Throughout America’s history, Thanksgiving has been celebrated in times of difficulty and dissension. People from diverse walks of life eat together with appreciation for the food and for each other. This Thursday should be no different.

Believe it or not, the first Thanksgiving meal held among native peoples and European migrants was in1565 not 1621. After grueling months at sea, some 800 Spaniards landed safely on the shores of what is now Florida. Thankful to be alive and on land, they celebrated a Mass of Thanksgiving and ate a meal with members of the Timucua people who lived nearby.

Their story has been eclipsed by the more popular telling of the Pilgrims’ Thanksgiving feast which they celebrated in autumn 1621 with the Wampanoag people whose crucial aid helped them survive their first year. As with the first Thanksgiving, people who differed in language, ethnicity, faith, culture, and politics shared a meal together in appreciation of God’s goodness.

One of the first official Thanksgiving proclamations was given during the Revolutionary War. General George Washington proclaimed December 18, 1777, the first national day of Thanksgiving. Later, once he took office, he issued the first presidential Thanksgiving proclamation. On that Thursday, November 26, 1789, Washington celebrated by attending church at St. Paul’s Chapel in New York City and donating food and beer to the city’s imprisoned debtors. Gratitude inspires a generosity of spirit.

After President James Madison proclaimed a day of Thanksgiving on April 13, 1815, the tradition languished until the dark days of the Civil War. President Abraham Lincoln issued a Thanksgiving Day proclamation for the last Thursday of November 1863, imploring the “interposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation, and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility, and union.” This proclamation began the tradition of holding the day on the last Thursday of November.

That nearly changed during the Great Depression. When the last Thursday of the month landed on the last day of November, President Franklin D. Roosevelt feared the shortened Christmas season would negatively affect the struggling economy. FDR moved Thanksgiving to the middle of the month. States balked and for two years, Thanksgiving was celebrated on two different days. Congress passed legislation in 1941 to make Thanksgiving the fourth Thursday of November.

Just as the day of the holiday has changed, the foods served have as well. While the first Thanksgiving likely featured wild game and fish, Native American crops such as beans, squash, and corn and vegetables brought by the Pilgrims such as onions, cabbage, and turnips, modern Thanksgiving meals are a rich hybrid of foods from around the world.

Turkey, green beans, pumpkins, and corn were domesticated in Mesoamerica (today’s southern Mexico and Central America) while the wheat in the bread stuffing and peas were first developed in the Middle East and Near East, along with cows from which we get that ancient invention, butter. Potatoes hale from South America. The marshmallows you might add to another South American-bred crop sweet potatoes, however, were first made in ancient North Africa.

Brussel sprouts, as the name implies, were developed from cabbages in Belgium. Cranberries are native to North America but the sugar that sweetens the tart fruit dish originated in Papua New Guinea. If you have apple pie, thank the ancient farmers of Central Asia. If you’re going for pecans, thank Antoine, a Louisiana slave whose grafting technique in the 1840s took the native North American nut to the next level of deliciousness.

The food alone is worth celebrating! But Thanksgiving is so much more. Celebrated during times of war, economic depression, and strife as well as in years of plenty and unity, the holiday brings together people to eat and drink united in common humanity.

So put political pique aside this Thursday and be grateful to God, or wherever your faith tradition takes you, and for the people who sit beside you at the table.

Krista Kafer is a Sunday Denver Post columnist.

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Coloradans are being asked to ban mountain lion hunting and the hunting and trapping of bobcats and the endangered lynx should the animal ever get delisted.

A “no” vote on Proposition 127 will allow the hunting and trapping to continue under the careful regulation and scientific control of the Colorado Parks and Wildlife.

The Denver Post editorial board has long supported the wildlife officials at CPW in their pursuit of scientifically managed populations and supporting hunting as both recreation, food sources and a tool for population control.

The group that has proposed Proposition 127 – known as CATS – has focused its campaign on making the case that trophy hunting or sport hunting is inherently unethical and should be banned in a state known for its hunting recreation opportunities. For now, the target is big cats, but we fear what may be targeted next. Bear hunting?

No one is hunting moose primarily for the meat, and while fish often survive being caught and released, sometimes the stress or injury is too much and they die. Hunting and fishing, even when the primary motivation is not procuring meat, is not necessarily unethical.

While most Coloradans would not participate in a mountain lion hunt, or feel comfortable killing a bobcat that had been caught in a live trap, we do not find those practices to be beyond the pale. Like all outdoor recreation, it has an impact on wildlife, but CPW’s job is to carefully regulate and manage that balance between hunting and healthy ecosystems and between fishing in Colorado’s rivers and streams and flourishing trout populations.

Colorado’s mountain lion populations appear to be thriving. Bobcats are not listed in short supply, although population estimates are hard to do on the elusive animals, and lynx are already an endangered species, and hunting and trapping of the animal is not permitted.

Some shocking revelations have come from the CATS campaign, however. All is not lost just because voters might reject a complete hunting ban in a state known for its recreational hunting.

First, mountain lion hunters are killing too many female lions. About half of the 500 lions killed last year were females, which can endanger the lion population and also inadvertently lead to the death of nursing kittens if signs are missed or ignored by hunters. As it does for deer and elk, CPW should start limiting how many licenses are issued for female lions every year.

Second, there need to be annual limits put on fur trapping for bobcats. The tags are currently unlimited, meaning a hunter receiving an over-the-counter furbearer license can kill as many bobcats as they can using hunting and trapping. We don’t think that’s reasonable and could lead to overhunting. A per-license limit should be applied to the license for all furbearing animals — badger, fox, mink, muskrat, opossum, pine marten, raccoon, ring-tailed cat, skunk, weasel.

But again, those two concerns don’t support a full ban of our Colorado hunting traditions.

Finally, we do worry that the current method of hunting may not give mountain lions a fair chance to escape the hunters. Dogs pick up on a lion’s scent and pursue them for miles before treeing the animal and alerting the hunters with their barks. Today, however, hunters do not have to keep up with their dogs on foot. Instead, they use GPS tracking collars to find the treed cat and shoot it from the limbs of the tree. No matter how you feel about that hunting practice, however, that is not what this ballot measure is about. Proposition 127 is not a carefully worded regulation of hunting practices that ensures the critical principles of “fair chase.” It is a complete ban that would open up a slippery slope for all hunting across Colorado.

Voters in this state have long embraced and prioritized outdoor recreation — even if it’s a sport they don’t personally participate in. Hunting big cats is no different and we hope voters in cities and towns, on the plains and in the mountains will say “no” to Proposition 127.

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Matthew Silverstone, at the young age of 18, has sacrificed more for Colorado than most can imagine.

The teen first warned his fellow students at Evergreen High School that there was a shooter on campus, then he confronted the shooter on the street outside the high school. Silverstone was shot twice.

He spent a month in a Lakewood hospital fighting for his life and then recovering from the wounds that almost killed him. He was released from the hospital Tuesday in what his family called a miracle, and we call a blessing.

“Matthew has never given up. He can now speak. In fact, he is happy to tell you, ‘I’m still alive!’ He can walk with assistance,” his family said in a news release. “His friends will tell you his sense of humor is back. He has exceeded everyone’s expectations in his recovery.”

Silverstone was both brave and selfless on Sept. 10, and it sounds like he continues to shine through his recovery, giving everyone hope in these dark times.

Silverstone is not alone in his distinction as a true Colorado hero.

Another student who was shot at Evergreen High School last month confronted the shooter. At the age of 14, the victim’s family has understandably chosen to remain anonymous and keep out of the public eye. We wish to respect their privacy while also highlighting the incredible act.

Both students remind us of Kendrick Castillo, who was killed defending his classmates inside a Highlands Ranch school in 2019. Castillo was joined by other classmates — Brendan Bialy and Joshua Jones — as they lunged at a shooter, saving others. Bialy was not hurt, but Jones was shot twice.

We are torn between celebrating these incredible acts and crying for the state of our country. Mass shootings have been occurring in Colorado schools since the 1999 Columbine High School massacre. How is it that students are still the ones confronting these assailants and not our trained adult professionals in law enforcement? Every school in this state needs an armed officer on campus at all times.

We should not be asking our kids to save themselves. More must be done to protect students who attend school hoping to grow and learn, and far too often in the past decade have found themselves trying to survive the horrors of mass shootings and the trauma that follows.

Nine minutes passed between when the shooting began inside Evergreen High School and when Silverstone was shot at the corner of Buffalo Park Road and Olive Road at the far end of the high school’s campus. Having an officer on the campus could have resulted in a different outcome.

Expressing gratitude to these kids for their acts of heroism is not enough. We can name a street for Silverstone (and should, just as we created Castillo Way). We can cry for their pain and suffering, and rejoice at their perseverance and determination.

But adults in Colorado must now act to ensure that no other child in this state is forced to fight an armed assailant for their lives and the lives of their friends and teachers.

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Updated 2:10 p.m. Oct. 17, 2025: Due to an editor’s error, this article previously misreported details about the shooting of Matthew Silverstone. 

Nebraska understandably wants to finally tap into a water right it has held on the South Platte River for almost a century.

Coloradans understandably are worried the plan will cut into the amount of water they can pull during the winter to save up for their crops in the spring.

Now the matter will go to the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether Colorado officials have violated the long-standing water-sharing compact for the South Platte River or whether Nebraska’s complaint is much ado about hoping to evade actually having to construct a billion-dollar canal to claim their water.

Fortunately, the 1923 South Platte River compact is abundantly clear and written in language that is difficult to interpret any other way. And also, fortunately, farmers relying on the South Platte River were not born yesterday.

Nebraska can build a canal that begins south of Ovid and travels east through Colorado to Perkins County to pull water during the winter months — roughly October to April — to store water to be used by Nebraska farmers during the spring growing season.

The canal — after taking into consideration upstream and downstream senior water rights — can take 500 cubic feet of water per second from the flow of the lower section of the South Platte during the winter.

So, Nebraska is entitled to the water, clearly, but only if it builds a canal.

And that is, of course, the rub.

Building a canal is going to be expensive. Nebraska lawmakers appropriated $628 million to get the project started.

But the state found landowners in Colorado unwilling to sell. An obvious development given that the canal could limit how much water the very farmers who own the land could pull from the river during the winter to store for spring.

Would you sell cheap?

Nebraska is expressly guaranteed the right to use eminent domain — the government’s power to take land against the owner’s will — to purchase land or egress for the canal. But the problem is land in Colorado is not cheap, and Colorado law demands that when eminent domain is used, a person is not only compensated for fair market value but also gets damages for the taking.

For example, a new interstate running next to a house is going to dramatically devalue that property. Colorado law requires a city or state to compensate the individual for the property taken, but also for the damages to their house. Could landowners convince a court that the taking of their land for a canal also included the taking of water from the river that they otherwise could use for crops? Maybe.

Notifying Colorado landowners of their rights and helping them organize to protect their own interests is most certainly not interfering unlawfully with Nebraska’s plan. Nebraska’s attorney general included this quote from Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser:

“We don’t believe there’s ever been a case in American history where one state has sought to exercise the power of eminent domain in another state. That is going to raise some significant legal issues. We are preparing for them. We’re prepared to engage on the ground to let people know what rights they have.”

That quote only proves that Weiser is doing his job protecting Coloradans and informing them of their legal rights.

Nebraska may need to bring a lot more money to the project than was originally proposed, but that is not Colorado’s fault.

As for the other claim in Nebraska’s lawsuit, that Colorado has routinely been violating the compact by not sending enough water downriver during the irrigation system, we are skeptical. The initial claim from Nebraska was scant on details about how much water is being shorted to Nebraska users.

Colorado’s response, filed this week by Gov. Jared Polis and Attorney General Phil Weiser, makes it abundantly clear that the state takes meeting the compact’s obligations seriously.

“Nebraska itself has not concluded whether Colorado is impermissibly reducing flows during the irrigation season, and there are other forums to explore Nebraska’s speculation on the efficacy of Colorado’s augmentation plans,” the state’s Supreme Court brief reads.

That is, if Colorado’s plan to offset or “augment” the negative impacts of pervasive groundwater pumping along the South Platte River is failing to deliver the required water downstream, the state is happy to address it, but first, Nebraska must bring evidence and bring it to the water managers in charge of enforcing the state’s prior appropriations system.

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Under no circumstances should the City of Denver bail out the bad investments made into risky bonds at the old Gates Rubber Co. redevelopment site.

The land at South Broadway and Interstate 25 could soon become a soccer stadium for Denver’s new women’s team, but those plans could leave investors who banked on getting repaid by property tax revenue high and dry because the city will buy the land from the former developer, rendering property taxes on a big chunk of the land zero.

Joe Landen, the managing director of a Denver-based investment firm, said in an interview with BusinessDen reporter Justin Wingerter, that it will “be remembered” if the city allows the bond investments to fail at the old Gates site, which is formally known as the Broadway Station Metropolitan District. We can only hope so.

Landen tried to equate the investment his firm made into the project to investments in municipal bonds. The difference between the two is laughable. The municipal bonds Denver will sell if voters approve a billion-dollar bond issue in Tuesday’s election are backed by the city, a major metropolitan city already fully developed and rated AAA quality by all three major bond rating agencies.

The bonds Landen’s firm invested in were issued by a developer who was given taxing authority through a metropolitan district and the promise of lucrative tax breaks through the city’s redevelopment authority. The bet investors made was not on whether Denver would succeed, but on whether the developer controlling the quasi-governmental authority, the bond money and the tax rates was trustworthy. In the case of the Gates Factory, the plans for redevelopment failed spectacularly, but not before the developer spent millions of dollars from investors on infrastructure and remediation.

Our response to Landen’s plea now for a bailout from the City of Denver is simple — absolutely not.

Metropolitan district bonds are extremely risky, and the investors in the Broadway Station metropolitan district should be used to set an example for the entire state. These bonds are nowhere close to the secure investment of city bonds, and investors should be very wary of entering into these deals with developers.

So yes, Landen, we hope you and other investors have a very long memory and that you tell all your friends in the bond market industry the risks of investing in metro districts. Perhaps the drying up of the bond market will be enough to save future taxpayers from the rampant abuse at the hands of many developers.

We can think of several housing projects going on right now in the metro area that could teeter and fail with an economic downturn and a housing crisis — including Sterling Ranch and Aurora Highlands. The bondholders whom developers convinced to invest in their property taxation scheme will be the ones left on the hook, instead of the developer, who can walk away from the project with very little personal investment in the infrastructure.

We’ve wondered for years how long it would take for investors to realize that these bonds are not safe-secure municipal bonds guaranteed by city officials. Mayor Mike Johnston has an opportunity here to let the harsh reality of developer-granted taxing authority hit investors hard in the face, and he shouldn’t hesitate to take it.

Colorado’s local elected officials have, for decades, ignored warnings that giving developers unlimited taxation authority and allowing them to market their bonds as tax-assured investments similar to a municipal bond is a looming financial disaster on par with the Big Short of 2008. Instead, elected officials have handed taxing authority to every developer who asks, with few restrictions or protections for investors or future taxpayers. Denver is preparing to do it again with the Denver Broncos stadium redevelopment plan for Burnham Yard.

Now, it appears the only solution to the problem is for investors to stop putting their money in these schemes because they fear a default on the bonds.

We applaud Mayor Mike Johnston for refusing to bail out the developer of the old Gates Rubber Factory and the investors who treated a risky project led by a developer like a safe municipal bond.

We tried but couldn’t muster much sympathy for Landen and the others who knowingly gambled on the Gates Rubber Factory redevelopment, putting their faith in metropolitan districts.

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Federal immigration officials are out of control, and America’s third branch of government needs to rein in the gross abuse of power on display in Colorado and across the nation.

Gregory Davies, a high-level federal official overseeing deportation arrests in Colorado, told a judge last month that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials did not have a warrant to arrest Fernando Jaramillo-Solano. But the agents arrested Jaramillo-Solano anyway after mistakenly pulling the Durango man over while he was on his way to drop off his 12-year-old and 15-year-old children at school. ICE officials detained all three, and they spent weeks in Durango before they were shipped to Dilley, Texas.

This is no simple mistake that is easily rectified.

ICE is causing real harm to contributing members of our community  — teachers, nurses, mothers and fathers. And children are traumatized in the wake of these unjustified detainments.

President Donald Trump has upended the mission at ICE, a part of Homeland Security that was once dedicated to keeping Americans safe by deporting criminals. The president has said he plans to deport the more than 13 million people who live in the United States without legal immigration status, regardless of whether they have committed other crimes. But he has gone farther than that, and his agents are now detaining people who do have legal status. The intent is clear — push out immigrants even who are doing everything right.

Trump’s intent is that the people his agents wrongfully detain will either self-deport becasue conditions are so poor in the federal facilities or that if a judge orders their release, they will be silenced by their fear of reprisal, after all, they were detained once; who can protect these individuals from being detained again?

But Trump has calculated wrong. These brave victims of Trump’s mass deportation policy are speaking out, and have filed a lawsuit together to try and prevent ICE from terrorizing people.

Caroline Dias Goncalves, the 19-year-old college student who was detained in Grand Junction and held for almost three weeks in a detention center in Aurora because a sheriff’s deputy thought her perfect English was broken by an accent, testified that her detainment has dramatically affected her life.

She lost her driver’s license, moved back home and has reduced her course load at the University of Utah.

To Davies she might be “collateral” damage, but to us she is an injured kid trying to rebuild her life. Her arrest was completely unnecessary and likely illegal. If people like Davies don’t step up to make sure that ICE agents are doing their jobs – targeting and arresting criminals for deportation – then who will?

The answer of course is that the judicial branch must act as a strong check on the abuses of the executive branch.

Trump’s immigration enforcement squad cannot just smash and grab Coloradans because they suspect someone might be here illegally. And if these agents do, there must be legal consequences for them and their bosses, no matter how high the orders have come from.

Gonclaves was lucky. She was released.

Jaramillo-Solano and his children are still detained in Texas with no end to their nightmare in sight, despite the fact that a federal official just testified to a judge that their arrest was a mistake.

Meanwhile, a Douglas County teacher who was detained with her family by ICE under similarly questionable circumstances is also in the same Texas facility.

Marina Ortiz, who teaches fifth grade at the Global Village Academy, went for a routine check-in with ICE officials and she and her family never came home. The principal of the school says that Ortiz had work authorization to work legally in the United States. She said the school is working with immigration attorneys to see if Ortiz can be released from detention.

The sad truth is that unless the courts step up, these abuses will likely continue, and thousands of people like Ortiz and Jaramillo-Solano will never get home.

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Editor’s note: Madison Schilling submitted her artwork to The Denver Post after her teacher at Green Mountain High School in Lakewood encouraged her to share it with a broader audience. Her hope is that it will help adults and teens cope with a difficult year of remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Tucker Carlson will no longer be on Fox News. The announcement Monday that Carlson and Fox had parted ways came after Fox had agreed to pay out three quarters of a billion dollars to Dominion in a defamation lawsuit that rested heavily on Carlson’s on-air reporting about election fraud coupled with his off-air text messages indicating he thought it all was a hoax.

To mark this moment, I’ve pulled some of the best Tucker Carlson cartoons from over the years because sometimes a drawing is worth a thousand words.

Megan Schrader is the editor of The Denver Post’s opinion pages.

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Federal immigration officials are out of control, and America’s third branch of government needs to rein in the gross abuse of power on display in Colorado and across the nation.

Gregory Davies, a high-level federal official overseeing deportation arrests in Colorado, told a judge last month that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials did not have a warrant to arrest Fernando Jaramillo-Solano. But the agents arrested Jaramillo-Solano anyway after mistakenly pulling the Durango man over while he was on his way to drop off his 12-year-old and 15-year-old children at school. ICE officials detained all three, and they spent weeks in Durango before they were shipped to Dilley, Texas.

This is no simple mistake that is easily rectified.

ICE is causing real harm to contributing members of our community  — teachers, nurses, mothers and fathers. And children are traumatized in the wake of these unjustified detainments.

President Donald Trump has upended the mission at ICE, a part of Homeland Security that was once dedicated to keeping Americans safe by deporting criminals. The president has said he plans to deport the more than 13 million people who live in the United States without legal immigration status, regardless of whether they have committed other crimes. But he has gone farther than that, and his agents are now detaining people who do have legal status. The intent is clear — push out immigrants even who are doing everything right.

Trump’s intent is that the people his agents wrongfully detain will either self-deport becasue conditions are so poor in the federal facilities or that if a judge orders their release, they will be silenced by their fear of reprisal, after all, they were detained once; who can protect these individuals from being detained again?

But Trump has calculated wrong. These brave victims of Trump’s mass deportation policy are speaking out, and have filed a lawsuit together to try and prevent ICE from terrorizing people.

Caroline Dias Goncalves, the 19-year-old college student who was detained in Grand Junction and held for almost three weeks in a detention center in Aurora because a sheriff’s deputy thought her perfect English was broken by an accent, testified that her detainment has dramatically affected her life.

She lost her driver’s license, moved back home and has reduced her course load at the University of Utah.

To Davies she might be “collateral” damage, but to us she is an injured kid trying to rebuild her life. Her arrest was completely unnecessary and likely illegal. If people like Davies don’t step up to make sure that ICE agents are doing their jobs – targeting and arresting criminals for deportation – then who will?

The answer of course is that the judicial branch must act as a strong check on the abuses of the executive branch.

Trump’s immigration enforcement squad cannot just smash and grab Coloradans because they suspect someone might be here illegally. And if these agents do, there must be legal consequences for them and their bosses, no matter how high the orders have come from.

Gonclaves was lucky. She was released.

Jaramillo-Solano and his children are still detained in Texas with no end to their nightmare in sight, despite the fact that a federal official just testified to a judge that their arrest was a mistake.

Meanwhile, a Douglas County teacher who was detained with her family by ICE under similarly questionable circumstances is also in the same Texas facility.

Marina Ortiz, who teaches fifth grade at the Global Village Academy, went for a routine check-in with ICE officials and she and her family never came home. The principal of the school says that Ortiz had work authorization to work legally in the United States. She said the school is working with immigration attorneys to see if Ortiz can be released from detention.

The sad truth is that unless the courts step up, these abuses will likely continue, and thousands of people like Ortiz and Jaramillo-Solano will never get home.

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