spending expected in October to sway voters who haven’t made up their minds or cast their ballots yet. Election Day is Nov. 3.

Colorado clerks will begin mailing ballots to voters Oct. 2. Weiser is the heavy favorite to succeed term-limited Gov. Jared Polis, with Colorado voters choosing only one Republican governor in the past 50 years and the state trending steadily blue over the past decade.

Marx, a first-time candidate who’s a former nonprofit ministry leader, emerged from a bruising primary campaign that came down to only a few thousand votes over state Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer — and ended with both of his GOP rivals saying they would not support him in the general election.

Marx’s candidacy has also been marred by ongoing questions about his biography and fundraising practices. On Aug. 31, the secretary of state’s office announced it was seeking against the Marx campaign for allegedly accepting donations over the state limit and “aggravating factors.”

A is slated to begin Thursday.

Among other candidates, Greg Lopez, a former short-term Republican member of Congress now seeking the governorship as an unaffiliated candidate, reported ending the latest campaign filing period with less than $18,000 on hand. He raised less than $17,000 during the period.

Other Colorado races

Here is how much money major-party candidates raised in other state races July 28 through Sept. 2, and how much they had on hand at the end of the reporting period:

Attorney General

• Michael Allen (Republican): raised $97,812.61, reported $62,506.59 on hand.
• Jena Griswold (Democrat): raised $241,521, reported $292,067.19 on hand.

Secretary of State

• Amanda Gonzalez (Democrat): raised $64,721.82, reported $84,499.32 on hand.
• James Wiley (Republican): raised $13,516.32, reported a debt of $4,305.11.

Treasurer

• Kevin Grantham (Republican): raised $9,231, reported $59,612.22 on hand.
• Jeff Bridges (Democrat): raised $13,101, reported $228,880.89 on hand.

In state legislative races, party political action committees that aim to expand or reduce Democrats’ majorities also reported recent fundraising and spending:

Colorado House of Representatives

• Colorado Way Forward (PAC supporting Democrats): raised $226,750, spent $38,583.18. Reported $1,179,792.08 total raised this cycle.
• New Day Colorado (PAC supporting Republicans): raised $112,505, spent $87,784.40. Reported $1,260,601.19 total raised this cycle.

State Senate

• All Together Colorado (PAC supporting Democrats): raised $217,575, spent $72,730.85. Reported $1,678,887.09 total raised this cycle.
• Senate Majority Fund (PAC supporting Republicans): raised $434,200, spent $189,419.75. Reported $1,928,319.11 total raised this cycle.

The Colorado Attorney General’s Office announced Wednesday that it had reached a after the Colorado Springs company allegedly billed for 123,990 extra lenses since March 2020. Hero DVO apparently didn’t double-bill for frames that would house the lenses.

“Hero DVO perpetrated a scheme designed to bill for unneeded lenses that were never provided to patients,” Attorney General Phil Weiser said in a news release. “Today’s action holds the company to account for its fraudulent conduct that harmed our state’s Medicaid program. We will continue to remain vigilant about protecting Colorado from fraudsters.”

In the settlement, Hero denied any wrongdoing. The company, which the AG’s office says provides vision services to underserved children, will repay the state in quarterly installments over four years. The first, worth $125,000, is due next week.

The settlement comes out to about $65 per lens. If Hero were to go into bankruptcy, Colorado could try to reclaim about $61 million, which is three times the maximum possible damages and the most the state could seek.

But so far, the effort hasn’t been successful. And now the company, EarnIn, is facing a lawsuit filed by the Colorado Attorney General’s Office under the same laws it was lobbying to change.

The lawsuit, filed Aug. 27��against EarnIn, is the first of its kind in Colorado. It accuses the company of violating state law by charging effective interest rates for pay advances that were, on average, 10 times higher than those allowed for payday loans.

Lawyers from the attorney general’s office allege that EarnIn used deceptive practices to rake in tips. They contend that its “earned-wage access” products — which, in exchange for a fee, provide instant, small-dollar payments to customers — should be treated like loans.

If the lawsuit succeeds, it would refute the claims by the industry, and some lawmakers, that the payments aren’t a loan but a new type of financial product that needs its own bespoke regulations. The industry spent more than $500,000 on lobbying in recent years in Colorado, alongside thousands more in campaign donations, as it backed efforts to create that proposed oversight framework.

In a statement, Attorney General Phil Weiser said the California-based EarnIn had acted “as a third-party lender and charged illegally high rates, used deceptive design strategies to extract some charges, and trapped consumers in repeat borrowing.”

The lawsuit targets one type of earned-wage access product, which is directly marketed to consumers and is accessible through smartphone apps. Customers receive payments as an “advance” on their wages, usually in small dollar amounts that are then repaid automatically to the company — typically when customers’ paychecks hit their bank account. The suit does not challenge a similar product that’s offered directly through employers.

Between January 2023 and July 2025, EarnIn loaned roughly $300 million to Colorado consumers and collected more than $16 million in combined tips and fees for “lightning speed” transfers, the attorney general’s office wrote. (EWA companies also often offer free transfers that are delivered a few days later.)

When weighing those fees as interest, the lawsuit alleges, the loans carried an average annual interest rate of 388%, far . A $3.50 fee for a $50 advance, for instance, translates to an annual interest rate of 365%.

Many of EarnIn’s loans went to repeat customers: Fewer than 57,000 Coloradans took out more than 3.1 million loans between early 2023 and summer 2025, the suit alleges. The filing also describes three customers who each took out hundreds of loans and paid thousands of dollars in fees during that period, with the fees amounting to average annual interest rates that ranged from 1,421% to more than 2,200%.

In a statement Wednesday, David Durant, EarnIn’s general counsel and chief legal and regulatory officer, said the company “firmly disagreed” with the lawsuit’s allegations. He said the lawsuit “seeks to take away a financial tool that nearly 200,000 Coloradans have relied on, while protecting the overdraft fees and late payment penalties Coloradans turn to when they can’t wait for payday.”

“EarnIn’s Cash Out product is not a loan. Our customers access a portion of the pay they’ve already earned, with no obligation to repay, no interest, no mandatory fees, and no advance on future earnings,” Durant wrote.

Growing legal challenges, new laws

Colorado’s lawsuit joins a growing list of legal challenges to the earned-wage access industry. Attorneys general in , and , have filed similar lawsuits in recent years, as have .

As that legal opposition has mounted, state legislatures have debated — — laws that carve earned-wage access services out of existing loan regulations. The EWA companies argue, as Durant did, that what they offer isn’t a loan at all and should be regulated using specifically crafted rules.

Critics have countered that the products are just a modern spin on payday lending and should be treated as such.

While a consumer can technically avoid repaying the loan without penalty, EarnIn has direct access to a customer’s bank account to secure repayment; that access can be difficult to revoke, the state’s lawsuit alleges. As with other EWA companies, a customer cannot use the app again until they’ve repaid the service.

Ninety-two percent of customers either paid a fee or left a tip — which, the suit alleges, were intentionally crafted to be difficult to avoid. In one case, it took 13 clicks to reduce a suggested $11 tip to $0, the AG’s office wrote. When factoring in tips and fees, customers repaid 99.23% of the money owed to EarnIn, according to the lawsuit.

In its bid to set its own regulatory framework, the industry has that would’ve required EWA companies to receive licensure before operating in the state. The latest bill, in 2026, would have applied both to direct-to-consumer products and to those provided through employers, and it would have effectively exempted EWA services from the more stringent requirements levied against payday lenders.

As a result, the measure also would have made moot much of the state’s forthcoming lawsuit against the company, said Andrea Kuwik of the Bell Policy Center, which opposed the legislation.

Indeed, EarnIn knew that the attorney general was investigating it as the company and others like it lobbied lawmakers, the lawsuit indicates. In January 2025, shortly before lawmakers first debated an EWA bill, Weiser’s office agreed to hold off on suing EarnIn, legal filings show.

Durant, the company’s general counsel, said that EarnIn had worked for a year with Weiser’s office and that the office “preferred a legislative solution.”

“The legislation we backed last session would have licensed EWA providers, put them under state supervision, and capped what providers can charge,” Durant wrote. “Supporting more oversight of our own product is the opposite of trying to avoid it, and it’s the same position we’ve taken in states across the country.”

Lawrence Pacheco, a spokesman for the AG’s office, said that the prior agreement not to sue EarnIn was unrelated to the legislative debate.

$500,000 spent on lobbying

Amid that debate, EarnIn and four other companies spent more than $500,000 on lobbying in Colorado in the past two years. EarnIn also donated $7,500 to outside spending committees backing Republican and Democratic candidates in late 2025 and early 2026, part of more than $41,000 in donations from four of the companies to spending committees supporting candidates from both parties and to lawmakers who sponsored the legislation.

All of that money was donated starting in late 2024, weeks before lawmakers first debated the industry’s regulations.

The companies’ lobbying did not pay off. In a repeat of the 2025 debate, this year’s bill cleared an initial committee vote only to die before reaching the House floor.

Rep. Sean Camacho, a primary sponsor of the EWA bills, said he was aware the attorney general’s office was “looking into certain companies for certain practices” ahead of the legislative debate earlier this year. That’s why “we wanted to run this bill, because we wanted to make sure best practices” were enshrined in state law, he said.

“What we were trying to do is protect working people by having a comprehensive framework in which EWA operates,” Camacho, a Denver Democrat, said. “We understand people need access to capital and traditional lending sources. This is a new thing in the marketplace, and from our view, it was unregulated and needed some work.”

But consumer-protection groups, which opposed the legislation, had long maintained that direct-to-consumer EWA services could always be regulated under existing rules.

The lawsuit affirmed that the companies have “really predatory, deceptive practices that should be following Colorado’s payday consumer protections,” said Kuwik, Bell’s policy and research director.

She said the legislature may need to set specific rules for employer-integrated EWA products, meaning those pay advances that are offered as part of an employer’s benefits package. But she said the state’s lawsuit made clear that direct-to-consumer advances, like EarnIn’s, should be treated like payday loans.

“The suit that they brought … just has all of (that) specific information about EarnIn that, again, just really validates everything that we’ve been saying,” Kuwik continued.

The lawsuit seeks a ruling that would prohibit EarnIn from violating state lending laws, and it also seeks refunds for excess charges and other penalties and fees.

The attorneys general argued that when Congress created Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, it left most decisions about which services to cover up to the states. The federal government and the states split the cost of covering low-income people through the programs, with Colorado responsible for roughly half of Medicaid costs.

HHS proposed a rule in December that wouldn’t allow federal funding to go toward puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones or certain surgeries for transgender people under 18 covered by Medicaid or under 19 covered by CHIP, known as Health First Colorado and Child Health Plan Plus, respectively.

That rule is .

Children who needed the same treatments for conditions other than gender dysphoria would continue to have them covered by Medicaid and CHIP. Gender dysphoria refers to distress when someone’s sense of their own gender doesn’t align with how the world sees them.

Studies have found that transgender children who receive puberty blockers have a than those who don’t.

“The Trump administration is once again singling out transgender youth, this time by trying to deny them access to medically necessary care simply because they rely on Medicaid,” Attorney General Phil Weiser said in a news release. “Parents, in consultation with trusted medical providers, know what is best for their children, not federal political appointees in Washington.”

Media representatives for HHS didn’t respond to a request that they comment on the lawsuit.

At about the same time it announced the rule, the department said it would cut hospitals and other providers out of Medicaid and Medicare if they provided gender-affirming care to minors.

The Trump administration has also to providers for patients’ information; excluded transgender people from military service; to stop providing gender-affirming care to inmates; and the same sex as someone’s original birth certificate.

Children’s Hospital Colorado and Denver Health stopped offering puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to transgender children in January because of the risk to their funding.

Families of affected kids sued Children’s, which officially reinstated gender-affirming care in its scope of services following a court order, but none of the Aurora hospital’s providers are offering it. The hospital faces a contempt of court hearing to determine whether it complied with the judge’s ruling.

The rule requires states to either come up with funds to keep paying providers or to stop covering gender-affirming care, the lawsuit said. The Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing said it doesn’t have the money or the legal authority to pay both the federal and state shares. At least one state, , has said it will make up the difference with its own funds.

The states filed the lawsuit, , on Wednesday in Massachusetts.

Latino voters in the state have consistently said they feel the country is going in the wrong direction, and they reiterated that dissatisfaction in a poll released Tuesday by the Colorado Latino Policy Agenda. Sixty-six percent of respondents said they felt the country was on the wrong track as their frustrations about the cost of living — which ranked higher than any other issue, including immigration — had gone unaddressed and, for many, had worsened.

Against that national critique, the annual poll has repeatedly found that Latino voters still hold a positive view of their own state. But that grace appears to have been exhausted: Forty-six percent of respondents this year said the state was moving in the wrong direction, against 40% who said the opposite.

That’s a stunning 26-percentage-point swing from the same poll last year. It’s also the first time in the poll’s six-year history that it has found an overall disapproval for Colorado’s direction among Latino voters.

“The main thing is the economy,” said Gabriel Sanchez, the pollster for BSP Research who conducted the survey. “Poll after poll, Latinos are telling us loudly: ‘Address the economy. We can’t afford housing. We can’t afford groceries. We can’t afford gas.’

“We’ve seen consistently in the poll that anger and frustration was largely at the federal government. Now, what we’re seeing is that frustration pointing toward government, period. And that’s because people are saying, ‘Look, every year things are getting worse. Somebody fix it.’ ”

The poll was conducted between July 1 and Aug. 11 in partnership with the advocacy groups Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights, or COLOR, and Voces Unidas. It included 1,606 registered Latino voters and has a margin of error of 2.4 percentage points.

The respondents were also critical of who influences their government, saying that wealthy donors, corporate business groups, political consultants and outside PACs, and oil and gas companies wielded too much influence in the state. Eighty-one percent said they were concerned that campaign contributions from wealthy outside groups limited policies that could address the affordability crisis.

Asked to rank what federal and state policymakers should focus on, the top responses included the cost of living and healthcare, increasing wages, and building more affordable and attainable housing. Forty-three percent of respondents said their financial situation had worsened in the past year, compared to 22% who said their situation had improved.

More than half of voters who said their situation has worsened blamed Trump. (Ten percent also blamed billionaires and corporations, the second-highest response.)

Latino voters’ dissatisfaction with Colorado’s direction did not extend to the Democratic officials leading its government. U.S. Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, Gov. Jared Polis, Secretary of State Jena Griswold and Attorney General Phil Weiser all had double-digit net approval ratings, with positive appraisals exceeding negative ones significantly.

Respondents also approved of Republican U.S. Reps. Lauren Boebert and Jeff Hurd and their Democratic colleagues, U.S. Reps. Diana DeGette, Brittany Pettersen, Jason Crow and Joe Neguse.

Freshman Republican U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans, whose 8th Congressional District seat is among the most hotly contested in the country this fall, was less appreciated. Only 34% of voting Latinos in his district regarded him favorably, while 42% viewed him unfavorably. Respondents in CD8 disapproved of congressional Republicans by 22 percentage points, compared to views of congressional Democrats that were net-favorable by 6 points.

That’s notable given that Latinos make up more than 38% of the CD8 electorate, .

What’s more, 61% of voters in the district disapproved of Trump. Of those who said the country was going in the wrong direction or their financial situation had worsened, a majority of Latino CD8 voters blamed Trump more than anyone else for those problems.

But Latino voters in the district also had the lowest overall opinion of the direction of the state. With an unpopular president in a blue state, Evans has focused his campaign on opposing Democrats at home. But while they’re unhappy with the state, CD8 Latino voters simultaneously have strongly favorable views of Polis and Colorado state lawmakers.

While those concerns may spell trouble for Evans, the poll’s top-line takeaway about affordability is a call to action for government officials across the political spectrum, said Alex Sánchez, the president and CEO of Voces Unidas.

“The problem is the lack of action by those in power who can do something about it,” he said. “For the first time since we began this project, more Latinos believe Colorado is moving in the wrong direction than the right direction. That is concerning. State leaders should take that seriously.”

Sánchez said the affordability concerns were “being made worse by what’s happening in our streets, in our communities.” The survey found that 40% of respondents statewide knew someone who had been deported as Trump has pushed to increase immigration arrests and deportations.

To that end, significant majorities of the poll’s respondents opposed letting immigration agents arrest people directly from jails. They backed efforts to allow Coloradans to sue federal officials and opposed allowing the governor to “voluntarily” share immigrants’ information with the federal government, a nod to Polis’ repeated attempts to cooperate with ICE subpoenas.

But the respondents were not entirely progressive. Majorities also supported conservative-backed ballot measures related to penalties for fentanyl possession; trans athletes competing in high school and college sports; and gender-affirming surgeries for minors.

Initiative 195 would create a graduated income tax for the state under which higher earners pay a greater percentage of their income than lower earners, generating significantly more tax revenue. Colorado currently uses a flat tax system, where all taxpayers, regardless of income, pay 4.4% of their income in state taxes. For the ballot, the measure will be assigned an amendment number.

The measure was the last of more than a dozen proposed questions to be certified by the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office after it determined the proponents had collected enough petition signatures. Voters will decide on 14 statewide questions total, in addition to the slew of state, federal and local elections that will make up the Nov. 3 ballot.

The graduated income tax proposal is likely to be one of the marquee ballot box battles heading into the fall.

If passed, the measure would keep the current tax rate for Coloradans making between $100,000 and $500,000 per year. It would raise the marginal income tax rate to 7.4% on income over $500,000 and less than $750,000; to 7.9% on income between $750,000 and $1 million; and to 8.4% on income over $1 million.

The tax rate for Coloradans making $25,000 per year or less would drop slightly to 3.7%, and the rate for Coloradans making between $25,000 and $100,000 per year would decrease to 4.2%.

expect the proposal would bring in nearly $2 billion more in revenue every year to the state, which this year has a general fund budget of more than $17 billion. That money would be earmarked for education, healthcare, and early childcare and preschool.

Medicaid, which would be included, has been a massive driver of the state’s recent fiscal crunches.

“Every Colorado student deserves a great public school and real pathways to opportunity, with great teachers who are paid and supported the way they deserve,” Lisa Weil, the executive director of Great Education Colorado, one of the key backers of the initiative, said in a statement. “Initiative 195 qualifying for the ballot means Coloradans will have the chance to vote their values and build a tax system where everyone pays their fair share and our neighborhood schools finally get what they need to do right by our kids.”

One of the other measures proposed for the ballot, Proposition 136, explicitly seeks to undercut the graduated income tax measure by setting a cap on the state income tax rate. Earlier it was designated as Initiative 232 during the petitioning phase.

If voters pass both, it could set up a potential legal battle over which takes precedence and becomes state law. Both measures would require more than 50% support to become law. The graduated income tax proposal, while a constitutional amendment, would only remove language from the constitution, and thus does not need to clear the 55% threshold for amendments.

“We’ve been prepared for this fight for months,” Michael Fields, the president of the conservative advocacy group Advance Colorado, said in a statement. “That’s why we qualified Initiative 232 — the Income Tax Cap — for the ballot. An overwhelming number of Coloradans agree that the progressive tax hike is too high, too extreme, and will take good paying jobs away from working families and out of our state.

“The Tax Cap is the better answer for anyone who believes Colorado should be more affordable for everyone,” he added.

The other questions that made the statewide ballot would:

• for the possession or sale of fentanyl and other synthetic opioids.
• mandate time in prison for .
• ban not aligned with their biological sex.
• ban for people younger than 18.
• require that law enforcement when an immigrant without proper legal status is charged with a violent crime.
• establish a right for cooking and heating.
• require that sales taxes on sporting goods be earmarked for conservation efforts.
• require additional verification when voters submit mail-in ballots, such as a driver’s license number or partial Social Security number.
• ban congressional redistricting outside the typical once-a-decade census cycle.
• create a constitutional right to hunt and fish.
• require that ballot questions be written at an 8th-grade reading level.
• allow the state to keep more tax money, typically returned under the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights revenue cap, to put toward education. That measure was referred by the legislature.

Another measure, which would have made it a constitutional requirement to better fund the state’s roads, was pulled days before the deadline to do so after Attorney General Phil Weiser, lawmakers and the backers of the measure reached a deal to secure more money for roads in future years. Weiser is the Democratic nominee for governor.

All of the items are being renumbered as amendments or propositions now that they’ve been approved for the ballot, with the ballot titles still to come. The secretary of state must certify the ballot by Friday. That is also the deadline for groups backing ballot initiatives to withdraw their measures.

County clerks can start mailing out general election ballots on Oct. 2, about a month before the election.

Re: “State should stay out of legal challenge to Nexstar-Tegna merger,” August 22 guest commentary.

I was baffled when I read Robin Rossenfeld’s op-ed in Saturday’s Post. The argument that she made for allowing the Nexstar-Tegna merger seemed absurd. “Predictable rules matter,” she wrote. But, as I’ve followed this dispute, the predictable rules have been openly violated. The Federal Communications Commission has long-standing rules about how much any one company can dominate the airwaves. Both Nexstar and Tegna were close to the limit on the number and size of TV stations they control. Predictable rules should say the merger was impossible.

But, in March 2026, FCC Commissioner Brenden Carr – who has been blatant in his Trumpian meddling in TV programming and licensing – waived those rules, without a vote of the commission. Trump’s Department of Justice signed off on “the competitive implications of the deal”, even though many other broadcasters had protested the proposed merger and described the likely distortions of such monopoly control. Lawsuits have put the full merger on hold.

It took me a few days to understand the case being made by corporate lawyer Rossenfeld. She is naming the realities of business in the era of Donald Trump, where predictability has nothing to do with legal processes and established precedent. What is predictable is that a wealthy corporation which has aligned itself with Trump’s version of “the news” will get what it wants, no matter what the laws and the rules say.

With that definition of “predictable,” she tells Colorado’s attorney general not to interfere with corporate privilege by filing pesky lawsuits.

I refuse to accept that corrupt definition of predictability. I applaud Colorado for joining the lawsuit challenging the Nexstar-Tegna merger.

Peter Sawtell, Denver

In her August 22 opinion piece, Robin Rossenfeld tried to make the case that the state should stay out of the Nexstar-Tegna merger because businesses rely on regulatory certainty. She stated that the merger went through a thorough review and that such mergers raise complex legal issues.

She also emphasized that the media market has changed dramatically, and local markets must continue to adapt. All of these are hollow attempts at support when the rules of the game were fundamentally changed to accommodate the merger. When the Federal Communications Commission voted in August 2026 to repeal the long-standing national cap, they threw out any sense of regulatory certainty.

A single broadcast company was previously prohibited from owning television stations reaching more than 39% of U.S. TV households. The proposed merger could reach up to 60% or even 80% of the market. With virtually no attempt to hide the underlying purpose of increasing conservative-leaning ownership of media markets, the current administration has asserted its political will at the peril of a free and open media market that would better serve the citizens of Colorado. The attorney general has a legitimate interest in preserving open markets within the state on behalf of open-minded Coloradans.

John Miles, Greeley

Where was “woke” when I needed it?

Re: “Yes, woke 1.0 was crazy; now where’s the accountability?” August 19 guest commentary.

Thank you, Bret Stephens, for reminding us about the recent crazy actions of some institutions responding to “woke” ideology. But I’m sorry there was not sufficient space in your article to mention the numerous instances of an “unwoke” culture, some way before you were born.

When women, people of color, LGBTA+ people were discriminated against because of the policies developed by white men. Being over 80 years old, I remember when women were denied a loan without a husband’s signature; reading history books that did not reflect certain groups’ contributions to our country; not being recognized because of gender; not receiving the same pay as a man in the same position; receiving medical care that did not match the same care given men; being refused a college admission because the place was reserved for men. The list could go on and on for millions of us growing up in an “unwoke” culture.

Will we ever find a balance of respecting each person’s contributions to our country instead of pointing fingers at others?

Andrea M. West, Centennial

The left should be held accountable for “woke”

I can only assume that Bret Stephens was asking a rhetorical question regarding accountability from the left when considering the pervasive damage done by Woke 1.0. If it����ap one thing everyone should know by now, it����ap that the left rarely holds itself accountable for any policy or action taken, regardless of the consequences.

Besides, why should they? Liberals in general only care about results and are quick to dismiss any failures. It����ap “damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead” with the next ill-advised action or policy. I suppose the follow-up column of anguish by Stephens will address the failings of the left����ap acquiescence to the lunacy put forth by the DSA’s stated policy positions.

David Oyler, Canon City

Griswold’s records problem must be investigated.

Re: “Jena Griswold’s latest scandal should get voters to look seriously at her opponent,” August 23 opinion.

I must admit that I too was deeply disappointed by the outcome of the Colorado Attorney General primary. What frustrates me most is not simply that Jena Griswold won, but that I believe Colorado voters had three other exceptionally qualified candidates before them — candidates whose professional experience and legal backgrounds, in my judgment, better prepared them for the responsibilities of Attorney General.

My frustration is perhaps with all of us. We have a responsibility to look beyond party label, name recognition, political alliances, and campaign rhetoric and ask a very basic question. Who is genuinely the most qualified person to do the job? I find myself asking whether we, as voters, are paying enough attention to competence, experience, judgment, and qualification when choosing people for some of the most consequential offices in our state. For this race, I would say, we failed.

Juanita Chacon, Denver

Krista Kafer alleges in her Sunday Post column that Jena Griswold is suppressing a $25,000 report about the functioning of the Secretary of State’s office. If proven true (and Kafer makes a strong case), Griswold should immediately resign her candidacy. She gained the nomination under false pretenses. Her administration has not been smooth, but rough and bruising to the people who worked under her.

Since, as Kafer pointed out, Griswold’s main qualification is her Secretary of State tenure, she is obviously not qualified to hold the Attorney General’s office. Her legal background is sparse at best, and now her administrative background has been called into question. We need people of integrity in public office. The national scene proves this over and over.

If Griswold is suppressing the report to cover her shortcomings, she doesn’t deserve to hold any office, let alone that of attorney general. Phil Weiser has demonstrated its importance in these troubled times.

Democrats deserve a qualified candidate. Either of Griswold’s opponents in the primary would suffice.

Bob Stephenson, Englewood

Trump’s land grab is based on greed

Re: “Paving paradise: Dismantling the Roadless Rule,” August 23, commentary.

Donald Trump’s thinly veiled excuse to open 59 million acres of national forest for “economic development” is another example of total disregard for the environment for the benefit of corporations.

As a native, a backpacker, and a photographer, I have seen firsthand the benefits of our national forests to all our emotional, mental, and physical health. This is nothing more than a land grab by an administration that values money over people and the environment. Will the next step be to close access to our National Parks? How many greedy millionaires and billionaires (maybe reading this) would love to have Rocky Mountain National Park as a gated community with signs reading, “No Trespassing, Violators Will Be Shot.”

Will Americans make a stand against a president when Congress and the Senate have no backbone to do so, instead sitting slack-jawed in front of their screens? Our national forests and national parks are some of the last examples of a great America.

Put down your fatty burgers, your nachos, and your six packs of beer. Turn off Twitter, TikTok, Meta, game shows, talk shows, sitcoms, and start thinking for yourselves. And if you can’t do it, or forgot how, ask Alexa for help. This land grab is based on greed, and greed is a form of fear.

John C. Gentile, Lakewood

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The Colorado Attorney General’s Office and the 14th District Attorney’s Office this week charged Fabrizio Lorenzin, 65, with four felonies in connection with repeated sabotage of the and its security cameras over several years.

The remote ditch system begins at 11,200 feet high on its namesake pass in the mountains and helps funnel water to Northglenn and Golden. The in Guanella Reservoir in Clear Creek County and in Standley Lake in Adams County.

Lorenzin allegedly forced open headgates on the system’s ditches, damaging the infrastructure and diverting millions of dollars’ worth of drinking water from its intended destination downstream.

Prosecutors allege that he also stole cameras meant to watch the district’s property.

“Protecting critical water infrastructure is a core public safety mission,” Attorney General Phil Weiser said in a news release Friday announcing the charges. “This prosecution reflects our commitment to working side by side with federal and local partners to identify threats quickly and ensure those responsible are held accountable.”

Charging and arrest documents do not specify why Lorenzin allegedly tampered with the gates and diverted water, or for what purpose.

Law enforcement first began investigating the possible tampering with the headgates in August 2019, according to an arrest affidavit documenting the investigation. That’s when four of the gates that control the direction of the flow of water were vandalized, diverting water worth approximately $1.3 million, the affidavit says.

A security camera captured images of an older man with a distinctive backpack, but investigators could not identify him at the time.

Headgates were damaged again in 2022, diverting $4.3 million in water, the affidavit says. Trail cameras again photographed the same man with the same backpack. Another headgate was damaged in 2023 when it was forced open and propped up with rocks. This time, the trail cameras were also stolen.

In 2024, the affidavit says, federal investigators with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency installed three cameras with Apple AirTags attached. More images from the area showed the same man with the same backpack.

In August 2024, the AirTags on the stolen cameras pinged from inside Lorenzin’s home, the affidavit says, and investigators searched it on two occasions, finding the disassembled EPA cameras and a laptop that contained images from other stolen cameras. A review of the search history on the laptop found multiple searches for information related to sabotage on the Berthoud Pass system as well as information about trail cameras and headgates, the documents says.

Lorenzin has been arrested, court records show. He faces one count of tampering with a public water system, two counts of felony theft and one count of tampering with physical evidence.

The deal, formally announced Thursday morning, averts the fight at the ballot box this fall.�� The agreement includes proposed legislation to be pursued early next year as well as a 2027 ballot measure that will ask voters to approve potentially billions of dollars for roads over the next decade. The deal was first reported by The Denver Post.

Attorney General Phil Weiser, the Democratic nominee for governor, was credited with helping push the deal over the finish line — setting up the prospect of a major legislative win before the general election is over.

“This is the type of bold strategy and commitment that Coloradans wanted and need,” said Jeff Keller, a co-chair of the Restore Our Roads Coalition, the group pushing the ballot amendment, in a statement. “It goes beyond what the ballot measure contemplated, both in the level of revenue it will produce and in its ability to address the major roads and bridges projects that have been ignored for too long.”

He added: “Our goal has always been to give Colorado taxpayers a voice in how the taxes and fees they pay for transportation are used. And now they finally will.”

has had heavy backing from the construction industry, including the Colorado Contractors Association and the Colorado Construction Industry Coalition. If it were to stay on the ballot and pass, it would require the state to spend some $2 billion per year, including $540 million from the general fund, on road transportation projects.

It would require taxes and fees the state collects on motor vehicles, fuel and parts to be spent specifically on road transportation — and was formulated as a way to push back against lawmakers’ budgeting of some of that money for transit and other uses in recent years.

State Rep. Andrew Boesenecker, one of the top Democrats in the House and a negotiator on the package, spoke about the deal on a call with fellow legislative Democrats Thursday morning. He said the emerging package would include legislation that could earmark as much as $120 million for roadway repair, without cutting into the general fund.

The exact details of how the legislature will pay for the proposal, along with the details of the 2027 ballot measure, will be worked out in coming months and during the normal legislative process early next year.

Its passage would hinge on the dealmakers winning election in November, when Democrats are favored to retain control of the legislature and the governor’s office. Weiser is running in the governor’s race against Republican Victor Marx and other candidates.

Boesenecker called the framework a “proactive and, I think, responsible path forward that addresses a core concern in our state.”

He said legislative leaders never disagreed that the state needed to do better on road maintenance, but he had problems with how the proposed constitutional amendment would have paid for its goal. This new process, he said, ensures a variety of stakeholders will be able to shape the final product.

“Because we were able to convene the conversation over the last several months, bring the right folks to the table, and have an honest and good-faith discussion on the challenge people face in regard to roadway maintenance in Colorado, we were able to come together — as opposed to being on the opposite sides of the table,” Boesenecker said.

The different sides were able to strike the deal with about a week until the deadline to pull initiatives from the state ballot.

As a constitutional amendment, Initiative 175 would have needed 55% of the vote to pass in November.

The ballot measure had faced fierce pushback from Democrats in the legislature, where the party holds nearly 2-to-1 majorities. They argued the amendment would, in effect, gut spending on other state priorities by requiring the road spending even as the government likely grapples with another massive budget deficit.

In the waning days of this year’s legislative session in the spring, lawmakers pushed through a bill designed to all but neutralize the amendment, even if voters were to approve it in the fall.

At the time, lawmakers had hoped to force the Restore Our Roads Coalition to withdraw its ballot measure in exchange for more talks on a legislative solution, a gambit that the coalition rejected at the time. That legislation would delay the bulk of the amendment’s impact from being felt for only three years, according to the coalition — a period of time the group was willing to wait out.

“I’m grateful that the Initiative 175 proponents were willing to collaborate and find a path forward — one that will produce a ballot measure that we can all get behind,” Weiser said in a statement. “The agreement we reached today will meaningfully fund our transportation system and protect scarce resources for other critical services. Only when we listen to each other can we find common ground.”

Gov. Jared Polis, who is term-limited and in his last year in office, also heralded the deal — while highlighting how roads have improved under his administration. In a news release, his office cited Colorado Department of Transportation data showing that more interstate pavement is in “good” condition than it was three years ago, up to 50.6% compared to 42.8%, and less is in “poor” condition.

On Wednesday, Meta agreed to an $18 billion settlement with 47 states for mental health harm allegedly caused by its products. Colorado’s share will come close to $615 million over the next nine years.

, arguing it designed Facebook and Instagram to ensnare young users, then lied to the public about it. The trial in Oakland, California, had been underway, with to testify that Meta knew Facebook and Instagram harmed some young people, but didn’t take steps to improve safety.

Over the last few years, studies have made it increasingly clear that to harm from social media, especially those who already had unhealthy body images or compulsive tendencies, said Dr. Joel Stoddard, a psychiatrist at Children’s Hospital Colorado.

Teens’ brains are wired for seeking new experiences and forming relationships with their peers — important features for a time when they’re figuring out who they are and where they fit in society, Stoddard said. Social media companies designed their platforms to take advantage of that, making it harder to log off, he said.

Social media platforms, as they currently exist, can harm youth mental health through showing users content that makes their existing vulnerabilities worse, and by making it harder to disengage, said Sarah Domoff, an assistant professor who teaches a class on the topic at the State University of New York at Albany.

The effects worsen if teens are scrolling late at night, or in place of getting exercise or in-person socialization, she said.

“It’s not just what you see, but when you see it, and if it’s crowding out things that are so important to mental health, like sleep,” she said.

showed that Meta knew Instagram was harmful to a portion of teen girls and that about one in eight Facebook users used the platform to the point of interfering with sleep or work.

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser on Wednesday described the settlement as justice for young people who experienced mental health harm and their families, as well as a possible blueprint for future agreements with other companies.

“They harvested data to make money and told the public there was nothing to worry about,” Weiser said at a news conference. “They put profits ahead of public health.”

As part of the settlement, Meta agreed to do more to verify users’ ages, preventing children from opening accounts and placing guardrails around teens, such as better parental controls, automatic blocks of content focused on topics such as eating disorders and self-harm, hiding “likes” to discourage comparison with others and limiting beauty filters.

It also will set a two-hour “hard cap” on teens’ combined daily use of Facebook and Instagram, with mandatory pauses after 15 minutes, one hour and 90 minutes. The company agreed to lower the cap to one hour if Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube do the same.

The apps won’t send push notifications to teens between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. on weekdays during the school year and would block them from accessing content between midnight and 6 a.m.

States agreed to spend the settlement money on youth mental health — a broad category that will allow for significant variation from place to place. An independent auditor will check if Meta is fulfilling its obligations, but doesn’t have the power to enforce more changes if teens are still struggling.

“With respect to whether it had the intended effect, that’s a societal challenge we’ll have to take on,” Weiser said. “We need to address social media because it has been part of the problem” of poor youth mental health.

Meta faced two recent court losses, though before Wednesday’s settlement, the company had said it will appeal both. A California jury found it liable for mental health problems a young woman suffered after using social media compulsively as a child, . The jury also found YouTube owner Google liable, though the majority of the financial penalty fell on Meta.

, jurors assessed penalties of $375 million after finding Meta allowed child exploitation to continue on its apps and attempted to cover up the problem. A judge later added an additional $567 million fine and , without setting a deadline.

The company’s estimated value is around $1.5 trillion.

Most experts don’t call for banning youth from social media altogether, since it can be a place for marginalized people to find support they aren’t getting in-person. Domoff, the professor in New York, said the first step toward a healthier relationship with the platforms is to assess whether they’re supporting or harming someone’s mental health, and if they’re replacing other things the person values.

For most people, a small amount of time on social media leads to greater connection with others, Stoddard said. But that leaves parents in a difficult position, trying to enforce limits on something designed to be hard to put down, he said. Typically, it goes best when parents and teens can agree on certain phone-free times or places, such as the dinner table or the bedroom while sleeping.

“It’s a society-made issue that’s imposed on families,” he said. “Parenting is hard enough without this added layer.”