Sure, they lost. It’s a game. Someone wins and someone loses. But, with a backup quarterback, they only lost by three points. Depending on who wins the Super Bowl, they lost to the Super Bowl runner-up or the eventual Super Bowl winner. In my book, that makes them, at worst, the fourth-best team in the NFL. And 2025 Division winners!
And the Broncos’ backup quarterback, Jarrett Stidham? Not bad at all for someone who got thrown into the fray at the last minute — 54.8% completions for 133 yards compared to the Patriots’ Drake Maye’s 47.6% for 86 yards. And how many quarterbacks don’t throw an interception in a game once in a while? And even more, Stidham is not the only player on the team, so don’t anyone give me “He lost it for us.”
The team won the division but lost the conference championship, a darn sight better than they’ve done in the last 10 years. We saw Bo Nix do extremely well for a second-year quarterback, we saw Sean Payton do extremely well as a great coach; we saw Stidham do extremely well as a first-time starter in a playoff game; we saw the Broncos do extremely well all season long, so what’s to cry about? All the Broncos are champions in my book. I wonder what this team can do next year?
Jon Sutterlin, Aurora
Hurting Nuggets — NBA needs to reduce games per season
With so much attention on the Broncos, we often hear little about the Nuggets’ ongoing injury situation involving key players, including superstar Nikola Jokic.
The league simply plays too many games, contributing to injuries throughout the league. There should be no back-to-back games, and, excluding the playoffs, there should be a maximum of 65 games played. Fans buy tickets in advance expecting to see superstars playing and much of the time they’re injured and don’t play. It’s time for the NBA to demonstrate it cares about fans and the health and well-being of players.
David Ryan, Salida
‘The effect the government has on the price of housing’
Neither limiting corporate ownership nor placing limits on new single-family detached housing will provide a lasting affordability solution. This would be more government distortion of the housing market, restricting the already tight supply of a very desirable type of housing, and add more upward price pressure.
Affordability has two parts: Purchase price and interest rate. During the mid-1980s, interest rates were almost 15%. The real estate market survived and thrived. Today’s interest rates are about half that. Interest rates are not the problem. The root of the problem is the total cost of housing.
The effect the government has on the price of housing, a basic necessity, deserves more attention. Our nation’s housing finance system, unfortunately, allows for housing to also be treated as a speculative investment, thus pushing up the price of this basic necessity. With readily available financing, it is not unexpected for housing prices to outpace income growth.
Government deficit spending since the 1990s continues to exacerbate this problem by way of devaluing our currency. Combined with increasing demand and upward price pressure on limited supply due to regulations, zoning restrictions and cumbersome permitting, and you have the current situation: Housing inflation due to too much money chasing too few goods.
Developers affirm that the cost of single-family detached housing would be greatly reduced if regulatory and permitting costs were less and zoning would allow for compact, factory-built housing on smaller lots with higher density.
Reform construction roadblocks and reduce the distorting effect of government on the residential housing market.
MINNEAPOLIS — In recent weeks my 80-year-old Asian American parents have started to carry their passports each time they leave their suburban townhouse. Neighbors on their Ring doorbell app will alert users when ICE agents are spotted on nearby roads. My mom has canceled appointments after receiving such warnings. A practical woman, she says she’s in a game of “cat and mouse” with federal agents, and she’ll be damned if she gives them the upper hand.
This is something the headlines often miss when describing what it’s like to be living with ICE in Minnesota.
We know that federal agents shot and killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti. We’ve learned that agents have approached and detained residents who appear to be “foreign” at grocery stores and bus stops. We’ve seen the picture of 5-year-old Liam, with his Spider-Man backpack and animal snow hat, before he and his dad were taken by federal agents. We’ve watched the horrific videos of masked agents tackling, cuffing and dragging U.S. citizens through the street — or parading them into the arctic chill in their boxers — and later releasing them, without apology.
On Saturday morning, Pretti, an ICU nurse, was killed by a Border Patrol agent while holding his phone to record a chaotic scene. It shouldn’t be forgotten that Pretti lost his life on Eat Street, a corridor revived by immigrants. Believe the video that shows Pretti was a helper. He was helping a woman whom an agent violently shoved to the ground. He was helping document the actions by federal agents so that the truth could be preserved.
Maybe Pretti knew how difficult life was becoming for those around him. A quiet, pervasive fear that has taken root in the Twin Cities, forcing some people of color who are not even immigrants to change our behaviors. We take extra precautions. We carry the passport. And we question our belonging.
Federal agents have been recorded on video, acknowledging that they’re homing in on individuals who speak with foreign accents. In one encounter, a man named Ramon Menera had just returned home to Columbia Heights with his daughter after getting ice cream when he was approached by a Border Patrol agent.
“Now, talking to you, hearing that you have an accent, I have reason to believe you are not born of this country,” the agent says in the video.
In other videos, shot at my local Costco parking lot, agents are seen politely asking random shoppers unloading their carts if they are U.S. citizens.
These interactions with agents are almost as chilling as footage of their violent tactics. Such videos normalize unabashed racial profiling by our federal government. It’s clear that anyone who looks or sounds anything but “American” is now viewed with suspicion.
This comes at a heartbreaking cost. Last week a video of an Asian American boy from Iowa circulated widely on social media. He’s 12, his name is Max and he wears a soccer uniform and a tournament medal around his neck. But instead of celebrating his team’s victory, he breaks down crying, describing to his mom the jeers he heard from the other team’s goalie.
“These guys told me I’m an illegal immigrant, even though I was born in America,” he said. “He said Trump is gonna get me and send me back to where I used to live. I was born in America!”
He’s trying to apply logic here, but the math won’t math.
We’re living in a nightmare where a kid who should be elated over his team’s win is processing that some of his peers see him as a second-class citizen. He is feeling the humiliation and denigration that can come with being different, which is something all people of color have experienced. But this time the hate is powered by a schoolyard bully who happens to be the president of the United States.
Somali Americans in Minnesota, says Trump, should “go back to where they came from,” a slur that so many kids from immigrant families have heard. Only now, it is repeated by children who cite the leader of the free world.
What troubles me is how far we are regressing.
Asian Americans, in particular, have always struggled with being perceived as perpetual outsiders, no matter how long we’ve lived in the country. When immigrants of my parents’ generation started families here in the 1970s, many of them figured their children would fit in and thrive here, so long as they gave their children Western names and made sure they could speak perfect American English. I always felt they went overboard, that we didn’t have to whitewash ourselves to gain acceptance. A half-century later, I’m thinking maybe my parents were onto something.
In the initial weeks of the ICE surge in Minnesota, I refused to carry my passport, an act of defiance in a country I no longer recognize. I worried more about my mom, who has a master’s degree in English but speaks with a Taiwanese accent, and my dad, an Army veteran who grew up in the Midwest but has Alzheimer’s and struggles with his words.
But the other night, after hearing from Twin Cities police chiefs that their officers of color have been harassed by federal agents demanding paperwork, I uploaded my passport to my Apple Wallet, just to be safe. It felt like a compromise I could live with.
A document that once made me proud of all the places I’ve traveled is now a badge to prove I belong. It speaks volumes that a person like me is scared — somebody with so many privileges, including my perfect American English.
Aren’t you scared, too?
Laura Yuen writes opinion and reported pieces exploring parenting, gender, family and relationships, with special attention on women and underrepresented communities. She looks for the deeper resonance of a story, to humanize it, and make it universal. Before joining the Star Tribune in 2021, Laura spent 13 years at MPR News, most recently as editor of a team covering race, class, communities and education. She also reported for the St. Paul Pioneer Press and the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader.
We are former senior Department of Homeland Security officials with experience in immigration enforcement, counterterrorism, and national security. Our public service was shaped by September 11, 2001, grounding us in the twin obligations of security and constitutional restraint. Today, we are deeply alarmed by what we are seeing from our former department.
Let us be clear at the outset: we support strong borders and lawful immigration enforcement. Law enforcement deserves respect; society cannot function without it. But enforcement that treats the public as the enemy and abandons constitutional limits does not make us safer. It puts the entire system at risk — legally, operationally, and morally.
Over the past year, we have watched repeated violations of Americans’ First, Second, and Fourth Amendment rights.
Free expression and peaceful protest are core to our Constitution, and the government has a duty to protect those rights even — especially — when speech is uncomfortable or critical of authority. At the same time, protections against unreasonable searches and seizures must be honored; law enforcement should not bypass judicial oversight when entering private homes or conducting operations.
And in just the last three weeks, federal immigration officers have been involved in three shootings, resulting in two deaths — an unprecedented pattern in modern immigration enforcement. Any serious law enforcement institution confronted with that record would pause operations and reassess training and tactics.
That has not happened, and it raises legitimate questions about proportionality, judgment, and respect for constitutional limits.
These outcomes did not occur in a vacuum. Over the past year, DHS leadership has driven a dramatic shift in tone and culture. Federal officials publicly labeled Renee Good — a mother and U.S. citizen — and Alex Pretti — a nurse who cared for U.S. veterans and also a U.S. citizen — as “terrorists” before investigations were initiated and without evidence of terrorist ideology or motive.
Official DHS social media accounts routinely post inflammatory content glorifying paramilitary enforcement. This rhetoric has influenced operations, encouraging escalation rather than restraint against American citizens.
When senior officials treat Americans as adversaries — not as neighbors and citizens with rights — it poisons the workforce. Officers are taught to see the public they serve through the prism of fear rather than duty, and that mindset can become self-fulfilling. Law enforcement that views the public as the enemy, rather than as fellow citizens to protect, and that abandons constitutional limits, does not make us safer. It normalizes escalation, erodes legitimacy, and increases the risk of violence for civilians and officers alike.
History offers a cautionary lesson: when enforcement institutions lose accountability and are insulated from meaningful oversight, their use of power tends to expand rather than contract. That reality should concern all Americans, regardless of where they stand politically.
Equally concerning is the lack of independent accountability. The administration declined to open an investigation into the shooting of Ms. Good and indicated it would investigate the shooting of Pretti internally. Across the country — in red states and blue states alike — officer-involved shootings are reviewed by independent authorities for a reason: public trust depends on it.
As tensions with protesters have escalated, it is essential to remember where responsibility lies in a constitutional democracy. Citizens have a duty to exercise their First Amendment rights peacefully. But the greater burden of restraint rests with the state. Whistling, shouting, filming arrests, or verbally criticizing officers is not violence. It is annoying — but it is protected speech. Courts have been clear for decades: speech does not become violence simply because it provokes irritation, anger, or discomfort in law enforcement. The public has a right to expect that officers will respond to lawful protest with professionalism and restraint, not force.
Mission of Homeland Security
DHS argues that officers are simply doing their duty by enforcing immigration laws during these operations nationwide to detain immigrants; that they have no choice. That framing is misleading. The executive branch exercises discretion in whom it prioritizes and how operations are conducted. Their choices are directly tied to the outcomes we are seeing. Officials also claim these operations target “criminals,” yet as of late November, roughly 73% of those detained had no criminal conviction, according to an analysis of publicly available ICE data by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC).
Having immigration officers walk residential or commercial streets in broad daylight is not how violent criminals are apprehended. Rapists, murderers, and drug traffickers do not announce themselves or surrender voluntarily. Identifying dangerous offenders requires investigative work, intelligence, and coordination — capabilities ICE already possesses. If the objective were to focus on genuinely dangerous individuals, the executive branch could do so. The outcomes suggest something else: an emphasis on meeting numerical targets, regardless of the human or constitutional cost.
Federal agents deploy tear gas and other munitions into a crowd of people near the intersection of 27th Street and Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis after a federal officer shot and killed 37-year-old Alex Pretti on Saturday, Jan. 24, 2026. (Ben Hovland/Minnesota Public Radio via AP)
Colorado could be a target for enforcement
Some may wonder why events unfolding hundreds of miles away should matter to Coloradans. The truth is that federal enforcement priorities and tactics that are normalized in one place tend to spread unless checked. Throughout history, unchecked power has expanded and carried out similar or worse activities elsewhere — first here, then there. Colorado already sits among the metropolitan areas experiencing one of the highest rates of immigrant arrivals per capita behind only a handful of U.S. cities.
Colorado’s state and local policies have also drawn federal scrutiny. The U.S. Department of Justice has targeted Colorado and Denver in litigation challenging local immigration-related laws, framing them as inconsistent with federal enforcement priorities.
This combination of factors means that Colorado could be next on the list. If so, it is critical that protestors and citizens do two things: document law enforcement actions in line with the law and remain peaceful. The latter, in particular, is absolutely vital. There can be no violence against law enforcement. That will undo all that has been sacrificed.
The executive branch does not have unfettered power, and Congress is not a bystander. It is a co-equal branch with a constitutional duty to conduct oversight and set limits.
Members of Congress must act. Yes, they should immediately hold oversight hearings, demanding accountability from DHS leadership, and using the power of the purse to impose conditions tied to constitutional compliance. But we need more. CBP, ICE, and DHS are no longer agencies with the credibility to keep the nation safe. Congress should create a blue ribbon commission to both hold them accountable and issue recommendations of how the agency should be reconstituted. Nothing short of that will be trusted by the American people.
We continue to care deeply about the mission of DHS and the professionals who serve there — many of whom cannot speak publicly without risking their careers. When leaders promote escalation over restraint, they endanger both civilians and officers.
To our fellow Coloradans: If this can happen in Minneapolis, Chicago and Portland, it can happen in Denver, Durango and the Western Slope. Call your senators and representative and demand that Congress insist on the rule of law. Law enforcement and liberty are not opposing values. In America, they must stand together.
Eric Balliet is a retired Homeland Security Investigations special agent who spent over 15 years on the Arizona/Mexico border combatting international drug and human smuggling organizations, he worked under five administrations and served as the law enforcement advisor to Department of Homeland Security secretaries Jeh Johnson and John Kelly. Elizabeth Neumann is a former DHS assistant secretary for counterterrorism and deputy chief of staff who served in national security roles across three administrations, including the Trump administration.
We, too, are horrified by the betrayal of America’s social safety-net systems perpetrated by dozens of individuals in Minnesota who bilked at least $1 billion from taxpayers for non-existent services and clients.
Colorado must act swiftly to triple-check that the federal dollars going out the door for programs like childcare, food pantries and cash assistance are reaching their intended targets and not subject to abuse.
However, we disagree vehemently with President Donald Trump’s attempt to freeze federal funding for Colorado and a handful of other states with zero evidence of the type of fraud we are seeing in Minnesota and Mississippi.
For years, the media has reported on fraud cases prosecuted in Minnesota by federal investigators who began their probes under President Joe Biden’s administration. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minneapolis first charged 47 defendants with stealing money from the child nutrition program. From there, the scheme began to unravel and prosecutors discovered a network of fraud.
“From Feeding Our Future to Housing Stabilization Services and now Autism Services, these massive fraud schemes form a web that has stolen billions of dollars in taxpayer money,” Joseph Thompson, then acting U.S. attorney for Minnesota, said at the time, according to The Wall Street Journal’s excellent account. “Each case we bring exposes another strand of this network.”
The scale of the fraud in Minnesota dwarfs the roughly $100 million welfare scandal that rocked Mississippi from 2016 to 2019, embroiling former NFL quarterback Brett Favre in a civil lawsuit and sullying the state’s reputation for oversight.
If such abuses are also taking place in Colorado, then our elected officials, prosecutors and law enforcement must root them out swiftly. Every dollar stolen from these programs is a dollar snatched from the hands of those truly in need. And in an increasingly expensive America, we know that these federal programs can be the difference between homelessness and stability for women and children.
On Jan. 6, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced that it would freeze $10 billion of funding headed to Colorado, Minnesota, New York, California and Illinois for the Child Care and Development Fund, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), and the Social Services Block Grant. Oddly absent from the list was Mississippi.
In Colorado, TANF provides financial support to 47,000 children living in poverty, while the Child Care and Development funding keeps 27,600 kids in child care for working families, according to The Denver Post’s Meg Wingerter. Cutting off those programs would harm Coloradans from inner cities to rural counties. Whether it’s farmers down on their luck waiting for tariff pressures to ease on our Eastern Plains or service workers in the mountains struggling to get by during a historically dry winter with low tourism, these dollars keep families in their homes and kids in quality care.
Fortunately, Attorney General Phil Weiser was able to join with other states to block the Trump administration’s actions. U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian of the Southern District of New York granted a temporary restraining order against the administration’s actions.
Colorado must be proactive, however, and provide taxpayers with evidence of oversight that would prevent fraud like that which has occurred in other states.
We know that Colorado is not immune.
In September of 2024, a federal grand jury indicted seven people for conspiring to defraud Medicare and Colorado Medicaid through a series of kickbacks and bribes to get referrals that could have led to more than $40 million in false claims. The outcome of the criminal case is still pending.
Coloradans can help by reporting suspected fraud to the Department of Health Care Policy and Financing. If you see something — outrageous prices billed to insurance, referrals for unnecessary services, etc — say something.
America’s safety net systems are too critical to shutter overnight, and too critical to allow waste, fraud and abuse to siphon assistance away from those in need.
Colorado cannot remain dependent on the federal government to support the child care needs of Colorado families.
Colorado families are already doing everything they can to stay afloat. Parents are juggling two or three jobs. Caregivers are burning out, barely making minimum wage. And child care providers — especially those trusted family, friend, and neighbor caregivers — are being pushed past the breaking point.
Now, just when support is most needed, the Trump administration tried to hit pause on billions of dollars in child care, family assistance, and social services funding to five states, including Colorado as a punishment for Colorado upholding the law.
The cuts included federal funds for the Colorado Child Care Assistance Program (CCCAP), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), and Social Services Block Grants — lifelines for working families across Colorado.
President Donald Trump’s goal of sewing chaos in Colorado is only successful, not because of his efforts, but because Colorado is unable to invest what we should in our own childcare infrastructure. Colorado’s child care budget, the funds that go to families who need tuition assistance, the funds that support centers in remaining open, the funds that support professional development, early intervention, home visiting, are 80% reliant on the federal government.
This should be a lesson to every Coloradan that the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR) makes it impossible to invest in our own. We are unable to responsibly budget to the real needs of families to support making child care more affordable, or health care. We are unable to pay teachers a livable wage where they can afford child care so they can go to work and teach other people’s kids.
TABOR is failing our families. TABOR requires a flat tax rate for every income earner in the state. That means that the majority of the families in Colorado who are barely making ends meet and those who are not, are carrying a heavier tax burden than those who make $500k or more! How?
Besides having more discretionary funding, the wealthy can take advantage of many tax tools that help them pay less in taxes than someone who makes $75,000 a year. With this flat tax system, we are leaving billions of dollars on the table that could be used to invest in our own child care infrastructure.
The graduated income tax proposal that the Protect Colorado’s Future coalition is working to get on the ballot would raise more than $2 billion for child care, health care, and K-12. Importantly, it would cut state income taxes for everyone making less than $500,000 a year, and raise income taxes for people making above that. A graduated income tax system, which Colorado had until 1987, is fairer and will help pay for the things Coloradans need.
Child care is not a luxury. It is how single moms keep jobs, how low-wage families stay housed, how children with disabilities receive care, and how our smallest businesses — child care providers — survive. It’s what makes our local economies prosper. Over reliance on the federal government puts Colorado families at risk to vendettas and grudges. Freezing these funds doesn’t just stall support; it rips the rug out from under communities already hanging by a thread.
And the damage spreads quickly:
• Parents are forced to choose between work and caregiving.
• Employers lose reliable workers overnight.
• Providers — mostly women of color — face closure, laying off staff and displacing children.
• Children lose critical early learning and safety.
At Colorado Statewide Parent Coalition, we see this every day. We work with hundreds of families and friend, family and neighbor providers who rely on these programs to keep going. These are not numbers — they are neighbors, teachers, grandmothers, and essential workers.
Let’s also be clear about what this funding freeze is not: It’s not about fixing fraud. It’s not about fiscal responsibility. And it’s not about improving services.
It is about punishing families — especially immigrant, low-income, and communities of color — for political disagreements they had no part in creating.
This moment demands more than technical solutions. It demands moral courage.
The moral courage to change TABOR and create a graduated income tax in Colorado so we can reduce our reliance on the federal government and generate the funding we need to take care of Coloradans.
Mirla De Low Coronado is the director of early childhood programs at the Colorado Statewide Parent Coalition.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife employees are in the crosshairs, caught between mountain lion lovers on the left and anti-wolf advocates on the right. The news this week that CPW employees are facing a variety of threats from radical elements in both groups of Coloradans strikes us as ironic sad — and frightening.
But in the face of unnecessary radicalism, we urge policymakers not to entrench themselves in their positions but to take a moderate approach that accepts the reality that, on both sides of the issue, there is ground to give.
CPW acting director Laura Clellan told The Colorado Sun that her staff has received anonymous threats over two mountain lions who were euthanized following a fatal attack on a runner. And after the release of 15 gray wolves into Colorado, CPW staff were followed during operations and threatened with violence.
We expect healthy and robust debate about Colorado’s wildlife management practices, but both sides of these issues have gone crazy. This outlandish and harassing behavior must stop.
Hunting is a vital part of our wildlife management, our economy and our Western culture as is Colorado Parks and Wildlife’s ability to euthanize animals who pose a threat to humans. The Denver Post editorial board opposed a ban on mountain lion hunting in 2024’s Proposition 127. But we also supported the reintroduction of wolves in Colorado in 2020’s Proposition 114. The wolves are native to Colorado and could help our ecosystems find the right balance between predator and prey.
From this middle-ground position, we can call for both sides to simmer down.
Because from our vantage of impartiality, we can see plainly that mountain lion hunting needs much more regulation to protect the apex predator from being overly culled. The ban simply went too far.
And we can see plainly that the reintroduction of wolves has not gone well for the wolves or for the ranchers whose livelihoods have been impacted by wolf depredation.
Neither of those realizations requires a revolution. A strongly worded letter to state officials or reintroduction of ballot measures to change state law could suffice in both instances of policy failure.
Accusations that CPW staff is acting inappropriately or that they are out to get Coloradans who have different ideas for how our wildlife should be managed are both inappropriate and inaccurate. There is no conspiracy to protect mountain lion hunters or the guides who make money pursuing the big cats for clients. There is no conspiracy to chase Colorado ranchers off of public lands with marauding bands of gray wolves.
What we do know is that a Colorado woman was recently killed by a mountain lion while on a heavily used trail near an established neighborhood in Estes Park. The tragic death followed months of reports of mountain lions that appeared to no longer fear humans. Euthanizing those animals was the right decision.
Hunting lions can contribute to the animals retaining a natural fear of humans and dogs. Not banning hunting was the right call. However, the tragic death also shouldn’t lead to vehement anti-lion sentiment like we are seeing with gray wolves.
Apex predators are a critical part of our ecosystem, and while they always pose a risk to humans, managing them, not eradicating them, is the right path.
Gray wolves were naturally entering Colorado’s northern territory before voters decided to accelerate their reintroduction in 2024. Last winter 15 wolves were released in Colorado, and since then, 11 have died. Of the 10 wolves that were released in 2023, an unknown number have survived. The state tracks 19 wolves via collars and knows of at least four packs that are having pups. The mortality of introduced wolves is unacceptable, but so are the continued threats to hunt and slaughter the wolf population. We support hunting lions because the population is stable and needs to be managed. Until the wolf population stabilizes, the animals must be protected.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife officials are doing their best to manage our wildlife and protect our ecosystems. Any conversations about wolf and lion populations and protections must start and end with that truth.
Pro tip to Tina Peters and her legal representatives — lying to the public about easily verifiable claims makes your client less sympathetic to Coloradans wondering whether she should be released from jail early. And make no mistake, whether or not Gov. Jared Polis grants Peters clemency is entirely based on how sympathetic her case is to both Polis and the public.
This week Peters’ representatives sent out a press release and went on conservative media saying she had been “assaulted” in a closet at the La Vista Correctional Facility in Pueblo. The story was that Peters had been attacked “from behind.”
The problem, of course, is that surveillance video from the facility tells a different story. The Denver Post obtained footage that shows Peters moving a large cart in a hallway and then partially pulling it behind her through a doorway. Another woman comes to the door, leans just past the cart toward the door, but does not enter. Then Peters quickly pushes the cart out of the way, comes back into the view of the camera, grabs the woman and pushes her.
The incident appears to have been a very minor scuffle, nothing that anyone would have noted, if not for Peters’ attorneys decision to blow it out of proportion and highlight it in the media.
None of this helps Peters’ case.
She is asking Gov. Jared Polis for clemency from a fair conviction imposed by a jury of her peers and a harsh sentence imposed by a judge thoroughly annoyed by her courtroom demeanor. Clemency is reserved for people who show contrition, growth, reform. The scuffle caught on camera would never prevent someone from getting clemency, but lying about it underlines the exact behavior that got Peters in trouble in the first place. She engaged in deception and fraud to try and prove that President Donald Trump had won the 2020 election, and that Biden had been the beneficiary of corrupted voting machines and software. Despite her continued assertions of the opposite, the data that she presented to the public did not prove that the voting machines in Mesa County had been altered to give Biden false votes.
Peters was sentenced to nine years in jail for her crimes. The sentence was absolutely harsh, but judges impose harsh sentences for a variety of reasons every single day. That alone doesn’t make her a worthy candidate for clemency. She is likely to get released early on parole through good behavior credits and could be free as early as March 2028, even without Polis taking action to reduce her sentence. That timing seems perfect as Trump is guaranteed to leave office 10 months later in January 2029, and his corrupting influence on Peters will wane as he surrenders the White House to the winner of America’s free and fair election that November.
What would make Peters a worthy candidate for clemency in the public eye is an apology for her breach of public trust, and maybe, just maybe, a long overdue admission that she was wrong about Colorado’s secure, paper-ballot election system.
Polis could move her mandatory release date to January 2029 if he feels moved by her appeals for mercy, which would likely move up he eligibility date for parole after good time credits to something much more imminent.
In the early 1980s, southeast Utah was targeted as a potential dump site for high-level nuclear waste, the kind that comes from nuclear reactors. The Department of Energy considered storing 8,000 tons of this highly radioactive material near Canyonlands National Park, boosting the idea as spurring “nuclear tourism.”
Who wouldn’t want to see Delicate Arch in the morning and casks of plutonium in the afternoon?
Like the radioactive waste itself, some bad ideas won’t disappear. Southeast Utah is in the crosshairs once again, aided by a $2 million Biden-era grant given to two pro-nuclear nonprofits based in California, Mothers for Nuclear and Native Nuclear, along with North Carolina State University.
San Juan County, where I live, is Utah’s only majority-Indigenous county and the state’s poorest. Last year, the county hosted a number of meetings as part of the Energy Department’s “consent-based siting consortia,” an attempt to get buy-in from residents for accepting radioactive waste. At local meetings, Mothers for Nuclear argued that the nuclear industry is much safer than the public has been told.
It’s true that 40 years ago some locals eagerly pushed for a nuclear dump. One pro-repository activist in Moab even called it preferable to national parks, because parks attracted “drugs, homosexuals, and environmentalists.” Utah’s governor opposed the dump plan, however, and after it was defeated, the town of Moab worked to create a new identity, Now, the Moab area has become an international tourist destination.
Yet the question of what to do about spent nuclear fuel remains, and the area surrounding Bears Ears National Monument and Canyonlands continues to be targeted as a suitable dumping ground.
Would welcoming radioactive waste lead to an economic revival? Probably not.
Though the Cold War rush for uranium created economic booms for San Juan County and Grand County’s town of Moab, prosperity spawned public health crises. Residents of Monticello, San Juan County’s seat, and the site of a uranium mill from 1942 to 1960, awoke to a fine yellow dust on windowsills during the mill’s heyday. Decades later, rates of lung and stomach cancer in the town were found in one study to be twice the state average.
The Navajo Nation experienced widespread uranium mining in the 20th century, followed by one of the highest incidences of uranium-linked health issues in the United States. In 1979, Tribal land was also the site of the second-largest accidental release of radioactive material in history, after a wastewater pond burst near Church Rock, New Mexico. Only the Chernobyl meltdown seven years later surpassed that disaster.
Mills for processing uranium are also harmful. After a mill site in Halchita, Utah, was capped in the early 1990s, workers who cleaned it up fell victim to some of the same diseases as uranium miners of the previous generation. Still contaminating air, livestock and humans are more than 500 unreclaimed uranium mines on Navajo land.
The Navajo Nation banned uranium mining in 2005 and uranium transport in 2012. But Energy Fuels, the company that operates the White Mesa uranium mill just outside San Juan County, secured an exemption from the transport ban in early 2025. The mill has been accepting radioactive waste for years, including waste from Japan and Estonia. Recently, it began processing ore from a mine the company owns just outside Grand Canyon National Park.
Around 10 trucks leave the Arizona mine each day, crossing unceded Havasupai and Hopi lands, the Navajo Nation, and the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation before reaching the mill–all over the objections of Tribal leaders and members of the tribes along the route.
But that waste and ore is far less radioactive than the spent nuclear fuel that Mothers for Nuclear promotes at San Juan County meetings. There, the group stays away from discussing cancer rates or birth defects, instead showing slides of pregnant, smiling women sitting next to containers of nuclear waste.
It is going to take time and vigilance, but once again my fellow residents of San Juan County intend to fend off the Department of Energy, which has adopted even more pro-nuclear policies under President Trump.
Zak Podmore is a contributor to Writers on the Range, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring conversation about the West. He is the author of Life After Deadpool and lives in Utah.
Food, Honestly is a monthly column discussing how people actually eat right now – not through reviews or recipes, but through real talk about cost, convenience and everyday food decisions. We want you to participate in that discussion, by telling us what matters to you. Email allysoneatsden@gmail.com to keep the conversation going.
My house used to have Thai Tuesday.
We’d order takeout from our favorite local spot, happily trading time at the stove and a sink full of dishes for curries and noodles that arrived hot and delicious. At a little more than $10 a plate, it felt like a splurge — but a manageable one. An easy-to-rationalize indulgence on a random weeknight when everyone was tired and hungry and no one wanted to talk about quinoa.
Thirteen-dollar meals times four people adds up to nearly $60 for my family’s beloved Good Times burgers and fries. (Getty Images)
But Thai Tuesday has gone the way of free bread at restaurants and anyone but me changing the rolls of toilet paper at my house. Not because we stopped loving Thai food, but because dinner now comes with a side of financial anxiety. As someone who loves to eat and try new restaurants, but who also loves paying her (thankfully-locked-in-at-2.5%) mortgage on time, I keep coming back to that age-old question, but for different reasons these days: What’s for dinner?
Ordering takeout used to feel like opting out of effort. Lately, it feels like opting into credit card debt. I do the quiet mental math while waiting in drive-thru lines: $13 meals times four people adds up to nearly $60 for my family’s beloved Good Times burgers and fries.
And that’s just for fast food. Somewhere along the way, the dinner middle ground disappeared. Picking up to-go food from the local Chinese spot or even Chipotle was once the compromise between cooking at home and sitting down at a restaurant. It cost a little more than a home-cooked meal, but not so much that it felt out of reach. But now it’s adding up.
I’ve had this conversation with pretty much everyone I know lately. A friend tells me her Chick-fil-A lunch ran $16. Someone else grabbed drinks and appetizers at The Cherry Cricket and left $60 lighter. Scroll Denver Food Reddit for five minutes and you’ll find the requisite “Can you believe this sandwich cost $20?” thread.
Dinner choices, like so many things right now, feel increasingly stratified. There’s the cheapish and labor-intensive cooking at home and stretching leftovers, or the takeout/eating out experience that’s increasingly expensive. What’s missing is that once-reliable in-between option that made weeknights easier without blowing the budget. Middle-ground food, like the middle class itself, feels like it’s slipping away.
Takeout used to be the pressure valve, the thing that kept us from burning out after returning from work, out of energy and willpower. Too tired to cook? Too broke for a sit-down restaurant? No problem, have some takeout tacos. But lately, even fast-casual feels like a decision you have to justify.
How did that happen? Not because restaurants suddenly got greedy, or because we all collectively broke Apple Wallet when money stopped feeling real. It’s not like restaurant owners banded together at their Annual Restaurant Owner Meeting and decided to spike prices for the heck of it. I don’t see the owner of my local pizzeria driving around town in a Ferrari.
If anything, it was inevitable. Restaurants are dealing with the same things the rest of us are — runaway rents, soaring food costs and, at least in Denver, a tipped minimum wage that’s nearly $5 higher per hour than that in notoriously expensive New York City. And all of this is happening in an industry that’s always operated on famously thin margins.
Unsurprisingly, a 2025 Expert Market Food & Beverage Industry Report, which surveyed restaurant professionals, found that 85 percent believe labor issues affect their business, with more than half pointing to wages and benefits as the single biggest threat to profitability. To cope, nearly two-thirds have raised prices. Almost one in five have raised them significantly.
So, yeah, this is why the math stops working at mealtime. A recent Newsweek article called the food and beverage sector “the canary in the coal mine,” one of the first sectors where economic anxiety shows up when people start tightening their belts. Which means that that $20 pad thai could be just the beginning.
The real loss isn’t any one dish or restaurant, but the ease of it all. Thai Tuesday didn’t disappear at my house because it stopped being good; it disappeared because it stopped being reasonable. The middle ground it occupied ghosted us, along with the idea that a weeknight meal could be both convenient and affordable.
Tonight, “What’s for dinner?” is about more than just food. It’s about time, money, burnout and what we’re willing to give up. Cooking means more work. Eating out means more money. And somewhere between the fridge and the menu board, we’re realizing, often with a side of sticker shock, that the way we eat now says as much about the economy as it does about our appetites.
Allyson Reedy is a Denver-area freelance writer, cookbook author and novelist. She is also a former Denver Post food writer.
Homeowners association fees for people living in condominiums or other multi-unit dwellings have been increasing year after year — doubling one year only to go up again the next — and the effect is crushing. The fees make housing unaffordable, pushing out existing owners and renters, but the fees also cause property values to decline as would-be buyers balk at outrageous monthly fees on top of high housing prices.
Fees increase for many reasons, but according to recent reporting by The Denver Post’s Aldo Svaldi, some of the biggest increases are a result spikes in property insurance premiums.
So profound is the problem in Colorado that in 2024, lawmakers gave the Colorado insurance commissioner two years and $329,863 to study the issue and report on their findings this January.
Now is the time for Colorado lawmakers to step up and help keep existing multi-unit housing affordable. Insurance releif will also assist single-family homes in subdivisions where HOAs have a hard time insuring community buildings and recreation centers.
We fear that since 2024, matters have only gotten worse for Coloradans living in multi-family units that share insurance coverage using an HOA. The extreme example is Broomfield, where condominium owners are now paying a premium for their property insurance because of the threat of wildfire — made apparent by the 2021 Marshall Fire fire that tore through Boulder County. The Denver Post’s Aldo Svaldi found some communities where HOA fees have doubled — or more — in response. And condominium housing values have plummetted 12% in a single year.
When the report is released this month, Colorado’s leaders need to take a long, hard look at how we can protect people from skyrocketing insurance costs and the subsequent increase in HOA fees. In theory, living in a condominium should protect people from skyrocketing insurance costs. If 50 people live under the same roof, sharing that cost burden of insuring that roof should be a fraction of the impact to individual homeowners. But because of complexities in the market, that is not the case.
“What we are seeing in the market over the past 12 months is that the premium increases seem to be stabilizing, but they are stabilizing at a place that’s really high,” said Michael Conway, Colorado’s insurance commissioner. “It is imperative to try to find ways to bring more affordability into the market. There isn’t an easy button. It’s going to take a lot of work.”
Conway said that the single biggest driver of homeowner’s insurance premium increases is hail damage claims. If you have ever seen roofers going door to door after a minor hail storm in Colorado, you might have an idea what is driving the claims and the costs.
In addition to the excess and sometimes dubious roof claims in Colorado, the condominiums are uniquely burdened by a shortage of companies offering insurance policies to multi-unit dwellings, especially in large complexes that require multi-million dollar policies with complex terms.
These units are insured through the surplus lines market — an insurance marketplace that exists largely unregulated for unique or high-risk properties. The nature of the market means that policies are not reviewed or approved by the Department of Insurance. The lack of standard language and other regulation also makes it more likely that HOAs will suffer surprises about what is and is not covered by these complex agreements. Instead the system relies on licensed agents to broker the deals and take a commission.
Colorado lawmakers need to take a long, hard look at the market for insurance for complex and hard-to-insure units. We are not suggesting that Colorado establish a state-owned insurance company for such units or even that it step up regulation. That ship has sailed.
But Colorado could play the role of a broker, providing free services to residents who live in HOA communities to help them navigate these systems, shop for options and perhaps qualify for Colorado’s new insurance of last resort.
That is just one of many ideas that lawmakers should investigate after the report is released this month.
Speaker of the House Julie McCluskie, who was an author on the legislation requiring the study, said she is open to any and all suggestions.
“I’m eager to get my hands on the report in the next week or two and see what direction it might take us,” McCluskie told The Denver Post. “We should open every door and explore every option.”
McCluskie said residents in her mountain town communities are suffering from the insurance prices and are struggling to keep units insured and affordable.
Colorado lawmakers have a responsibility in 2026 to make this a top priority. The report will guide the way, but not if it sits on a shelf after it is released. There are ways to help HOAs navigate these systems and to create a fair field of competition for insurers, if only we can find the political will to make it happen.
