Teacher absences forced schools to delay and cancel classes in Denver, Boulder, Aurora, Commerce City and Glenwood Springs, and students initiated their own walkouts. Dozens of restaurants and cafes closed across metro Denver. spoke out. An afternoon at Denver’s La Alma-Lincoln Park drew more than a thousand people.

Denver resident Kenneth Daniels, 46, and his 14-year-old daughter Violet were among the crowd gathered on the park’s grassy field at 2 p.m. Daniels, who owns Drop to Pop Records and Curio, closed his store for the day for the protest. The past few weeks have sparked feelings of horror and disgust, he said.

He and his daughter have been to several other protests, and Violet said attending helped her feel connected to the community.

“I feel happy to share their support for wanting a better future, and I’ve seen people who are from my school as well, trying to end this fascist regime,” she said.

A crowd marching past the Colorado Capitol around noon chanted “No hate, no fear, immigrants are welcome here!” Marchers carried signs calling out the recent shootings of civilians by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. Hundreds of Denver-area students participated.

“Get ICE out of here,” said Charles Easley, 18, who had seen flyers posted around Northfield High School and decided to join in. Teachers, coaches, and school staffers were there, too.

“Even kids can tell this is wrong,” said Levi Caufman, 17, another student from Northfield High, referring to the stepped-up ICE tactics in Minneapolis.

The demonstrations were the latest amid widespread outrage following the fatal shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis, which have heightened concern over the Trump administration’s tactics in enforcing immigration laws.

Pretti, an intensive care nurse, was shot and killed by a Border Patrol agent on Saturday after a group of federal officers tackled him to the ground while he was filming ICE actions in Minneapolis. An ICE officer shot and killed , a mother of three born and raised in Colorado, after a confrontation in the Minneapolis streets on Jan. 7.

Protesters at the Capitol marched through downtown to join the demonstration at La Alma-Lincoln Park, sparking expletive-laden chants against Trump and ICE. Organizers passed out food and water to the crowd as advocates from different metro Denver groups addressed the crowd.

“Are we great yet? Cause I just feel embarrassed,” one sign read. Other signs urged people to love their neighbors or likened ICE to the gestapo.

Kelsang Virya with community group Mutual Aid Monday called for the release of all children in immigration detention centers as she spoke to the crowd, referring to the arrest of a 5-year-old Ecuadorian boy and his father who are now being held in a federal facility in Dilley, Texas.

“Now is the time we must join our neighbors and fight back against a fascist government,” Virya said.

Teachers across metro Denver called out of work on Friday as part of the protests, with district officials reporting more than 1,000 teachers and other staffers saying they would not work on Friday. Another 497 teachers at called out, district officials said.

Mapleton Public Schools officials in Adams County told students they could not participate in walkouts in a Thursday letter, but did not stop them when at least 400 did walk out on Friday at Skyview and Global campuses.

“Our kids did participate in protests and nobody did stop them,” district spokesperson Melissa Johnson said. “We do support their First Amendment rights.”

District officials were concerned about students leaving campus unsupervised, but school administrators were able to monitor the protests to ensure pupils’ safety, she said.

Denver school officials announced two-hour delays at George Washington, North, South, East high schools and Joe Shoemaker and McMeen elementary schools because of staffing shortages. Early childhood education and other programs were canceled.

The and the Boulder Valley Education Association notified teachers that Friday was not “an authorized day of action,” officials said.

Aurora Public Schools and Commerce City-based Adams 14 canceled all classes because of staffing shortages.

“We always seek to keep schools open to provide critical learning, social-emotional support, mental health resources, and healthy meals for our students,” Aurora Public School officials said in a statement. “However, after closely monitoring the number of staff absences across the district for tomorrow, we have determined that APS will not have enough staffing capacity to safely operate schools.”

Adams 14 Superintendent Karla Loría declared that, because of high student and staff absences, Friday would become a “teacher and staff work day” with no classes.

In contrast, Cherry Creek Schools, the fourth-largest district in the state, didn’t have a large number of staff absent on Friday, and district spokeswoman Lauren Snell said operations were “as normal as usual.” Douglas County School District officials also reported no impact, with no school closures or delays. In Mapleton Public Schools, 66 teachers called out, and district officials were able to fill most of the absences with substitutes, Johnson said.

More than a dozen Denver-area restaurants planned to close on Friday, and owners of other restaurants said they would donate a percentage of their profits to local immigrant rights organizations. The point, Sap Sua Vietnamese restaurant chef and co-owner Ni Nguyen told the Denver Post this week, “is to grind the economy to a halt.”

Denver Police instituted rolling road closures throughout the downtown area on Friday afternoon because of demonstration and march activity, .

Colorado officials also pushed back on ICE this week, with U.S. Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper demanding ICE reforms as part of a proposed government spending package to avert a partial federal government shutdown and Denver officials supporting Minnesota’s lawsuit challenging ICE operations. Bennet on Friday condemned the Department of Homeland Security policies, and “Donald Trump’s immigration troops,” in a speech on the Senate floor.

“Alex Pretti was killed by his own government, and then his government immediately began to lie about him and what had happened,” Bennet said. “He did not attack the agents. He did not threaten them, and at no point did he pull a gun in the video of that horrific scene. It’s clear that an agent disarmed him before any shots were fired. Multiple agents held him to the ground. Three of them beat him. No reasonable person would have believed he posed any threat to the agents or anyone else at the scene, but the agents still shot him.”

Professional sports figures also commented on ICE on social media.

Nuggets coach David Adelman, who worked in Minneapolis for five years, told a reporter he watched drone images of what “looked like a war zone” and wondered how to explain what is happening to his children.  decried “utterly senseless acts of violence,” referring to the killings of Good and Pretti, on X.com. “… their lives are just taken from them,” Johnson said in the post. “It����ap sad, and it hurts.”

Denver Broncos football guard also called for the abolition of ICE in a since-deleted post on Instagram.

BREAKING: Denver star Quinn Meinerz is calling for President Donald Trump to ABOLISH ICE.

Quinn posted this after Minnesota resident Alex Pretti was shot by US federal agents on Saturday.

Meinerz was one of one of first athletes to call for ICE to be abolished.

Wow.

— MLFootball (@MLFootball)

As next Thursday’s trade deadline nears, the Rockies will be fielding calls about Moniak, if they haven’t already. The club must decide if the outfielder is integral to their rebuilding blueprint or if they’d be better off dealing him for prospects and/or pitching.

It won’t be an easy decision.

The Rockies are hoping several young outfielders, led by Zac Veen, Yanquiel Fernandez and Benny Montgomery, will eventually blossom. But what if the 27-year-old Moniak is already in full bloom? What if he’s part of the solution to the Rockies’ multi-layered problems?

He’s certainly affordable.

Just before this season began, the Rockies signed Moniak for $1.25 million. He’s under control for two more seasons, but he’s arbitration-eligible, so he’d cost more than the outfielders mentioned above. Moniak’s deal with Colorado came after he was released by the Angels, despite Moniak winning his arbitration case and being awarded a $2 million salary. He received termination pay from the Angels worth $484,000.

If teams come calling, the Rockies must consider the roller-coaster track record of a player whom the Phillies selected with the first overall pick in the 2016 draft out of La Costa Canyon High School in Carlsbad, Calif.

With the Angels last season, Moniak hit .219 with 14 homers and 49 RBIs. But in 2023, he batted .280 with 14 home runs, 45 RBIs, 21 doubles and two triples in just 85 games.

In August 2022, the Angels acquired Moniak and outfielder Jadiel Sanchez from the Phillies in exchange for right-hander Noah Syndergaard. In 2021, Moniak was optioned and recalled from Triple-A Lehigh Valley to Philadelphia six times.

Roller-coaster ride, indeed.

But the affable Moniak just might have found baseball heaven at the foot of the Rockies.

“Everyone likes to talk about the altitude and the ball carrying a little bit, but the biggest thing here is there’s a lot of room to get your hits,” Moniak said, adding that he loves Denver. “It plays to my strengths and what I’ve done my whole (career), trying to hit line drives to the gaps, and use my speed for doubles and maybe triples. Historically, Coors Field is a great place to hit, and I’m enjoying this.”

There’s a lot to love about the outfielder. He hustles, plays with abandon and has surprising power. Witness his 450-foot home run to right field off St. Louis right-hander Erick Fedde on Tuesday night. It was Moniak’s 15th homer this season, a career high.

During Colorado’s season of historic failure, the outfielder has been a shooting star.

“He’s a baseball player,” said interim manager Warren Schaeffer, handing out one of his highest compliments. “He’s right in the middle of the action with the guys. He’s one of our leaders.”

Entering the weekend series at Baltimore, Moniak was slashing .423/.464/.769 (1.233 OPS) with four homers and 12 RBIs in 15 games in July. The Rockies have consistently come up empty in the clutch this season, hitting .228 with runners in scoring position. But Moniak’s RISP average is .367.

He’s primarily a right fielder, but he can play center, too.

“I love playing here at Coors,” he said. “I like the room to run and even when I’m in right field, it’s so big, it feels like I’m playing center. I think it’s fun.”

Schaeffer has studied how Moniak plays defense. He likes what he sees.

“Mickey, for me, has really good first-step quickness off the ball,” Schaeffer said. “Probably better than (Brenton) Doyle (a two-time Gold Glove winner). But Doyle has all of that makeup speed and the ability to do special things out there.

“But Mickey takes good routes, and his body’s in the right position. You can tell he’s been doing it for a while at a high level.”

Schaeffer loves Moniak’s game, but it’s general manager Bill Schmidt’s front office that will have to make decisions if suitors come calling. Moniak is trying to tune out the noise.

“I don’t have Twitter on my phone, I don’t have Instagram,” he said. “Just be where my feet are and kind of enjoy the moment. This season has flown by, as they all do. Who knows how long any of us can play this game? So I just try to control what I can control.

“I definitely want to be a Rockie for as long as possible, but if I were to get traded, I’m just grateful to be playing. So whether I’m playing here or somewhere else after the deadline, I’m just grateful.”

“Twitter was not entitled to a credit for rent due on Dec. 1, 2022, and its nonpayment of rent for December and thereafter was a breach,” Judge Nancy Salomone wrote May 23.

In 2020, Twitter agreed to lease 64,500 square feet of the 70,000-square-foot Railyards at S’PARK office building, which was then under construction at 3401 Bluff St. The lease called for the company to stay 10 years, until 2032. It lasted a little more than one year.

Twitter stopped paying rent in late 2022, was evicted and sued its former landlord for wrongful eviction, and was sued for back rent. A five-day trial was held this past March.

The triple-net lease between Twitter and S’PARK’s owners, The John Buck Co. in Chicago, provided Twitter with a tenant improvement allowance of $5.8 million. As Salomone noted in her verdict last week, “The central dispute in this litigation is whether Twitter satisfied the lease conditions precedent to accessing that tenant improvement allowance.”

The 192-page lease for 3401 Bluff St. required Twitter to build out the property and send documentation proving that it had before it could collect the allowance. Twitter did the build-out work — at a cost of $40 million, by its own estimation — but, in the period following Elon Musk’s purchase of the company, never sent evidence of that to its landlord.

Salomone was persuaded by a video deposition of Joseph Killian, a former Twitter executive, who testified that Twitter stopped paying rent in December 2022 as a “renegotiating tactic — a tactic to save money.” By comparison, the judge found trial testimony from Nicole Hollander, a top Musk aide who led Twitter’s real estate division, “not at all credible.”

“This testimony suggests to the court that Twitter’s cessation of rent payment reflected business strategy rather than a bona fide belief in its entitlement to rent credit,” Salomone wrote.

Because Twitter could not claim a rent credit in December 2022, its refusal to pay rent was a breach of its lease, the judge determined. With that, she ordered the company, which now goes by X Corp., to pay $8.3 million, plus interest and the Buck Co.’s attorney fees.

The Buck Co. had asked for $8.5 million. Twitter thought the amount should be far less, since its former landlord has not taken serious efforts to lease the space after Twitter’s eviction, holding out for one very large tenant rather than subdividing. Salomone disagreed.

“(The Buck Co.) has wagered that the likelihood of waiting for a market recovery will ultimately be more profitable than dividing the building and seeking smaller leases at lower rates,” the judge wrote in her verdict. “The court does not find that strategy unreasonable.”

The John Buck Co. was represented by a trio of attorneys — Jose Ramirez, Shawn Eady and Sarah Perkins — from the Denver office of Holland & Hart, who declined to comment.

Twitter was represented by Jonathan Hawk and Kathryn Barragan at McDermott Will & Emery, plus Damien Zumbrennen with Zumbrennen Law, who also declined to comment.

It can be hard to curb excessive use of smartphones and social media, which are addictive by design. Reducing your screen time is often more than just a matter of willpower, especially for younger people whose brains and impulse control are still developing.

If you’re a phone addict who wants to cut down on the hours a day spent looking at your device, here are some techniques you can try to free up more IRL time:

Delete apps

An easy first step is getting rid of any apps you’ve been wasting time on.

Over the past year, I’ve deleted Facebook, Instagram and Twitter from my phone because I wanted to use them less. Now and then I’ll have to go the app store and reinstall one because I need to do something like post a photo I took on my phone. (Sometimes I’ll transfer the photo to my laptop and then post it to the web from there, but usually, it����ap too much hassle.)

The danger with this approach is that if you do reinstall the app, you won’t bother deleting it again.

Use built-in controls

Both iPhones and Android devices have onboard controls to help regulate screen time. They can also be used by parents to regulate children’s phone usage.

Apple’s Screen Time controls are found in the iPhone’s settings menu. Users can set overall Downtime, which shuts off all phone activity during a set period. If you want a phone-free evening, then you could set it to kick in from, say, 7 p.m. until 7 a.m.

The controls also let users put a blanket restriction on certain categories of apps, such as social, games or entertainment or zero in on a specific app, by limiting the time that can be spent on it. Too distracted by Instagram? Then set it so that you can only use it for a daily total of 20 minutes.

The downside is that the limits aren’t hard to get around. It����ap more of a nudge than a red line that you can’t cross. If you try to open an app with a limit, you’ll get a screen menu offering one more minute, a reminder after 15 minutes, or to completely ignore it.

Android users can use turn to their Digital Wellbeing settings, which include widgets to remind users how much they’ve had. There’s also the option to create separate work and personal profiles, so you can hide your social media apps and their notifications when you’re at the office.

Don’t be distracted

There are other little tricks to make your phone less distracting. I use the Focus mode on my iPhone to silence notifications. For example, If I’m in a meeting somewhere, I mute it until I leave that location. Android also has a Focus mode to pause distracting apps.

Change your phone display to grayscale from color so that it doesn’t look so exciting. On iPhones, adjust the color filter in your settings. For Android, turn on , or tweak the color correction setting.

Android phones can also nag users not to look at their phones while walking, by activating the feature in Digital Wellbeing.

Block those apps

If the built-in controls aren’t enough, there are many third-party apps, like Jomo, Opal, Forest, Roots and LockMeOut that are designed to cut down screen time.

Many of these apps have both free and premium versions with more features, and strongly push you toward signing up for a subscription by minimizing the option to “skip for now” on the payment screen. I tested out a few on my iPhone for this story.

To try out Opal, I reinstalled Facebook so I could block it. Whenever I tapped the Facebook icon, Opal intervened to give me various inspirational messages, like “Gain Wisdom, Lose Facebook,” and tallied how many times I tried to open it. To get around the block, I had to open Opal and wait through a six-second timeout before requesting up to 15 minutes to look at Facebook. There’s an option to up the difficulty by increasing the delay before you can look again.

Jomo, which I used to restrict my phone’s Reddit app, worked in a similar way: tap the Unlock button, which took me to the Jomo app, where I had to wait 20 seconds before I could tap the button to unlock Reddit for up to 10 minutes.

The OneSec app takes a different approach by reminding users to first take a pause. The installation, which involves setting up an automation on the iPhone’s Shortcuts, can be confusing. When I eventually installed it for my Bluesky app, it gave me a prompt to run a shortcut that wiped my screen with a soothing purple-blue and reminded me to take a deep breath before letting me choose to open the app — but in practice it was too easy to just skip the prompt.

The Android-only LockMeOut can freeze you out of designated apps based on criteria like your location, how many times you’ve opened an app, or how long you’ve used it.

The obvious way to defeat these apps is simply to delete them, although some advise users to follow the proper uninstall procedure or else apps could remain blocked.

Use external hardware

Digital blockers might not be for everyone. Some startups, figuring that people might prefer a tangible barrier, offer hardware solutions that introduce physical friction between you and an app.

Unpluq is a yellow tag that you have to hold up to your phone in order to access blocked apps. Brick and Blok are two different products that work along the same lines — they’re squarish pieces of plastic that you have to tap or scan with your phone to unlock an app.

The makers of these devices say that software solutions are too easy to bypass, but a physical object that you can put somewhere out of reach or leave behind if you’re going somewhere is a more effective way to get rid of distractions.

What about stashing the phone away entirely? There are various phone lockboxes and cases available, some of them designed so parents can lock up their teenagers’ phones when they’re supposed to be sleeping. Yondr, which makes portable phone locking pouches used at concerts or in schools, also sells a home phone box.

See a therapist

Perhaps there are deeper reasons for your smartphone compulsion. Maybe it����ap a symptom of underlying problems like anxiety, stress, loneliness, depression or low self-esteem. If you think that����ap the case, it could be worth exploring therapy that is becoming more widely available.

One London hospital treats “technology addiction” with a plan that includes dealing with “discomfort in face-to-face time” with other people, and exploring your relationship with technology.

Another clinic boasts that its social media addiction treatment also includes working on a patient����ap technology management skills, such as “setting boundaries for device usage, finding alternative activities to fill the void of reduced online interaction, and learning how to engage more with the physical world.”

Downgrade your phone

Why not trade your smartphone for a more basic one? It����ap an extreme option but there’s a thriving subculture of cellphones with only basic features, catering to both retro enthusiasts and people, including parents, worried about screen time. They range from cheap old-school brick-and-flip phones by faded brands like Nokia to stylish but pricier devices from boutique manufacturers like Punkt.

The tradeoff, of course, is that you’ll also have to do without essential apps like Google Maps or your bank.

___

Is there a tech topic that you think needs explaining? Write to us at onetechtip@ap.org with your suggestions for future editions of One Tech Tip.

The poll comes as the national Democratic Party searches for a path forward in the wake of former Vice President Kamala Harris’ loss to now-President Donald Trump in November. The strength of Republicans’ identification with working-class issues is a warning shot for a party that’s lost ground across the country.

In Colorado, where Democrats backslid slightly but largely maintained their recent gains in November, the results — funded and trumpeted by a centrist group — also hammer upon now-familiar divisions between the party’s left and moderate wings over how to consolidate and exercise Democrats’ reliable position atop state government.

“It is true that the Democratic Party in Colorado is not a monolith,” said Kyle Saunders, a political scientist at Colorado State University. “It is not an ideological monolith — it����ap a very diverse set of groups in coalition to support the Democratic cause. And while progressives want to pull the party further to the left, the concern over maintaining the Democratic advantage in Colorado is genuine, and I think that����ap what this poll is trying to establish.”

“Whether it does so effectively,” he continued, “is up to the reader.”

The poll, conducted by Keating Research, found that 45% of respondents had a favorable view of the Democratic Party, against 51% who viewed the party negatively. Just 37% had a favorable view of the Republican Party, versus 56% who viewed it unfavorably.

The poll was conducted in mid-December on behalf of One Main Street, a centrist Democratic dark-money group that doesn’t reveal most of its donors. Keating surveyed 1,225 Colorado voters, and the margin of error was 3.5 percentage points. Keating is a Colorado-based firm that generally polls Democratic issues.

The vast majority of self-identified Democrats and Republicans in the survey said they supported the party to which they aligned. But unaffiliated voters — who make up a plurality of Colorado voters — had a negative view of both parties, though they were more favorable toward Democrats than Republicans.

Still, a majority of unaffiliated voters — and a majority of voters overall — said Republicans better represented the working class and were better at addressing the economy and inflation than Democrats.

Voters also said the economy and cost of living, housing and immigration were the top issues facing the state; Republican and suburban voters, though, said they were primarily focused on immigration.

As for what motivated voters in the Nov. 5 presidential election, the economy was the top issue, ahead of immigration and a three-way tie of anti-Trump sentiment, candidates’ character and women’s rights.

Though the poll included some questions about Republicans and Trump, the bulk of its results were devoted to the Democratic Party, its November losses and voters’ views on where the party should go from here — an ongoing debate in which One Main Street has a well-established position.

“What we really learned on this poll is it showed that Democrats really need to focus on kitchen-table, bread-and-butter economic issues,” said Andrew Short, the executive director of One Main Street. “That folks are looking for leaders to really come together and find collaborative solutions to the big issues that we’re facing, that they’re sick of the political theatrics and those focused more on their Twitter likes than actually crafting good policy.”

“More work to do,” party chair says

Shad Murib, the chair of the Colorado Democratic Party, said Democrats had “more to work to do” on “putting its money where its mouth is” with voters on economic issues.

He pointed to a recent of American voters that found the national Democratic Party was deeply unpopular — even more so than among Colorado voters.

In that way, the Keating poll was something like good-ish news for Colorado Democrats, Murib said: The party’s brand in the state hasn’t suffered as much as it has nationally, even after six years of firm Democratic control, and November brought mixed results.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Yadira Caraveo lost her reelection bid to the House of Representatives, meaning Colorado’s eight congressional seats are now evenly split between Democrats and Republicans. But Democrats in the statehouse maintained their firm legislative majorities, though they lost their supermajority control in the House in a nail-biter contest in El Paso County.

Still, Murib said he was concerned about Colorado voters’ identification of the Republican Party with the working class. A plurality of the poll’s participants also said Democrats lost in November because the party was out of touch with voters.

“That’s something I’ve been really concerned with and (that) is the canary in the coal mine from the national election,” Murib said of the November results. “The public is seeing Republicans as best representing the working class and the poor, and Democrats as representing elites. That����ap why we’re focused intensely on economic abundance for all.”

As much as the poll showed warning signs for the Democratic Party, it — and in particular the questions it posed to voters — also served as another shot in the ongoing fight among the party’s moderate and progressive factions. That fight isn’t new, but it’s become an existential struggle nationally as the party tries to gather itself after November’s losses.

The battle is also increasingly prominent in Colorado as gubernatorial candidates begin to jockey to replace Gov. Jared Polis in two years.

The poll asked voters, for instance, if they thought the Democratic Party should now tack “to the left,” “to the right” or toward “bridging the divide to find workable answers.” The last one is the position that One Main Street supports, and poll respondents overwhelmingly selected that option, too.

It also asked about general policy objectives like “building generational wealth” and creating “high-quality jobs,” versus specific left-wing policy goals, like rent control and “free health care.”

“I think One Main Street has a financial interest in making sure that what they stand for appears to be popular — so, like any other poll, they’re trying to prove their value in the ecosphere,” Murib said.

New legislative caucus underlines fight

One Main Street is no stranger to the struggle for party influence: The group spent millions of dollars last summer to back the more moderate candidates in several Democratic primaries. It also recently helped launch the in the legislature, composed of several Democratic members it supported last year.

Since the launch, that caucus has started an accompanying group that allows it to raise money on its own — a move that raised eyebrows among other Democratic legislators.

Short, One Main Street’s executive director, said the poll’s “language was fair and focused on economic opportunity.”

Murib agreed that the Democratic Party needed to focus more on economic issues.

But there are more nuances to the Democratic coalition than were revealed in One Main Street’s poll, Saunders, the CSU political scientist, said. And “economic opportunity” means different things to different members of that coalition.

Case in point: Short said that to address the housing concerns identified in the group’s poll, One Main Street supported policies like construction-defects reform, which would make it more difficult to sue developers over construction problems in a bid to spur more condominium development.

He also pointed to this year’s , which would nudge state regulators to consider how air quality rules impact the workforces of the industries they regulate, like oil and gas. That measure, which is sponsored by the chair and co-chair of the “Opportunity Caucus,” is supported by energy and gas companies, like Xcel Energy and Black Hills Energy, and opposed by environmental groups.

But Short was more lukewarm on the cost-of-living and housing policies that legislative Democrats have backed as priorities: bills to limit price increases on groceries, to lower hidden fees in housing and to ban the use of rent algorithms that drive up housing costs.

Those policies, Short said, needed to be “carefully reviewed” to ensure they don’t have “unintended consequences.”

Colorado just agreed last month to in the 2023 303 Creative LLC v Elenis case. That $1.5 million bill does not include the time and money the state spent on its own side defending the law in question that violated Smith’s free speech. The government can avoid incurring similar costs by repealing another law that abridges free speech before taxpayers have to pony up again.

That law, enacted in 2019, censors free speech between a mental health professional and his or her clients. The law dictates that a therapist affirm a girl or boy’s desire to transition to the opposite sex. The counselor cannot legally engage in conversation that will help the teen accept his or her body and biological gender identity. If she does, the therapist could be fined $5,000 per conversation or could even lose her license.

Lawmakers who passed the bill, most of whom have no experience in the mental health field, believe that gender confusion must be confirmed rather than challenged. For many mental health professionals, this is tantamount to treating anorexia by telling a patient she is right, she is too fat.

Because of the law, these mental health professionals face a choice no one in a free society ever should: they can do right by their patients and lose their license, speak only as the government demands against their professional judgement, or refuse to take clients with gender dysphoria who have come to them for help.

For this reason, one such Colorado licensed counseling professional, Kaley Chiles, recently petitioned the US Supreme Court to protect her free speech and that of her patients. Several viewpoint discrimination cases over similar laws have made their way to appeals courts. Half of the court decisions have been in the counselors’ favor and half on behalf of the laws.

In light of the 303 Creative decision and the division among the circuit courts, Chiles is likely to prevail in her petition. 303 Creative affirmed the right to free speech and the right to viewpoints “no matter how controversial.” The court stated that “a commitment to speech for only some messages and some persons is no commitment at all.”

The government can neither censor with which it disagrees nor compel speech with which it agrees. Colorado’s counseling law does both.

Gender identity is a contentious subject. Everyone cares about struggling teens but disagrees on how they can best be helped. Some people believe it is best to affirm the alternate identity through counseling and medical interventions; others contend the best choice is to help teens accept their bodies and gender identity. The debate over best practices shows no sign of abating. But the government cannot intervene and silence those with whom a bare majority of lawmakers disagree.

Exit polling from the last election showed that many voters do not believe that human beings can change their sex or gender and they resent being shamed or silenced over their concerns about bathrooms, team sports, and treatment of teens with gender dysphoria. Democrats continue to push an aggressive trans agenda at its own political peril.

Ideally, Colorado lawmakers would support free speech for its own sake and repeal the 2019 law as the legislature convenes. At the very least they should act in their best interest to save money and their political future.

Krista L. Kafer is a weekly Denver Post columnist. Follow her on Twitter: @kristakafer.

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The infamous anti-vaxxer, Polis wrote, “helped us defeat vaccine mandates in Colorado in 2019.” He hoped Kennedy “leans into personal choice on vaccines” because mandates are “terrible.” In addition to taking on “big pharma,” Polis added he looks forward to working with Kennedy against the “corporate agriculture oligopoly” which he accused of doing “more harm than good” to human health and the environment.

Trying to curry favor with the incoming administration by supporting a nominee who spreads harmful misinformation like a virus isn’t going to inoculate the state against Trump’s first 100 days. The governor, judging by subsequent communiqués to the press and public, but there’s more ruing to come.

All week medical experts, Denver Post readers, and even national commentators criticized Polis’ social media post. State Sen. Kyle Mullica, a prime sponsor of the 2019 vaccine bill stymied by Polis and Kennedy, corrected the record. His bill did not mandate any vaccines; it standardized the student vaccine exemption form. It was the governor himself who tried to mandate vaccines. He urged the state Board of Health to require health care workers get the COVID shot in 2021. Did he forget?

Also, Kennedy is no mere big pharma critic. He has peddled the false claim that vaccines cause autism for years. He says vaccine research created AIDS, Lyme disease, and the Spanish Flu. Fiction like this discourages vaccination with deadly results. Just ask grieving Samoans. In 2018, two nurses accidentally mixed muscle relaxants with vaccine serum instead of water tragically killing two infants. Kennedy and his advocacy organization insisted the vaccine itself was to blame. Thanks to their relentless misinformation campaign, measles vaccination rates declined. A year later when a person infected with measles visited the island, the ensuing outbreak killed 83 Samoans, most of them children.

In addition to opposing vaccination, Kennedy encourages the consumption of unpasteurized milk and promises to remove fluoride from drinking water. By throwing out two centuries of medical breakthroughs we can make measles, tooth decay, and food poisoning great again.

Polis didn’t just throw medical science and Sen. Mullica under the bus to praise Kennedy, his denunciation of so-called Big Ag was nearly as egregious. Agriculture generates $47 billion of economic activity annually in our state. They aren’t forcing anyone to eat Ho Hos. Some people’s personal choice is processed food. Lean into that. Our farmers, ranchers, and food producers are helping feed the world. A little appreciation is due.

If Polis wants to compliment the incoming president on cabinet picks there are far better options. Chris Wright, CEO of Denver-based Liberty Energy, is a respected leader in the field who is pioneering technologies that make energy production quieter and more efficient. He is a solid choice to head the Department of Energy. Fellow governors Kristi Noem and Doug Burgum are competent leaders without a history of conspiracy theorizing. Noem shot her dog, a disgusting act of animal cruelty, but she didn’t eat the remains or dump the carcass in a public park. RFK, Jr. can’t say the same. Why not give a Twitter shout-out to them instead?

Even if Polis did praise Trump’s saner cabinet picks what does he expect to get? Will Trump forget the bad blood between them? Just last month, the former president called Polis a weak, ineffective, cowardly, pathetic fraud who tried to take Trump off the ballot because he was “leading in the polls against all of the Democrats.” Since nothing in that statement is true, Polis said Trump might be suffering from “cognitive decline.” A tweet legitimizing a manifestly unfit cabinet nominee won’t erase the past.

The problem with trying to ingratiate oneself with Trump is there is no guarantee he’ll return the favor. Just ask Nikki Haley. Colorado will still lose U.S. Space Command and become a target for mass deportations. The taste of boot will linger.

Krista L. Kafer is a weekly Denver Post columnist. Follow her on Twitter: @kristakafer.

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For several weeks, the teenagers, who were recruited with the help of Instagram influencers, answered a questionnaire three times a day about their social interactions. Each time, more than 50% said they had not spoken to anyone in the past hour, either in person or online.

To put it another way, even though the teenagers were on break from school and spending plenty of time on social media apps, most of them were not socializing at all.

Americans now spend more time alone, have fewer close friendships and feel more socially detached from their communities than they did 20 years ago. One in 2 adults reports experiencing loneliness, the physiological distress that people endure from social isolation. U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy declared loneliness an epidemic late last year.

Ever since, scholars and psychologists have accelerated research into whether technology is contributing. The rise of smartphones and social networking apps has forever changed social norms around how we communicate. More personable interactions such as phone calls have been superseded by text messages. When people broadcast their lives on TikTok and Instagram, they may not be representing themselves in a genuine way.

“It����ap hard to know who’s being real online, and it����ap hard for people to be themselves online, and that is a recipe for loneliness,” Murthy said in an interview. He concluded that loneliness had become an epidemic after reviewing scientific studies and speaking with college students last year, he said.

I went down a rabbit hole for the past few months reading research papers and interviewing academics about tech and loneliness. (Many studies focused on how younger people used technology, but their conclusions were still relevant to older adults who used the same tech.)

The consensus among scholars was clear: Although there was little proof that tech directly made people lonely (plenty of socially connected, healthy people use lots of tech), there was a strong correlation between the two, meaning that those who reported feeling lonely might be using tech in unhealthy ways.

The correlation was rooted in three main behaviors:

— On social media apps such as Instagram, many fell into the trap of comparing themselves with others and feeling that they were lagging behind their peers.

— Text messaging, by far the most popular form of digital communication, could be creating a barrier to authentic connection.

— And, perhaps unsurprisingly, some people who felt lonely also exhibited addictive personalities — in this case, to streaming videos — that kept them indoors.

Here’s what to know and what to do with your tech if you’re feeling lonely.

The dangers of making comparisons on social media

One of the most comprehensive research efforts on tech and loneliness to date, led by Marciano and her colleagues, was a review that aggregated data from 30 studies published during the coronavirus pandemic exploring tech use and the mental health of adolescents. Most studies found that social media was linked to loneliness — specifically, when people made unfavorable comparisons of themselves with others online.

Online and offline, people naturally compare themselves with others, a behavior that psychologists call social comparisons. Social comparisons can manifest online in many different ways. One way could be counting the number of likes, comments and reshares that your posts get compared with those of your friends. It could be comparing your body with the body of a beauty or fitness influencer. For parents, it could be monitoring your newborn’s development compared with that of other infants. When people feel they are behind others in life, it can be isolating.

Social comparisons aren’t always bad. In academic and work settings, for example, many past studies have shown that comparing yourself with other high performers can motivate you to do high-quality work. So the solution isn’t simply to stop comparing ourselves with others online, said Chia-chen Yang, a professor of educational psychology at Oklahoma State University.

Yang led a study in 2018 that surveyed nearly 220 college freshmen about what they liked and disliked when using apps such as Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. The study concluded that the interactions that caused the most distress were comparisons of a judgmental nature evoking envy, in which people viewed others as being more popular, having more fun or looking prettier.

Social media stirred up more positive feelings among students browsing posts from people who shared useful information online. That could include a friend posting about getting a scholarship or a great deal on a used car, inspiring you to make similar decisions.

“I don’t have to see other people as enemies — I can see them as informants in my life,” Yang said. “That type of comparison is not detrimental.”

But judgmental comparisons that induce envy and “FOMO” (fear of missing out) may be more prominent on social media because the apps were designed to encourage people to compete with and seek validation (i.e., likes and reshares) from their friends by publishing only the most glamorous facets of their lives.

Yang said she had interviewed students who deleted posts if they didn’t get a certain number of likes because it hurt their self-esteem.

In response to backlash from activists and researchers about the harms of social comparisons, Meta added controls inside its apps several years ago, including an option to hide the number of likes and shares from posts. I recommend turning it on if you feel bothered: In the app’s settings, scroll down to “What you see” and tap on “Like and share counts” to turn on the setting to hide the engagement.

A Meta spokesperson referred to a blog post by Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, stating that reactions to hidden likes were mixed.

“Not seeing like counts was beneficial for some, and annoying to others, particularly because people use like counts to get a sense for what����ap trending or popular, so we’re giving you the choice,” Mosseri said.

Instagram also has a tool to “favorite” accounts so that they surface at the top of your feed, which could be useful for focusing on the right people and accounts.

But a more helpful step may be to do some self-reflection.

“If you feel bad about yourself after browsing a lot of social media posts, maybe it����ap time to pause for a few hours or a few days,” Yang said.

Maybe we text too much

Dozens of studies found that one-on-one digital communications, including messaging, phone calls and video calls, were associated with the most positive mental health effects, including decreased feelings of loneliness. But an overreliance on text messaging, which superseded phone calls as the most-used communication method on phones many years ago, could contribute to loneliness if people weren’t genuinely connecting with one another.

An overwhelming majority of teenagers primarily communicate through text messaging, and they have also reported feeling connected with others when they were on “the same vibe,” according to Marciano’s research. They also said some text interactions — like a friend’s taking a long time to respond to a message — stoked anxieties and feelings of loneliness.

In addition, very few teenagers — about 2% — used video calls, Marciano said. Therein lies a potential problem. It����ap difficult to imagine how people could sense vibes and authenticity through typed messages, which lack the context and social cues of face-to-face interactions.

“How can you feel on the same frequency with someone if you don’t communicate properly?” Marciano said.

Lonelier people could consider shifting to richer forms of communication. Instead of sending a text message, consider a video call or, at minimum, send a short audio message so that a friend can hear your voice. And by all means, take advantage of the tools in social networking apps that help you meet others in person.

Murthy lamented that the tradition of wishing someone a happy birthday had devolved over time, from a phone call to a Facebook wall post and now to the abbreviation “HBD” sent via a text message.

“I can’t underscore just how powerful it is to have a few moments of authentic interaction with somebody where you can hear their voice and see their face,” he said, adding, “There is tremendous benefit that comes to each of us from being able to show up for each other.”

Binge-watching isn’t helping

During the pandemic, researchers also homed in on whether binge-watching, or streaming shows back to back for long blocks of time, was linked to loneliness. An academic review of multiple studies concluded that adults who binged programs tended to experience depression, anxiety and, to some extent, loneliness.

Dr. Marc Potenza, a Yale professor and addiction expert who worked on the review, said that although the binge-watching studies focused on streaming apps such as Netflix, it was important to note that other types of apps, including TikTok and Instagram’s Reels, encouraged a similar type of infinite viewing.

People with mental health problems may engage in binge-watching as a coping mechanism for stress and other negative emotions, Potenza said. There are also obvious consequences to physical health that can harm mental health: being sedentary for too long, losing sleep and not going out to engage with others.

“It consumes a lot of time,” Potenza said. “They may procrastinate and not address other concerns, which may lead to more anxiety.”

It may feel good temporarily, but it����ap probably not helping. I recommend taking steps to turn off features that enable this behavior, such as Netflix’s ability to automatically play the next program. In the app’s settings, click manage profiles, select a profile and toggle off “autoplay next episode,” and then click done.

TikTok and Instagram’s Reels include screen-time tools in their settings that show reminders about how much time you’ve spent scrolling, although those tools can be ineffective because the reminders are easy to ignore. I suggest temporarily deleting the apps when scrolling feels problematic.

Netflix declined to comment. Spokespeople for Meta and TikTok said their apps automatically set screen-time limits for teenagers.

Looking ahead

The relationship between technology and loneliness is a moving target because tech and its users are constantly evolving. Emily Weinstein, a social scientist who has studied how teenagers use tech, said that just as we begin to understand our relationship with our apps and devices, younger people find other ways to be anxious online and new outlets to cope with loneliness.

A teenager could feel distressed if you commented with fewer fire emoji on his or her Instagram photo than you did on another person’s photo, she said. And many are rapidly experimenting with chatbots using generative artificial intelligence that can replace human companions, raising new concerns.

“Teens are telling us things like, ‘That robot actually listens to me — people are mean and judge you, but gen AI tools don’t,’” she said. “I’m wondering what that����ap going to look like.”

Murthy said that during his cross-country listening tour at college campuses last year, the dining halls were eerily quiet, as students busily typed on their phones.

He said a conversation with a student at the University of Washington resonated with him.

“He said, ‘It����ap not the culture for people to talk to each other anymore, so how are we supposed to connect?’” Murthy recalled. “His point was that even when you’re walking to class, everyone is occupied, but then they’re looking at their phone. It feels intrusive to say hello to someone.”

This article originally appeared in .

A on Monday afternoon said the system had experienced a “cyber incident” and was still investigating. It said the clinics would send letters to their patients if hackers accessed their data.

The group’s patient portal was offline as of Monday afternoon. An Axis spokesperson didn’t respond to questions about the incident.

Axis operates 13 mental health and addiction treatment facilities in southwest Colorado, including locations in Durango, Pagosa Springs and Montrose. It also offers primary care and some dental services.

A ransomware group known as Rhysida claimed responsibility on Oct. 10 and gave Axis until Thursday to pay about $1.58 million in bitcoin, or else the group would expose patients’ data, .������, formerly known as Twitter, offered a chance to bid on the data, but didn’t specify what it might include.

“He has not said whether he disagrees with her offensive posts or spoken out against antisemitism,” Caraveo, a Democrat, said during a brief online news conference. “Let’s be clear: Hate and antisemitism have no place in our society. We must stand up to all forms of intolerance, wherever and whenever we see it.”

On Tuesday, Evans, a state representative, directly condemned the comments from his former political director, Jessica Spindle, in an email to The Denver Post.

“Gabe fully rejects the offensive material contained in those social media posts,” campaign spokesman Alan Philp wrote. “That’s why he acted immediately upon learning of them.”

The posts by Spindle were laid out in a story last week by the . The online outlet showed screenshots of Spindle’s posts on social media sites, including Facebook, that were antisemitic, along with one in which she wrote “please shoot her” — in reference to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat.

In 2019, Spindle praised a mashup flag combining the United States flag, the “Don’t Tread on Me” flag and the Confederate flag. She also posted favorably about the QAnon movement, a sprawling conspiracy theory that claims Donald Trump is fighting a secret, satanic cult of world leaders and celebrities intent on world domination.

Spindle’s posts largely date back to 2019 through 2021, before the Times Recorder said that she first worked with Evans, helping him win election to the state House in 2022. But its story said Spindle posted an antisemitic image as recently as June.

Spindle’s account on Facebook and her account on the social platform X appears to .

Evans’ campaign said Spindle was fired last week “after a number of inappropriate comments she made on social media were brought to our attention.”

Philp didn’t respond to a question about how Spindle had been vetted for the campaign’s political director position or how Evans could have been unaware of her postings on social media. Spindle, who serves on the , based in Fort Lupton, did not return an email request for comment.

Illinois Democratic Congressman Brad Schneider, who is Jewish, joined Caraveo on Tuesday’s call. He called Evans “extreme” and accused him of “not standing with the Jewish people” against hate.

Evans’ campaign attempted to turn the tables on Caraveo, a freshman representative, by criticizing her no vote last November on a bill that would have provided $14.3 billion to Israel in its fight against Hamas. At the time of her vote, Caraveo said she opposed the bill because Republicans designed it to be funded by stripping money from the Internal Revenue Service. The entire Colorado Democratic congressional delegation voted against the bill.

The Evans campaign also said Caraveo wasn’t vocal enough in criticizing college protests against Israel this past spring, which at times veered into what some Colorado Jewish students perceived as displays of antisemitism.

The 8th Congressional District is considered one of the closest House races in the country in November’s election and stands as Colorado’s most evenly divided district by voter affiliation. The district covers northern Denver suburbs in Adams County and stretches north to Greeley and into a small slice of Larimer County.